Tag: artistic vision
‘American Fiction’ and the ‘Just Literature’ Problem
“Why are these books here?” asks Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, the writer protagonist of the film American Fiction, as he points to four novels stacked neatly on the shelf of a chain bookstore. The name Ellison sticks out from their spines.
Monk wants to know why his Greek-tragedy-inspired novels are housed not in “Mythology” but in the “African American Studies” section. A bookstore employee offers the obvious explanation: “I would imagine that this author, Ellison, is … Black.” He has
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh on ‘A Substitution,’ a Short Story
“A Substitution” is a new story by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh. To mark the story’s publication in The Atlantic, Sayrafiezadeh and Oliver Munday, the design director of the magazine, discussed the story over email. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Oliver Munday: In your story “A Substitution,” a playwright struggles to figure out his next project. You’ve written other fiction concerned with theater, and you’re a playwright yourself. What about the relationship between playwriting and fiction writing do you