[Past Event] Stewart O'Nan and Small-Town America | Livestream Zoom

Course Description:

Stewart O’Nan trained as an aerospace engineer, worked as a mechanical engineer, and then, he became a fiction writer. His literary road was not typical, but then neither are his 18 novels. He writes in a style labeled “everyday gothic” that centers characters who find themselves in a false position and have to wind back to a true position. Stewart's characters are ordinary people, in ordinary jobs, in ordinary towns, with ordinary lives. "Last Night at the Lobster" (2007) narrates the lives of people working their last shift at a Red Lobster restaurant. "Ocean State" (2022) reveals the killing and loving natures of unrestrained middle school girls in a small town “down the shore.” O'Nan studies these life situations so deeply that readers come to see his never-told stories as truly large ones shared by many people. We'll read these two works in search of the largest small-town lives in America.