Friday, February 23, 2007

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres and the just-released Ten Days in the Hills, talked to the Christian Science Monitor about what she was listening to and viewing for entertainment.

And reading:
I have been reading a book by Anthony Trollope called Lady Anna. I love Trollope. I think my favorite Trollope is He Knew He Was Right, which is very complex. The range of female characters is really astonishing. I was reading Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. The new generation of writers is really interested in crossing boundaries because they live in a world in which boundaries no longer exist. You know, they live in a very paradoxical world where you can go anywhere and yet, simultaneously, personal boundaries seem to go up and groups and people tend to defend themselves more rigorously. The Desai book reflects this ... it's about going back and forth between India and America, Russia and Britain, and the dislocation that the characters in the novel feel [about] globalization. My generation of woman writers, which I would say began in 1970, were much more interested in establishing our identity as to who we were born to be. Our daughters are telling stories that are more global in their aspirations.
Read about what Smiley is listening to and watching.

--Marshal Zeringue