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John Wray

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). 

Author

The Realm of Possibility

Summer 2020 | Fiction


“I have to do the wee,” announced the child.

“You have to make a wee,” her mother said. “And I asked you before we got in the car, remember? It’s too late for that now. You can go at the gym.”

“I have to do the wee,” the child repeated.

Photographs by John Wray

John Wray’s Notes to Self

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.)