Lists
by Powell's Books, January 15, 2020 9:34 AM
A major component of Indiespensable, Powell's literary fiction subscription program, is the Powell’s interview. While the interviews are bound in a collectible booklet that accompanies each installment, we also make sure to post them on the Powell's blog. It’s a rare treat and privilege to talk with artists about their work, and we want to share that heady experience with as many booklovers as possible.
Whether you’re an Indiespensable subscriber, or just like to catch the interview on the blog, we thought it would be fun to look back at 2019’s roster and reacquaint ourselves with the amazing books and authors we had the privilege to read and speak with.
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Volume 78: Tessa Hadley, Author of 'Late in the Day'
“[Late in the Day] began with my idea that I would like to have two couples and follow them through time. I wanted to follow them through from their youth to their middle age, and explore the longevity of marriages and friendships and things. I thought that episodic nature would need something sharp and acute and very dramatic. I loved the idea of them changing partners from time to time, whether visibly or invisibly. Then I thought, Of course, one of them dies.”
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Volume 79: Valeria Luiselli, Author of 'Lost Children Archive'
“I've done a lot of work in libraries. I've enjoyed working with archives, old newspapers and magazines and photos and letters. An archive really is our only material connection to the past. There's a lot in an archive that I just find very beautiful and mysterious. In the sense that you're touching something that hands long ago produced and eyes long ago gazed on.
At the same time, the way we now can compose a narrative from the debris of the past doesn't necessarily bring us closer to that past. It just shows us what we look for in it. There’s a sadness or a resignation that comes with the archive, which is that you know that you won't necessarily reach any kind of truth, but perhaps just receive an echo of what you bring to it.”
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Volume 80: Kristen Arnett, Author of 'Mostly Dead Things'
“I'm a third-generation Floridian. Not only was I born here, but my parents were, and my grandparents. A lot of growing up was hearing stories told about their experiences living here and dealing with the outdoors. Florida always feels a little bit like storytelling. There's always something happening here. I'm always wanting to investigate what that means to me.
Some people decide to interpret it like, Oh, it's weird, or Oh, it's like Florida Man, or ugly in this kind of way. I prefer not to look at it in a binary way. I think it's easy to be like, things are either weird or normal, or things are either beautiful or ugly. I think that Florida's a lot of all these things simultaneously. It adapts and works with everything; and the land is always trying to take the place back....
Florida's always interesting. It's always confusing. It's always kind of uncomfortable. Those are things I like to write about, too....I guess I will continue writing about Florida until it's not interesting to me, but I don't know when that day will come.”
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Volume 81: Colson Whitehead, Author of 'The Nickel Boys'
“My first book was about elevator inspectors. It wasn't about some conventional idea of what black experience is. I've written books that have nothing to do with race such as my book about poker or my book about New York.
Sag Harbor is about black teenagers, but it's really about teenagers; it's sort of incidental that they're African American. It's really about identity formation and being a teenager. Race enters very minimally into Zone One.
It may be that the media or the critical apparatus expect black writers to write in a certain way about certain subjects. I never felt I had to, and why would you follow someone else's idea of what you're supposed to write?”
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Volume 82: Maaza Mengiste, Author of 'The Shadow King'
“I think Ettore, at some point, understands that he's an archivist of atrocity....He thinks what he does, by crafting these images in such a way that they become beautiful, is something that might absolve him of his actions.
As a novelist, I can see why he might think that. It's hard sometimes to sit with the truths of what you do. But as a woman who looks at those images that are often beautiful, I realize that it's not catering to some higher purpose, necessarily, other than that the assumed male viewer gets something very nice to look at.
It doesn't complicate the subject; it merely dresses it up nicely. I think as a novelist, as a writer, what I want to do with these images is not only craft them in a way that might be beautiful, but I want to complicate them at the same time, so that I make the experience as uncomfortable as possible. So that once you leave the page, you're considering it the next time you see someone else objectified or subjugated.”
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Volume 83: Ben Lerner, Author of 'The Topeka School'
“I think that the cue ball that's hanging there, and kind of rotating, suspended over the novel... really what's suspended over the novel is the present....
The novel is a lot about that kind of moment in the ’90s where, at least amongst the pundit class, there was this talk about the end of history, like historical time has ended and everything's going to be fine. Part of what I'm trying to do is remember that discourse from the present, where history has resumed in really horrifying ways.
Obviously, history never stopped, but that ’90s ideology of being at the end of ideology is something I wanted to get at. I think with the cue ball, when the cue ball is in motion again, you're also being thrown back into the present, remembering the '90s from the Trump era.
The symmetry isn't exact, but there is a disaster that hangs over the book, and it's not just Darren’s discrete act of violence. It's everything that act of violence represents about a structure of American nihilism.”
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