‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
In this episode of the Granta Podcast, we speak to the novelist Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life (2020) and The Late Americans (2023), about naturalism, the future of fiction, and the connection between Émile Zola and The Sims.
We also discuss Taylor’s short story ‘Stalin, Lenin, Robespierre’, which appeared in Granta 166: Generations.
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‘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.
‘He tried to think about what sort of person he wanted to be in this world and how he might bring that about.’
Fiction by Brandon Taylor.
Our ten most popular pieces of fiction this year, including work by J.M. Coetzee, Brandon Taylor and Miranda July.
‘This set of characters are simultaneously medieval kings and modern aristocrats.’
Allen Bratton on adapting the Henriad and his debut novel Henry Henry.
‘Every time I tried to write more, it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor – I felt like I was trapped in a sealed room with no windows.’
Fiction by Yu Hua, translated by Michael Berry.
‘It seemed perfectly normal for middle-class writers to tell the stories of the underclass. But the presumed creator of literature has been changing.’
Granta interviews Wu Qi.
‘The landscape, glimpsed through plumes of dust thrown up by trucks, grew drier, more hostile as it climbed away from the sea.’
