The New York Times - USA (2020-11-09)

C4 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Danielle Evans really did mean to write a
novel.
She had promised one to her literary
agent, and there was certainly interest after
her critically acclaimed 2010 debut, “Before
You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self,” a story
collection that earned her a place on the Na-
tional Book Foundation’s Five Under 35 list.
But over the past 10 years, Evans kept
getting ideas for short stories. She would
write them “quickly and secretly,” she said
in a video interview last month, then get
back to work. Eventually, however, the nov-
el gave rise to a novella, the stories kept
coming, and they are all together in her new
collection, “The Office of Historical Correc-
tions,” out on Tuesday from Riverhead.
The book is “thematically about apolo-
gies, or corrections, or trying to make
things right,” Evans, 37, said, though it
shouldn’t be taken as any sort of apology for
writing more short stories. It’s a form that
she loves because “you get to see a writer
thinking about the same question in differ-
ent ways but arriving at different answers,”
she said.
In one, “Boys Go to Jupiter,” a college stu-
dent named Claire becomes a lightning rod
— scorned by Black students, supported by
the campus libertarian group — when a
photo of her in a Confederate flag bikini cir-
culates. In “Why Won’t Women Just Say
What They Want,” a high-profile artist’s lat-
est work is a series of public apologies to the
women he’s wronged — ex-wives, his
daughter, a former assistant — though he
doesn’t realize all that forgiveness entails.
And in “Alcatraz,” a woman fights in vain to
reverse her relative’s dishonorable dis-
charge, focused on the sum she estimates
the U.S. government owes her family:
$227,035.87.
The novella, which gives the book its
name, follows Cassie, a field worker in a fic-
tional but plausible government depart-
ment, the Institute for Public History.
Cassie’s job is to leave notes of clarification
throughout the country about everything
from inaccurate commemorative plaques to
kitschy souvenirs.
In one scene she corrects a bakery’s
Juneteenth display — “targeted not to the
people who’d celebrated Juneteenth all
along but to office managers who’d feel hec-
tored into not missing a Black holiday or
who just wanted an excuse for miscella-
neous dessert.” She and her few co-workers
of color “shared an urgency about the kind
of work we were doing, a belief that the
truth was our last best hope, and a sense
that our own mission was less neutral and
more necessary than that of the white men
we answered to at the office.”
Evans’s stories and their sensitivity to is-
sues around race and power feel particu-
larly resonant in 2020, and to the people
who know her work, that is no surprise.
“Danielle can always anticipate what’s go-
ing to happen,” the writer Melinda Mous-
takis, who was part of Evans’s Five Under
35 cohort, said.
Her editor, Sarah McGrath, said, “She
sees really clearly the meaning of various
exchanges in ways that many of us take for
granted.”
Evans, who teaches creative writing at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,
talked about how short stories work, the
evolving discussion of race in literature and
publishing, and, in a way, her fear of com-
mitment. This conversation has been edited

and condensed.

You don’t see many writers who publish only

short stories, and novellas are even rarer.

What do you like about the short story

form?

I can shape-shift. I’m not pinned down to

one voice or one model or one way of think-

ing about something.

I’m especially aware of this, being a Black

female writer. This was more true of my

first collection, but I was aware of all the

ways people — even well-intentioned peo-

ple or people who think they were being

complimentary — see that in a reductive

way. There was a point in our culture when

the best possible reception you could hope

for as a writer of color with a mainstream

audience was that people would celebrate

you as thevoice of your community, which is

a fraught place to be speaking from.

Stories work in compression and intensi-

ty, and their structure helps me get to the

place where everything collapses or the

threads come together. It can echo some of

the intensity of how being alive feels.

[Laughs.] Maybe that’s an intellectual way

of saying that I’m commitment-phobic.

I do think it’s true in some existential way

that people don’t universally take the short

story seriously. Who knows what imaginary

life I’d have if I’d written a novel first —

maybe I’d be on some private island, but

probably not! Working in the story form has

in some ways given me what I wanted,

which was not necessarily a flashy career

but a sustainable career.

How is this collection different from your

first?

It’s a slightly weirder book. Having bought

myself some trust, I can take risks and ask

people to go with me, which I probably

wouldn’t have tried in the first book. Now,

I’m asking readers to wait till the end of the

story and see if you still trust me. You don’t

have that freedom with a debut.

You’ve spent much of the past decade

teaching and visiting colleges across the

country. How has your time in the classroom

affected your writing?

There are a lot of things that make you feel

like art is tiny or that writing is meaning-

less. Every five minutes someone declares

the death of fiction. But being in the class-

room helps me turn off that noise and see

that writing really matters to people. If I put

the right story in someone’s hands, it can

change their life.

And it’s an excuse to reread “Jazz” once a

year, since I teach it so often. It’s a book that

reminds me why I want to be a writer.

You wrote much of this book during an

intensely difficult time, while caring for your

mother. How did that shape the arc of this

new collection?

This book is substantially about grief. I was

writing it when my mother was sick — she

died three years ago, and I can see it all over

the book now. It was a way to write into a

space that I didn’t have an emotional vocab-

ulary for: The emotional balance of the

stories is often more about the day-to-day

management of life in the face of something

that won’t change.

These stories are shaped differently be-

cause I was thinking about the absence of

choice. It was probably related to both my

sense of personal crisis and a sense of na-

tional crisis: how to think about the parts of

the world we can’t control.

In what ways do you feel like the broader

culture has changed surrounding how we

talk about race and authors of color?

I’m less afraid that I’ll be the only Black

writer that somebody reads or that there

will be only one book by a writer of color

each season that people are talking about.

It’s much more true now that you’ll hear,

“Here are eight books by Black writers.

Let’s think about what they’re saying to

each other.” That gives me more space to be

weirder, riskier — not to feel like something

will be taken as representative.

Across the publishing industry there’s been

a racial reckoning. What else would you like

to see happen?

The question is not “How do we talk about

race in the work of Black writers?” but

“Why don’t we talk about it more in works

by white writers?”

I almost never get asked to review white

writers, for example. The one person who

ever asked me to review a story collection

by a white writer was a Black editor. People

of color notice the absences, we notice the

treatment of secondary characters, where

the language gets weird. And that’s useful

for everybody.

We should be talking about race more as a

function of craft — of everybody’s craft.

Maybe it shouldn’t be the first paragraph of

every review, but it should be noted that

books have a racial context. Conversations

would be more interesting for it. Part of the

answer is making that conversation

present in more places, so it doesn’t feel hy-

per-visible when it’s focused on the work of

Black writers.

I never want to give the impression that I

don’t want to be identified as a Black writer

— obviously, it’s an important part of what I

do and part of my identity and writing. But

reading reviews of my first collections,

sometimes I wondered how people would

describe the book if they had to wait until

the second paragraph to mention race.

She Is a Defender

Of the Short Story

Danielle Evans says her

second collection is ‘slightly

weirder’ than her first.

By JOUMANA KHATIB

SHAN WALLACE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Danielle Evans earned a place

on the National Book

Foundation’s Five Under 35 list.

are and the differences between the various

roles is one of the show’s persistent vaga-

ries. Maybe that’s “Industry” commenting

on capitalism wringing individuality out of

us. Maybe.

Harper says in her job interview that she

considers banking to be “the closest thing to

a meritocracy,” which might be a canny

ploy, her ingratiating herself by feeding the

executives their own favorite (if hilarious)

myth. But it plays like something she truly

believes. Later, in one of many drug-based

scenes, she says, “I actually wrote a paper

on the moral case for capitalism.”

“That must have been short,” her col-

league jokes.

“No, it was 8,000 words,” she says, snort-

ing another line. But that’s the end of it. Nei-

ther she nor the show dwells on issues of

morality, ethics or purpose.

Instead, “Industry” retreats from com-

plex adult drama to functional enough YA

show. Everyone sure has some growing up

to do! Ugh, roommate drama! Uh-oh, my

crush likes my friend! Ack, I threw up! Will

the guy who is clearly marked for death

from the first five seconds of the show die?

The poor little rich girl, the gay guy, the

one who parties way too much — self-actu-

alization is always just a few good meetings

away, one “you remind me of myself”

speech from a mentor, one “we can do this

together” hug from a friend.

The show seems to think its naughtiness

and bad behavior have an edge, like in

“Skins,” but really “Industry” is more like

“The Bold Type” with male nudity. And like

many other shows about young adults seek-

ing validation, the sage authority figure and

source of all approval is the best character.

Here it’s Ken Leung (“Lost”) as Harper’s

boss, who sometimes has good advice and

seems less inclined toward the fratty abuse

everyone else at the company embraces.

Much of the action of “Industry,” such as

it is, takes place in bathrooms, where people

say and do things they shouldn’t because

vulnerability creates intimacy. The show

would benefit from more intimacy in gen-

eral — not among its characters but be-

tween the characters and the audience. In

the fourth episode, Harper makes a mistake

at work and sobs on the phone to her

mother, who barely responds. Other than

the ordinary pity one extends to anyone

crying on a toilet, though, the scene is ab-

sent any emotional potency because it’s un-

clear how bad the actual problem is or why

Harper cares about it so much. Or why any-

one should.

“Industry” was created by the first-time

showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad

Kay but counts among its executive

producers Lena Dunham (“Girls”), who

also directed the pilot. All the pieces work

fine — its gray and noisy world is fully real-

ized and each character has a clearly defin-

ing schtick.

But the show doesn’t appear to be about

anything. Everyone is in favor of winning

and opposed to losing, but there’s no mean-

ingful motivation or specificity to any of

their behaviors. What might someone enjoy

about banking that they can’t get from any

other lucrative profession? Plenty of indus-

trious 22-year-olds pursue power, autono-

my, pleasure, stability, safety or vengeance

— all things money can represent. What

does it mean, then, to pursue money qua

money?

Perhaps those answers, or even just

those questions, come in the second half of

the season.

MARGARET LYONS TELEVISION REVIEW

All in the Pursuit of Money

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1

From left, David Jonsson as
Gus; Harry Lawtey as Robert;
and Nabhaan Rizwan as Hari in
the premiere of “Industry.”

AMANDA SEARLE/HBO

Industry
Starts Monday on HBO

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