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On the Web Wed Dec 09 2009
Today in Hemon News
Chicago's own Aleksandar Hemon is the editor of this year's Best European Fiction anthology and was recently interviewed in the New York Times books blog about the process. Here's Hemon on how his work on the anthology reminded him about some major differences between American and European fiction writing:
Q. What was the biggest surprise for you, editing the collection?
A. It was less of a surprise than a reminder: how unabashedly comfortable many of the writers are to engage with literary forms that would be perceived as experimental or avant-garde here. In turn, I was reminded how deeply conservative contemporary American literature is in terms of form. And that conservative bent is a recent development, I believe. The European form flexibility is not a consequence of some snotty, elitist aesthetic but rather of the fact that there are many stories to be told and many traditions to draw from.
In other Hemon news, over at Booklist Daniel Kraus takes the trailer for Hemon's The Lazarus Project to task, finding that it doesn't so much make him want to read the book as it makes him want to go back and read fellow Booklist writer Donna Seaman's review of it.