Narrative, Database, Archive: Tom Comitta and Deidre Lynch (AV)

New Books in Literature · Nov 2, 2023 · 41m

12 tables; 300 novels, 1500 pages of nature description: This is how Tom Comitta created The Nature Book (Coffee House Press, 2023), a one-of-a-kind novel cut from 300 years of English literary tradition. It has no human characters, no original writing, and it is astoundingly good! Tom sits down with distinguished Harvard prof, Deidre Lynch and host Aarthi Vadde to talk about how he wrote a book out of found language. The conversation reveals why The Nature Book is so compelling: it scrambles the usual distinctions between narrative and database. It is fast-paced, propulsive, full of…