American Fiction

Jonathan Franzen has written a poignant book about coming of age in the Midwest of the 1970s, the discontents of family, searching for identity in a p...

A short story is like a toothache and you must drill it and fill it. A novel is more like bridgework.

Are the writers receiving the major awards and official recognition really the best writers today? Or are they overrated mediocrities with little claim to recognition by posterity?

What I tell my students is this: Don't read any living American writers. If you're going to read any American writers at all, only read dead ones. That way you can be sure you're not wasting your time.

"We angle down to New York City, and the skyscrapers of Manhattan aggregate like tall flowers in a garden and the grids of orange lights look like LED...

Novelists didn't have to think much in the way of plot. 9/11 happened before, during, or after, to change everything (as Bush and Ashcroft had it, the world changed, nothing was the same after 9/11).

We discussed how Harper Perennial maintains a unique sensibility despite the large number of titles, and the prospects for fiction writing amid the rapid changes in the publishing industry.

In The Humbling's three fantastic acts, the reader is thrown into a dramatic maelstrom, which has but one Chekovian outcome and raises many novel questions.

In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college I got a postcard from a boy in my sociology class. It read something like this: "Please, read Goodbye, Columbus right now."

At 76, Mr. Roth continues to explore the themes that have defined his work: the eroding of family ties; man's struggle with depression and loneliness ...