Mark Trainer

So maybe the short story is dead, or maybe it's the hottest thing this season.  But here's a writer who gets the most out of the form and probably doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about the market and his platform.

Jones spent 10 years creating nearly all of his Pulitzer-winning, antebellum-era novel, "The Known World," in his head, until he finally set it all down on paper in a three-month rush in 2001 after being laid off from his job at a tax publication. "The Waiting Room" is still locked up tight in his mind, though he dictates the opening and closing three times in a row, down to the dashes and commas, without so much as blinking.

Here in Washington, dumping on the beleaguered Washington Post seems to be a favorite pastime.  But this profile of Edward Jones is a rare convergence of a subject worthy of profiling, a journalist up to the task of doing it right, and a paper willing to give a good story enough room.

Mark Athitakis' American Fiction Blog links to Donald Ray Pollock's recent interview with Southeast Review.  He's similarly mystified by the novel's prominence in these days of the limited attention span, but publishing in the tiny journals worked for him.  Good to hear.