‘I am very interested in the question of reality on the one hand and imagination on the other, so the mirror has to be angled slightly to take in something that isn’t already there’
Granta Magazine’s Luke Neima speaks to Garth Risk Hallberg about being one of Granta’s 2017 Best of Young American Novelists.
Garth Risk Hallberg on how September 11th lead to his first real piece of fiction, the state of American literature today, and the difficulties of getting the perfect balance of realism and imagination into a piece of writing.
Read his story The Meat Suit from Granta 139
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘Thinking back to that summer of Silas Lucas, I can see my father trying to invent for me the place where the actual and the possible meet to make something new.’
Garth Risk Hallberg on the borderline business of telling stories.
‘All life is suffering. At the zendo where Jolie went Thursdays after sixth period, not much in the way of portable wisdom got dispensed, but this was, near as she could tell, the through line.’
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
‘Our imaginations are in service to the wrong ends.’
Olivia Laing and M. John Harrison on the commodification of the imagination.
‘I tell my dead father if he gives any more advice that rhymes, I’ll leave this story unfinished.’
Fiction by Idra Novey.
‘While waiting for his faecal transplant, my husband wasn’t as fun as he used to be.’
