Building the Great D.C. Novel
For decades, D.C. has been hurting for a classic novel all its own. Some suggestions on how to make it.
Cover Story
On Feb. 29, Edward P. Jones spoke before an adoring crowd of locals. He and another writer, Dinaw Mengestu, were reading from their work and taking questions at Capitol Hill’s Lutheran Church of the Reformation, a place the literary organization PEN/Faulkner uses when demand for its readings exceeds the capacity of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Unquestionably, this was a big night: The evening’s topic was fiction about Washington, D.C., something both writers have some expertise in—Jones has written two short-story collections about the District, 1992’s Lost in the City and 2006’s All Aunt Hagar’s Children, and Mengestu’s 2007 debut novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, is set in a rapidly gentrifying Logan Circle.
About midway through the event, one person rose to ask Jones how he could bring such a detailed, novelistic quality to his short stories about the District, without actually writing a novel. In response, Jones riffed for a bit about the virtues of brevity. He spoke about his affection for his collection of tiny, meticulously crafted Japanese figurines and said he wanted to bring that same sort of smallness, detail, and precision to his writing about D.C. “In New York it’s all about the novel,” he said. “Novel, novel, novel. I didn’t want to write a novel that’s bloated and full of steroids.”... Continued 
Issue of Apr. 4 - 10, 2008
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