Jim Shepard: The Unexpected Ubiquitous-ness of Class (July 2001)

Socioeconomic class is a crucial element of American society, yet in craft discussions about fiction, as in most of our daily life, it’s rarely talked about. In this lecture, Jim Shepard examines class issues as a subtext in Lorrie Moore’s “People Like That Are the Only People Here”; he explores how class is at first under the surface in the story, and then how the narrator’s desire to maintain her privilege forces that subtext to the surface, so that it dramatically shapes the narrative’s revelations.