Storytelling

The debut novelist on writing fiction about free will, his love of Denis Johnson, the elusive idea of plot, and his family lineage of writers.

On telling a story within a story, writing about autocratic regimes, and finding creative inspiration in science experiments.

The crisply constructed short stories for which David Means has become renowned are high and tight. His new—and first—novel, Hystopia, is something shaggier, departing, in its theoretical approach, from the New Yorker School of Fiction for the emerging field of narrative medicine, in which testimonies of trauma are inherently wooly and chaotic rather than refined and concise.

“I intended The Fugitives to be as close to a zero-research book as possible. I decided that if I couldn’t find something with Google in ten minutes, then I should forget it, or make it up.”

We gathered around you while you told ghost stories. It was a familiar, reflexive, ancient act to draw close to the beat and the voice. When the drummer tripped out a beat, your speech became a song.

Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska of Nature Theater of Oklahoma on their series Life & Times, new episodes of which will be presented this September by FIAF as a part of its Crossing the Line festival.

Sung Hwan Kim’s The Tanks at Tate Modern uses mixed media to challenge reality, and how the artist and the viewer are both figments of the imagination.

“The reason I am writing fiction is so that I can tell the truth from a vantage point that allows me some space.”

“You can renovate your soul and change your behavior and lie to yourself, but maybe the face is the last frontier of truth. There’s only so much that plastic surgery can do for you.”

After a lunch consisting of meatballs, rice, and lemonade, Francis Alÿs coordinates the afternoon plans for his son Elliot. The main activity is soccer practice, but Alÿs determines it’d be best to get to homework right away.