Word: mallon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wants to try what one's been writing about," says Mallon, who says his study at Harvard helped prepare him for novel writing because "it encouraged us to write in a way that avoided the worst excesses of academic jargon...
Born in Long Island and educated at Brown before coming to graduate school here, Mallon agrees that his novel is popular fiction because its goal is to entertain. But, he says, "there is a sort of literacy involved" in understanding the novel, which is filled with literary and political allusions...
...Arts and Sciences stems from more than a critic's desire to be a writer. The book was written in "the aftermath of an unhappy love affair to cheer myself up," Mallon says. One of its main themes is the protagonists inability to cope with their feelings about each other and their affair...
...believe that the novel's main character, Artie, and his love affair with a British beauty are not strictly autobiographical, he explains that he gave his characters "bits and pieces of different people's resumes. "Until I wrote this novel, I didn't believe in composite characters," says Mallon...
...Mallon not only learned about writing with this project; he learned about being read. "I am very distrustful of authorial intention," he says, adding that one reviewer of Arts and Sciences wrote that he probably meant the protagonist's name to be a pun on the word art in the title. "But I named him for my father," he says...