Author Julia Glass discusses
her second novel, The Whole World Over with Jeff Baker of The Oregonian. Glass burst upon the literary scene by winning the National Book Award in 2002 for her first novel, Three Junes.
"It's a tough world, fiction," Glass said, settling back on a couch in the atrium of The Heathman Hotel. "I feel like this has really been building by word of mouth."
Glass' first novel, "Three Junes," won the National Book Award in 2002, a tremendous upset for an unknown writer. The book had been well-reviewed and was a bookseller favorite, but the award gave it a boost that pushed it onto paperback bestseller lists and raised Glass' profile.
"The difference this time is I have a slew of readers who loved the first one and eagerly awaited this one," Glass said. "I've had a good showing at readings, and a lot of people have really jumped in the deep end and read this book before they came to the reading."
Breaking into the world of literary fiction is notoriously difficult (not that breaking into mystery or science fiction is easy), and Glass is extremely grateful that her publisher, Pantheon, took a chance on her. She's also grateful to the editors at magazines who wrote her personal letters when they rejected her fiction. The encouragement kept her going and made her feel like there might be someone interested in what she was writing. In particular, editors at The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly nurtured her while the smaller literary quarterlies mostly sent form letters.
"The treatment I'm getting on this tour is amazing," Glass said. "A lot of people who've never heard of 'Three Junes' or me are responding to the book, and it's not like I'm Jane Smiley or Alice Munro."
