Reimagining Narrative Structure w. JANE ALISON

Jane Alison

Jane Alison’s new book, Meander, Spiral, Explode, is out now from Catapult. (Buy now from IndieBound.) Jane is the author of a memoir, The Sisters Antipodes, and four novels—The Love-Artist, The Marriage of the Sea, Natives and Exotics, and Nine Island—and is also the translator of Ovid’s stories of sexual transformation, Change Me. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville. 

Discussed In This Episode

Liberation from the narrative arc. Obligation and rules (and breaking them). The pliability of the novel form. “I have to admit, I have a hard time reading a conventional realist novel these days.” Narrative as a visual art. Spatial narrative. Letting a project age until it’s the right time to make it. Egocentric and allocentric spatial knowledge. Levitating above the text.

Bonus Segment: Reading Practice

Jane talks about how she reads.

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Further Reading

The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald
Crossing the River, Caryl Phillips
The Lover, Marguerite Duras
Autoportrait, Edouard Leve

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