Author Allegra Goodman: Friend of Jane
Alert Janeite Jessica sent us a link to an interview with Allegra Goodman, author of the novel Intuition.
Why did you call your book “Intuition”?
It’s Austen-ian, I think. It’s like her “Persuasion.”
Is Austen your hero?
I’m interested in realism. I am interested in writing about people with all their strengths and all their flaws. I love Jane Austen. I love George Eliot. I love Charles Dickens and his engagement with the social and political sphere.
And yet creative-writing teachers are always telling to you to write about what you know, so now we have countless novels that sound like unedited therapy sessions.
At some point you have to move beyond that. You have to know more, you have to learn more. If we all wrote about our childhood forever, books would be rather monotonous.
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