As this week continues to careen out of control, we look to others to provide wit and wisdom. Or at least interesting reads. Over at the Co-Op, Elizabeth Poliner stops by to discuss her book Mutual Life & Casualty. In addition to expanding on her themes, she also addresses how she sees the novel-in-stories:
As far as the novel-in-stories being successful as a novel, I’d like to throw out the possibility that they’re different creatures. Often more a fiction of community than anything else, novel-in-stories often jump, as my book does, from character to character, with an aim of gathering a sense about a community, or about relationships within a community, more than with the aim of telling a story through the traditional novel’s device of unified plot.
