Lydia Millet on writing about goodness; and Mary Ruefle makes a cameo.

Send us Fan MailDo good people make for good novels? In this episode, the author Lydia Millet, best known for The Children’s Bible, a National Book Award Finalist, talks about her latest novel, Dinosaurs,  the story of Gil, an unambiguously good man who is determined to make the world a better place.  “I think books should have an agenda, but I don’t think you should be able to deliver a one-liner about what that agenda is,” she has said. “It should be an agenda felt by the reader, sensed by the reader, but not fully known. In my work, often there’s a sort of agenda of empathy.” Later in the show we’ll discuss what agenda might be lurking between the lines of two of Lydia Millet’s favorite books - the short, tight prose pieces in Mary Ruefle’s collection, The Most of It, and in Mary Robinson’s 2001 novel, Why Did I Ever. And we'll hear from Mary Ruefle herself, as she reads from one of the pieces in The Most It.