Stacey D’Erasmo: Creation of Intimacy (July 2009)

Most of us know, Stacey D’Erasmo suggests, how to put characters in a room and get them to talk, fight, trouble and/or seduce one another— we know, that is, how to create an impression of intimacy through dialogue and action.  But intimacy can be expressed by means of a variety of subtle textual strategies far more deeply implicating the reader in the characters’ emotional lives; D’Erasmo draws on fiction by D.H. Lawrence, Elizabeth Bowen, William Maxwell, Virginia Woolf and Charles Baxter for examples.