Meg Wolitzer and The Interestings

Meg Wolitzer’s latest novel, The Interestings, is both a coming-of-age and coming-of-middle-age story. Six teenagers meet at a performing arts camp in the Berkshires – the kind of place where kids put on Beckett plays – and become lifelong friends. It’s the summer of 1974, and the friends are united in the belief that they are destined for interesting lives as an actor, a director, a musician, and an animator.
One could mock their presumption, but Wolitzer loves the adolescent world of “endless possibility,” when all options feel open. As we grow older, she says, “our lives get smaller.” The problem for Wolitzer’s group of friends is that as some of their talents fade, others flourish, and by middle age, their fortunes have diverged.
Wolitzer’s talent blossomed young – her first book was published when she was still in college – and she has remained prolific. She says that she is proud of hanging on. People don’t read fiction like they used to, and being a novelist has a bit of a specialty feeling to it. Kurt compared the craft to those who make wooden boats. Wolitzer agrees. Writing fiction is like boat building, “or scrimshaw.”
  
Bonus Track: Meg Wolitzer’s 3 for 360