by Geoff Mak. Posted on Flavorpill - Tuesday Jul 10, 2012
If you haven’t noticed, we spend a lot of time thinking about literature here in the Flavorpill offices, digging through its past, weighing its current state, and imagining its future. Take a look at our bookshelves and you’ll find us reading everything from Nobel Prize winners to age-old classics to paperbacks printed at the bookstore down the street. Call it Chick-Lit, Hysterical Realism, Ethnic-Lit, or Translit — if it’s good fiction, we’ll be talking about it. So this summer, we’re launching The Future of American Fiction: an interview series expanding on that endless conversation about books we love, and yes, the direction of American fiction, from the people who’d know. Every Tuesday from now through August, we’ll bring you a short interview with one of the writers we think is instrumental in defining that direction.This week, we talked with Karen Thompson Walker about her bestselling, debut novel The Age of Miracles, which just hit shelves last month. Gripping from the first page, the book is the kind of literary page-turner for people who don’t normally like literary novels. It kicks off with Julia, a sixth grader, and her parents as they anxiously watch news reports about the Earth’s rotation having inexplicably slowed down. As nights stretch up to 48 hours, Julia’s family builds up paranoia like a cloud. Soon, invisible threats derail their California suburb, brimming with religious and political diversity, into an apocalyptic dystopia. Hate crimes spike, families disappear to join desert communes. Green soccer fields get swarmed in ladybugs, churches slide into the sea, and hundreds of whales surface on the Southern California beaches. And amidst the Earth’s decomposition is a precocious, quiet love story as Julia grapples with the contradicting terrors of middle school life. Walker joined us to talk about her new novel, the inherent anxiety of living in the suburbs, and the phenomenon of the literary page-turner.
Arthur Krystal wrote recently for The New Yorker that “For the longest time, there was little ambiguity between literary fiction and genre fiction: one was good for you, one simply tasted good.” Many novels recently (i.e. Chabon, Diaz) are blurring those boundaries, as they’re methodically accessible while still provoking serious cultural and political thought. Do you see this as a trend in American fiction right now?
I hope so, although I’m not sure I would characterize the divide in exactly that way. The literary fiction I love — from Madame Bovary to Lolita to The Road — does taste good. I don’t believe that a piece of fiction can be successful if it’s merely “good for you” and not at all enjoyable. For me, the key ingredient is always great writing. If a book is not well written, I just can’t get into it, no matter how thrilling the story. The books I love most, though, are the ones that combine wonderful writing with a wonderful story. (A few of my relatively recent favorites in this category are The Virgin Suicides, Blindness, Housekeeping, The Namesake, The Lifeboat, and Never Let Me Go.)
Full interview at Flavorpill