Each year, the International Forum on the Novel in Lyon, France, invites authors to write about a “keyword” of their choice. The following texts are drawn from this year’s forum, presented by the ...
Dana Spiotta
In Eat the Document (2006; recently translated into French by Élodie Leplat), the novelist and Guggenheim Fellow Dana Spiotta tells the story of Mary Whittaker, a militant anti-Vietnam activist forced to change her identity. In this symphonic romance of a bygone America that traces the movement from the fervent idealism of the ’60s to the cynicism of the ’90s, Spiotta paints a subtle and powerful picture of the decline of the radical tradition. 