Edan Lepucki sets her debut novel, 'California,' somewhere in the 2060s. The nearness of this era helps make her vision both more discomfiting and more credible.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Before my book, 'California,' came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let's put it this way - I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn't want it to disappoint, but I didn't expect it to be a best-seller, either.
As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future.
If utopian fiction became the new trend, I wouldn't read it.
I hope someday to see California literature become a part of mainstream American literature, and I hope to be part of that process.
With 'California,' editors were reading it, and fast, and others were emailing my agent to request it. Ultimately, there were a few editors interested in the book, and it sold at auction about two weeks after the submission process started. I couldn't believe it!
I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.
The summer I got to Pittsburgh for graduate school, I house-sat for a Ph.D. student who had a lot of books. One of the books that I found was 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov. That was eye opening. I've probably read it every other year since my 20s.
Where was Paris Hilton a year ago? She's a fabulous character to write about.
Some people become passionate readers and fans of science fiction during childhood or adolescence. I picked up on SF somewhat later than that; my escape reading of choice during my youth was historical novels, and one of my favorite writers was Mary Renault.
When someone hears that I've written a book about 1897, I'm usually met with blank stares. And the first thing they say is, 'Was there even an L.A. back then?' A lot of people don't even think there was a city before the movies appeared. That concept of Los Angeles is so strong in the popular imagination that celebrity overrides everything.
No opposing quotes found.