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Meg Wolitzer Explores the Meaning of Early Talent An exclusive Authorlink AUDIO interview with The Meg Wolitzer ONE OF AMAZONS TOP TEN BIG BOOKS FOR SPRING ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2013The Millions A MUST READ FOR 2013Houston Chronicle Like Virginia Woolf in The Waves, Meg Wolitzer gives us the full picture here, charting The Chicago Tribune and Newsday have likened Meg Wolitzers ability to tackle big American issues to that of Tom Wolfe, Jonathan Franzen and Rick Moody, while Vanity Fair has called her a stealth feminist who expertly teases out the socio-sexual power dynamics between men and women. Regularly invoking comparisons to the great male titans of American literature, Wolitzer retains a voice that is all her own and one that is unafraid to challenge the very canon to which she is compared. In this Authorlink AUDIO interview, she talks about talent, artistic confidence and the role of luck in success. As a writer who gets better and better with each succeeding book (Newsday), Wolitzer now delivers an ambitious and career-culminating novel about early talent and what becomes of it; and the quiet envy we may feel even toward the people we love most. Wide in scope and populated with complex and appealing characters, The dazzling, panoramic novel is about what becomes of early talent, and the roles that art, money, and even envy can play in close friendships. The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Juless now-married best friends, become shockingly successfultrue to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken. In a provocative essay in the New York Times Book Review this past spring, Wolitzer discussed the different way that men and womens writing is perceived in the world of literary fiction, generating heated conversation among the literary community and a mounting anticipation for THE INTERESTINGS, the newest novel from this bestselling author and perceptive cultural observer. Having already won over Pulitzer-Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenidies and been named by Amazon as one of its Top Ten Big Books for Spring, THE INTERESTINGS is proving to be the literary novel of the season, with coverage already lined up in everything from Elle, Vanity Fair, and Marie Claire to Readers Digest, Cosmopolitan and Real Simple,among others. THE INTERESTINGS is a landmark novel, reaffirming that Meg Wolitzer deserves to be a household name (San Francisco Chronicle) and cements her place among the best novelists of our day. Meg Wolitzer talked with Authorlink while on a book tour in April 2013. The tour scheduled appearances in New York City, Portland, Pleasanton, A, Sebastopol, CA, Hudson-on-Hastings, NY, Chicago and Indianapolis. –Doris Booth |
