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Podcast: New Books in Literary Studies
Episode: 10.2 Beautiful Sentences Matter. Billy-Ray Belcourt and Matt Hooley (SW)
Description: Can a novel with a singular voice also be a chorus? Can it reject the conventions of the novel and still be a novel? Poet, essayist, and novelist Billy-Ray Belcourt tells critic Matt Hooley how his desire to write a novel that âwould sound like something else,â led him to produce A Minor Chorus, his experimental debut novel. Together they consider how Billy-Rayâs vulnerable, first-person narrator makes room for other voices, or more precisely, how it becomes âa voice that could focalize the desires of a community.â Billy-Ray discusses how his influencesâ queer theory, indigenous novelists, and contemporary autofictionâharmon...