“You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations. And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable.” WantAmericaNovelParticularCricketPreoccupationUnspeakable Author:Joseph O'Neill
“I think the novel is the American form because people read it in private, and the only valuable things that happen in America happen in private life, because public life is a dead loss.” PeopleThinkingHappensAmericaFormLife IsLossNovelValuablePrivate LifePublic LifeValuable Things Author:David Hare
“Look at Andrew Roe's The Miracle Girl from one angle and you'll see an incisive and insightful critique of America at the millennium and today, investigating where we put our faith and why. The greatest of Roe's achievements in this captivating debut is a memorable feat of intense empathy. Roe inhabits characters who are desperate to believe and reveals to us their needs and wounds and hopes, and he does so with kindness, generosity, and wisdom. This is a novel about what it means to be human, to seek connection and hope and maybe even transcendence in the world around us.” WorldNeedsBelieveHumansLooksMeanDoeCharacterTodayAmericaGirlKindnessNovelAchievementEmpathyConnectionsMiracleWoundsIntenseGenerosityMemorableDesperateInsightfulAngleTranscendenceCritiqueFeatsAndrewMillenniumDebutInvestigatingCaptivatingKindness GenerosityWhat It Means To Be Human Author:Doug Dorst
“Fitzgerald could sense that America was poised on the edge of a vast transformation, and wrote a novel bridging his moment and ours. The Great Gatsby made manifest precisely what Fitzgerald’s contemporaries couldn’t bear to see, and thus it is not only the Jazz Age novel par excellence, but also the harbinger of its decline and fall.” MadeMomentsAgeAmericaFallNovelBearsTransformationJazzExcellenceEdgesManifestDeclineHarbingerJazz Age Book:Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby Source: Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby
“The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn't from the news. I live there. We don't go home at the end of the day and think, "Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points." What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture.” ThinkingKnowsWellsEndsStoriesHomeAmericaCultureNovelStreetsFashionWallTruth IsNewsWho I AmMagazinesWho We AreThe End Of The DayJournalPopular CultureStock ExchangeWall Street JournalFashion Magazines Author:Chris Abani
“We have a thriving subculture of 'independent' American movies that makes an impact on America as a whole roughly equivalent to that of a the modern literary novel. These are the films sincere viewers marry, whereas, once upon a time, movies were a lifetime of one night stands.” WholeAmericaFilmNightNovelModernHollywoodIndependentImpactLifetimeSincereViewersOne NightOnce Upon A TimeAmerican MovieOne Night StandSubculture Author:Edward Jay Epstein
“I haven't written a novel or something that long, because I really am improvising all along and the story is growing new limbs to do what it needs to do. So there's very little planning. There's a little planning where I say, "Well, it looks like I'm going in this direction, ok, good." But there's very little forethought or intellectual justification: "Oh, look, I'm putting in a theme park because that represents dystopian America!"” NeedsWellsLooksLittlesLongStoriesAmericaNovelGrowingWrittenHavensIntellectualPlanningParksThemeJustificationDystopianLimbsImprovisingForethoughtTheme Parks Author:George Saunders
“Jayne Anne Phillips . . . is at the height of her powers in Lark and Termite. . . . This is a major novel from one of America's finest writers.” AmericaNovelMajorsHeightFinestLarks Author:Robert Olen Butler
“In America they have to know just what you are-- novelist, poet, playwright... Well, I've been all of them... I think poems and novels and stories spring from the same seed. It's not like, say, playing polo and knitting.” ThinkingKnowsWellsStoriesAmericaNovelPoetSpringSeedsNovelistsPlaywrightKnittingPolo Author:Robert Penn Warren