Generosity in Fiction
with Joan Silber, Sarah Lawrence writing faculty
What do we mean if we say an author isn’t generous enough to the characters? What form would generosity take? Do we just mean free of cruelty or condescension, or can it be a literary value in itself? We'll look at examples from Anton Chekhov, David Malouf, Colm Toibin, Edward P. Jones, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and others. No advance reading is required.
Joan Silber is the author of eight books of fiction. Her last novel Improvement won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and she recently received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.