Novelist, short story writer, poet, and critic Lucy Ives’ new novel Life Is Everywhere has been heralded by some of our most formally inventive and playful writers today, from Jesse Ball to Alejandro Zambra to Percival Everett. No wonder as Life Is Everywhere, a book that contains other books, is hard to categorize. Some have called the structure like that of Matryoshka dolls but its inspiration comes directly from an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin called “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” an essay that reaches toward a different future for the novel. In Ives’ book we spend just as much time reading the things inside our protagonist’s bag as we do with the protagonist herself. At any moment what we are reading might seem like a #MeToo novel, a book of fictional history, a book of real history, a fantastical adventure of magical statuary, an autofiction, or a “systems novel,” one that looks at how individuals act and are acted upon within structures and institutions, whether a marriage or a university. As Percival Everett says “If Lucy Ives is as smart as her novel Life Is Everywhere, then I am in complete awe. . . . How many books in one and yet one book. This is great writing.” And Jesse Ball aptly adds about this erudite and sly invention, Ives “slays enemy and friend alike.”
For the bonus audio Lucy Ives contributes a reading of a five-part writing exercise called “Exercises for Writing from Memory.” This joins contributions from writers as varied as Ted Chiang, N.K. Jemisin, Dionne Brand, Arthur Sze, Max Porter, and more. To learn about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other many potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page.
Finally here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation.
The post Lucy Ives : Life Is Everywhere appeared first on Tin House.
Tin House Live : Matthew Zapruder on Story of a Poem
Major Jackson : Razzle Dazzle
JoAnna Novak : Contradiction Days
Jorie Graham : To 2040
Tin House Live : Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah on Surrealism
Roger Reeves : Dark Days
Isabella Hammad : Enter Ghost
Tin House Live : Max Porter on Shy
Megan Fernandes : I Do Everything I’m Told
Johanna Hedva : Your Love Is Not Good
Tin House Live : Katie Holten on The Language of Trees
Tin House Live: Richard Powers on The Overstory
Melanie Rae Thon : As If Fire Could Hide Us
Christina Sharpe : Ordinary Notes
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o : The Language of Languages
Charif Shanahan : Trace Evidence
Sabrina Orah Mark : Happily
Monica Youn : From From
Jai Chakrabarti : A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness
Mariana Enriquez : Our Share of Night
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
Anne of Green Gables
Just So Stories
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends