Catherine Lacey discuses voice, characterization and the minute details that bring a story to life
Granta Magazine’s Luke Neima speaks to Catherine Lacey, the author of The Answers, about being one of Granta’s 2017 Best of Young American Novelists. They discuss her latest novel, micro-interactions in literature and translating emotional relationships into prose.
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘Grief has a warring logic; it always wants something impossible, something worse and something better.’
An extract from Biography of X by Catherine Lacey.
‘The church has no thoughts. The church is brick and glass. If they ever slept there, they would see that.’
Catherine Lacey shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
‘And each time I hit the tarmac I had this terrible feeling that the trip I’d just taken had never even happened, that I’d spent hundreds for a memory I could barely recall.’
‘The possibility that I’d unwittingly tapped into her fate and used it as fuel for a story sickened me.’
‘And yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of Lamb’s influence on contemporary writing, the nineteenth-century superstar has been largely ignored and mostly forgotten.’
