The Plot: A Novel

Price: $14.99
(as of Jan 13,2022 00:32:47 UTC – Details)

From the Publisher

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

At the risk of sounding too meta, how did you come up with the plot of The Plot?

JEAN HANFF KORELITZ: Like most writers I’m fascinated by plagiarism and the murkiness around creative appropriation: chefs stealing recipes from other chefs, comedians helping themselves to other comedians’ jokes, academic theft, and above all creative writers appropriating work by others. I’m hardly the first novelist to write about this — there’s an entire sub-genre of Stephen King work on this theme — and it’s not the first time I’ve touched on it in my own work, but it’s the first time I’ve placed it front and center in a book. I think it makes sense to write about the things that fascinate us.

While writing this book, you must have put yourself in the shoes of the main character. Do you think you’d ever steal a genius idea for a book if you knew it would never be used?

I wouldn’t, but only because I’m squeamish by nature and I’d be terrified about that degree of exposure and disapproval. But like most artists, I also understand that stories run underneath the ground of our collective experience, and we all dip into them, whether we’re aware of it or not. The real question is: At what point does a collective story become the individual property of a person or an artist? A contender for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama was The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez, which openly adapts Forster’s Howards End to contemporary New York City. This is a normal, even laudatory practice, which artists fully understand. But to help yourself to the specific plot of a recently deceased author who never completed his book? I don’t know where the line is, exactly, but I’m pretty sure that’s over it.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08JKC299M
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Celadon Books (May 11, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 11, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4066 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 317 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled