The Questions That Matter Most: Reading, Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom

“Clear, vibrant” essays on reading and writing by the Pulitzer Prize–winning, New York Times–bestselling author: “A reader feels smarter just taking it in” (The Boston Globe).

From the author of A Dangerous Business, A Thousand Acres, and Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, this volume “gathers essays (and two stories) composed with wit, enthusiasm, expertise, and candor” (Booklist).

Long acclaimed as a preeminent American novelist, Jane Smiley is also an unparalleled observer of the craft of writing. In this book, she offers penetrating essays on some of the aesthetic and cultural issues that mark any serious engagement with reading and writing. After a personal introduction tracing Smiley’s migration from Iowa to California, she reflects on her findings in the literature of the Golden State, whose writers have for decades litigated the West’s contested legacies of racism, class conflict, and sexual politics through their work. With meticulous attention, she also dives beneath surface-level interpretations of authors like Marguerite de Navarre, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Franz Kafka, Halldór Laxness, and Jessica Mitford. Throughout, Smiley seeks to think harder, and with more clarity and nuance, about the questions that matter most.

“Valuable . . . Smiley gives educators, readers, and writers much to discuss.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“Her literary criticism . . . brims with the same keen observations, inquisitiveness, and humor as her novels. . . . Fleet-footed and smart, this delights.” —Publishers Weekly