John Wray is the author of Godsend (FSG, 2018), The Lost Time Accidents (FSG, 2016), Lowboy (FSG, 2009), Canaan’s Tongue (Knopf, 2005), and The Right Hand of Sleep (Knopf, 2001).
John Wray sees novels as falling into one of two categories—arrowheads or fruitcakes—whose modus operandi are distinct. “There’s the kind of novel that’s formed on the principle of exclusion, in which your goal is something very flinty and sharp and generally not very long. Those would be the arrowheads.” (See A Farewell to Arms, for example.) “Then there are the fruitcakes, which accrue on the basis of inclusion, in which almost anything could potentially be incorporated into the narrative as long as it’s interesting or amusing or bizarre.” (See Moby-Dick.)
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