Dear site members,
I wanted to signal you an article on Jennifer Egan, the renown American novelist, Pulitzer winner in 2011, which appeared on a New Yorker issue of October 2017, after she had published her last book: Manhattan Beach. Here is the link:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/16/jennifer-egans-travels-through-time
The article is quite entertaining and will offer you a mess of interesting information about the author.
That's why I recommend it to you, even though, I must admit, its style and concept idea is not one of my favorites.
Actually, it doesn't have a driving concept idea, meaning that it doesn't have a clear exposition structure nor a thesis to prove.
Instead, it pleasantly wanders here and there around the books and the biography of the author, the description of her working places and her house. The result is that of creating a sort of multifaceted symulacron, around which to encourage an almost pointless Cult of the Author, uniquely based on her success.
Hence, you see how easy it is to write "pointlessly," even though you are a "staff writer" of a prestigious literary magazine, and you are talking about a very popular and indeed lovely author.
I take, anyway the opportunity to tell you something meaningful and conceptually clear about the author Jennifer Egan.
I read it form a much more ideally structured article, from a weekly magazine of literary critics, that I can't publish because it is copyright protected.
Well, that article reveals something exciting to us: Jennifer Egan in the interview affirms that she firmly believes in the importance of sharing her work with other people, fellow authors or the like, and to listen to their opinions.
That is she warmly recommends Beta Reading!
She says (I report from the article) :
"I also have an ampler circle of colleagues to whom I show my writing. Often it is painful and not everything the other say of your work is right, but I need to listen, my production is based on repeated attempts and errors."
An enlightening sentence for us all, I believe.
This is also confirmed in other articles, where she is reported to suggest attending a Writing Group, as she does (!).
" Egan claims that her writing group helps her decide whether her material feels ‘alive’. Originally, she says, Manhattan Beach was going to play with time in a similar way to A visit from the Goon Squad – it was only after she’d brought several limp chapters to her writing group that her peers’ disapproval finally sank in and she started over. "
I wish you all the same an entertaining read of the "nothing-more-than-entertaining" New Yorker's article.
Best!