Jessa Crispin at Bookslut helpfully provides a link to this recent interview with the outrageously talented young writer Adam Johnson. His short story collection from last year, Emporium, is a book I just can’t shut up about. I have not yet gotten my hands on his new novel Parasites Like Us, and have not read much about it.
As far as splashy fiction debuts, last summer sometimes seemed to be the summer of Adams: Johnson and Haslett. It was easy to get them confused at first, but soon this one was grabbing most of the attention, topped off with a National Book Award nomination. I liked Adam Haslett’s stories, but the media fuss seemed misplaced. To my mind there is something just a little showy, and less than fully felt, about the stories in You Are Not a Stranger Here. They’re inventive, diverse and impeccably crafted, beyond any argument. But–and I know this is a highly subjective criterion–to me Haslett’s stories feel decisively less urgent, less necessary. They may be too diverse; as a group they feel oddly professional in their intent, like a portfolio of work samples designed to demonstrate mastery of a range of modes and subjects.
I think Lost in Translation is going to be a touchstone for all of my thinking about art and storytelling for a while. What it has in common with the amazing stories in Emporium, and what distinguishes them from Haslett’s fine, but finally sterile, performance in You Are Not a Stranger Here, is hard to put your finger on precisely. It’s in the vicinity of conviction or purpose–whatever all that lovely craft is serving. Encountering Coppola and Johnson’s work, I experienced something very like what Terry described here.