"As A Man Digging": Allan Gurganus in Conversation

Stokes and Boyers interview writer Allan Gurganus about the use of a collective first person voice in his writing. Gurganus also talks about his novel Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and identifies the difference between a workshop featuring an instructor interested in training students to write literary fiction and another with a teacher interested mainly in the zeitgeist and the marketplace. Moreover, he cites what attracts him most to the prospect of working, over many years, at a very lengthy trilogy, building on materials or characters or events developed in an earlier work, when he might instead be inventing entirely new situations and sets of characters.