PUBLISHED: April 13, 2006
I found it a over month late, but here’s a nice interview with David Lynn, editor of the Kenyon Review, by John Sledge, the Books columnist of the Mobile (AL) Register. (Brief registration may be required.) Sledge offers that he plans to interview Bret Lott of the Southern Review and George Core of the Sewanee Review in future columns. Nice to see a book editor give a little attention to the lit mag world.
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In the interview, David Lynn says:
“It’s an interesting period in America in terms of what genres writers are choosing. I would argue that never before has so much first-rate poetry been created – it’s an astonishing moment for poetry, partly because the writers are also realists. They’re writing poetry for the sheer beauty and satisfaction of it – they have no ulterior hopes of fame or making great money. Best-seller status and film rights aren’t a possibility.
“Fiction, however, is a different story. It’s rather a tired genre, it seems to me, with some fatigue in its conventions. It’s very hard to write a story that seems truly fresh. Also, many fiction writers use short stories as a kind of apprenticeship, while they look to “move up” to novels, where there is more hope of fame and fortune.”
Could it be that Mr. Lynn isn’t seeing any “truly fresh” work because so much of it is being scooped up by VQR?
