“Fates and Furies” Author Lauren Groff’s New Story, “Junket,” Takes On Lit Privilege
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Among the constellations of Gen X writers, Lauren Groff dazzles like a lodestar: At the age of 43 she has published four novels and two short-story collections. Fates and Furies (2015) was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction—President Obama named it his favorite read of the year—and last year’s provocative Matrix was also shortlisted for the NBA. Her broad influence and generosity with younger writers are legendary. This month, Scribd brought out Groff’s “Junket,” a pitch-perfect, stand-alone story that features a nameless protagonist caught in the vise of a Northeastern winter and a failed romance. When “the writer” is offered an all-expenses-paid residency at an exclusive retreat in Arizona, she leaps at the opportunity. But her grasp at self-care doesn’t go as planned: The fastidious, edgy woman she is follows her to a warmer, gentler, and more affluent place. There’s no escape from the self.
“Junket” is sardonic yet gorgeously crafted—there’s a paragraph composed of gerunds used to brilliant effect—but it tackles issues debated throughout our literary and publishing spaces. How can writers earn their keep from MFAs and patchwork publications? How is creativity monetized in a culture of extreme inequity? From the Twitterverse to academic journals, this discourse will only grow more heated and divisive.
Oprah Daily recently discussed “Junket” with Groff.
How did this story evolve and why did you decide to publish it as a stand-alone?
Lauren Groff: “Junket” was a piece from a novel that I had been working on but abandoned because the overall shape of the book just never came together. I really liked the “Junket” part, though, and when Amy Grace Loyd asked me for a story for Scribd, I looked at it again and realized it could be its own story. It did speak to where I was at the time as well, in the middle of winter, when I was kind of miserable. I really just wanted to get away to somewhere warm.
Although worlds and centuries apart, both “Junket” and Matrix feel like allegories, each a kind of Pilgrim’s Progress. Why are you attracted to allegory?
It’s true that I like to take a half-step away from straightforward realism in most of my work, because I like the possibilities that forms like allegory, mystery, folk tales tend to open up. With these forms, there is a sense that the work is being plugged into a larger current of storytelling that has come down through the ages. It’s a way of speaking not only to our time but also to more distant times.
“Junket” takes on issues of socioeconomic inequality, like when the protagonist thinks, Please, if you have to waste, waste your diamonds into the pockets of the world’s artists, all your sons and daughters of ease. How can we ensure greater socioeconomic diversity in our literary and publishing spaces?
I think that a lot of people are putting a great deal of attention and time and money into the attempt to make publishing less classist. That said, it’s overwhelming, as an individual writer, to try to understand how one person can shift an entire system. I do believe we’re progressing toward opening the literary world in America toward people who haven’t had opportunities that people like me have had—I’ve benefited from having well-educated parents, going to a great college, being white and upper-middle-class. I’ve joined established organizations that are opening these doors, but I don’t know if that’s enough. One thing we can do is to make sure that creative work starts early, with joy and few strictures, and that it’s propagated widely among all young people. That said, publishing really is a microcosm of the world—these structural issues need to be addressed not only in publishing, but also in America. The vast gulf between the wealthy and the not-wealthy is getting worse, day to day; Covid has consolidated 4.4 trillion dollars in the hands of billionaires, while 100 million households fell below the poverty line. Publishing’s issues are society’s issues.
In the story, the writer asks herself, “Who was this person who writes these lines?” How are you different as a writer now than before the pandemic?
Oh, I’m vastly different. The pandemic was extraordinarily hard for me, as it was for everyone else; nobody was unaffected. I lost some of my joy. I hope I’m not more cynical—I’d never want to be a cynical writer—but I think that I’ve grown sad about humanity and the way we continue to act. My optimism has been tempered a bit. There are times when optimism is the only thing getting me to the desk in the morning—now it’s harder to feel as though the work I am doing matters. I do believe deep down that there’s a profound need for books, for ideas and writing. But, though it has been a really difficult time for my own work, there will always be other people’s books, other people’s words. Reading is also writing. Even if nothing is being produced, that’s fine: Artists are not little baby capitalists. We don’t always have to produce everything all the time to be part of the larger project of literature.
Which writers have sustained you during this period?
Well, my friends and I had a reading group, and we read most of Roberto Bolaño, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Cervantes’s Don Quixote. I’ve been bonkers about the Bolaño, especially 2666—I think it is the great masterpiece of the past hundred years. It contains a moral imperative that almost no other literature I know can come close to. There are parts of Moby-Dick that feel as morally urgent, but 2666 reminded me that literature is and can be an agent for change and an agent for outrage; that it can describe great, vast events in human history. Bolaño was a lifeline, for sure. I also took great sustenance from people like Kaveh Akbar and Sofia Samatar and Mavis Gallant. There were so many great books that came into my world and lit it up. The voices of others made me feel less alone, especially in the beginning of the pandemic, when I’d fled to a barn in New Hampshire with my two children while my husband stayed in Florida and I was responsible for my children’s survival. The books made me feel like there were other adults in the house.
The scene with the Mother underscores, for me, your fascination with religious ritual and the emptying-out of self. Is there a source or point of origin for that fascination?
None of this story is autobiographical except for the Mother scene. I did visit this woman who played with my energy and at the end seemed to draw all of my darkness and demons out of my ankles. I don’t have any idea how that is possible. I was terrified by it at the time, and I still feel skeptical about what actually happened in that little room. That said, I try very hard, especially as I’m aging, not to be closed down to new experiences or new ideas. The Mother experience changed me in metaphysical ways but also in somewhat solipsistic ways. I had to look at myself and my understanding of the world and recognize how little I know about the mysteries of existence. There are people who are in touch with things that are invisible: the eternal truths. I admire them, and this admiration makes me write about them, not only in this story, but in Matrix, too.
At the labyrinth, the man talks about “intention.” What does the word intention mean to you as a writer?
I think most people consider intention to be about balance. I try to be intentional in my writing, meaning that every day I try to create the situation in which the writing can bloom. But I also need to keep myself open—intention in writing is not about guidance or outlining or anything like that, it’s more about creating the situations that can make good work possible, and then showing up, and continuing to show up through the disappointments or the disasters that are just part of this job. It’s a sort of steadiness, intention.
Can you give Oprah Daily readers a preview of coming attractions?
Sure! I believe my next novel will be published in the fall of 2023. It has gone through many changes, but it will be published with Riverhead and is called The Vaster Wilds. It’s basically a female Robinson Crusoe set in the 17th century.
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