The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life

by Richard Russo

I knew: quite a lot about the nineteenth-century novel, Twain and Dickens in particular. less about the twentieth century, very little about the eighteenth. enough about Gass, Elkin, Barthelme, Coover, Vonnegut and the other postmoderns to know they didn’t speak to me. how to create characters that, for the most part, rang true. that it’s conflict, more than plot, that drives the best stories forward. that characters had to speak out of their own need, not their author’s. the ins and outs of point of view.