A Novel Doesn’t Have to Be About an Individual
James McBride’s radical approach to fiction
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Our lives are shaped by networks: of family, friends, and colleagues, or the wider ones that encompass neighbors and fellow citizens. We exist in relation to others. And yet novels, beginning almost as soon as Don Quixote set out on his quest, have long fixated on the individual as a shaper of his or her fate, as the fundamental unit for a story. The individual acts or is acted upon, and narrative results from this tension. Which is why James McBride’s most recent
