The beauty of literature is that, ideally, every person should come away from a given novel with their own impression of “the message” based on their distinct worldview.
Thank you so much to Mariella Hunt for this fascinating interview with Liza about her brilliant upcoming book “The Lilac Room!” Liza is one of the most intelligent, perceptive and passionate people I have ever known. Her love for literature knows absolutely no bounds and she clearly was born to be a writer. What Liza describes in this interview is a book that would easily outsell and be more interesting than any piece of contemporary literature on the shelves at Barnes & Noble today! “The Lilac Room” is the book we need right now as people are starved for great, well-written literature with something more than identity politics in it. It’s not the identity of the characters or the social justice nonsense in a book that make a work of literature great. It’s the underlying message in it, the universal themes it explores and the characters and how they develop. That’s why books like A Farewell to Arms, The Great Gadsby, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, The Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Old Man and the Sea, The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men and the poetry of William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, G.K. Chesterton, and T.S. Eliot will stand the test of time while nonsense like The Hate U Give and Bad Feminist will not. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take James Joyce or James Baldwin any day over anything Sally Rooney or Judith Butler has written! Classism, elitism and seeking to fit in are timeless themes that mankind will always grapple with. Liza mentioned that World War I seems to have changed mankind forever. I think what the Great War did was it showed humanity how awful they could be to one another and the depths of depravity we as a species can truly reach. This interview was so much fun to read! Liza can hold you spellbound on her every word like no one else I know can! Whenever I see a note by her on Substack or I watch one of her videos from YouTube I’m immediately intrigued to find out what she will say or what her opinion on a given topic will be! The characters of the Lilac Room are clearly sophisticated, well-rounded characters with interesting backstories. The Lilac Room I’m certain will be like a nice cool pitcher of water poured onto the dry desert of the literary world! To Liza’s point about Edith Wharton, she definitely is a very underrated writer. Mrs. Wharton also lived quite a fascinating life as well. I’m convinced if Edith Wharton were alive today, she’d be intrigued by “The Lilac Room” and seek to obtain a copy and read it when it was officially published. Liza follows in a long tradition of great female writers stretching back centuries. You should definitely check out Pens and Poison if you haven’t already! Also, go read her article she wrote for The Black Sheep publication!
Thank you for this beautiful comment! Liza has a very intriguing way of speaking about literature and certainly sees things with a clarity that even I lack; I am so glad to be friends with her!
Thank you so much to Mariella Hunt for this fascinating interview with Liza about her brilliant upcoming book “The Lilac Room!” Liza is one of the most intelligent, perceptive and passionate people I have ever known. Her love for literature knows absolutely no bounds and she clearly was born to be a writer. What Liza describes in this interview is a book that would easily outsell and be more interesting than any piece of contemporary literature on the shelves at Barnes & Noble today! “The Lilac Room” is the book we need right now as people are starved for great, well-written literature with something more than identity politics in it. It’s not the identity of the characters or the social justice nonsense in a book that make a work of literature great. It’s the underlying message in it, the universal themes it explores and the characters and how they develop. That’s why books like A Farewell to Arms, The Great Gadsby, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, The Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Old Man and the Sea, The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men and the poetry of William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, G.K. Chesterton, and T.S. Eliot will stand the test of time while nonsense like The Hate U Give and Bad Feminist will not. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take James Joyce or James Baldwin any day over anything Sally Rooney or Judith Butler has written! Classism, elitism and seeking to fit in are timeless themes that mankind will always grapple with. Liza mentioned that World War I seems to have changed mankind forever. I think what the Great War did was it showed humanity how awful they could be to one another and the depths of depravity we as a species can truly reach. This interview was so much fun to read! Liza can hold you spellbound on her every word like no one else I know can! Whenever I see a note by her on Substack or I watch one of her videos from YouTube I’m immediately intrigued to find out what she will say or what her opinion on a given topic will be! The characters of the Lilac Room are clearly sophisticated, well-rounded characters with interesting backstories. The Lilac Room I’m certain will be like a nice cool pitcher of water poured onto the dry desert of the literary world! To Liza’s point about Edith Wharton, she definitely is a very underrated writer. Mrs. Wharton also lived quite a fascinating life as well. I’m convinced if Edith Wharton were alive today, she’d be intrigued by “The Lilac Room” and seek to obtain a copy and read it when it was officially published. Liza follows in a long tradition of great female writers stretching back centuries. You should definitely check out Pens and Poison if you haven’t already! Also, go read her article she wrote for The Black Sheep publication!
Thank you, Noah! This made my day! Appreciate your kind words and hope to get The Lilac Room out to you soon!
Thank you for this beautiful comment! Liza has a very intriguing way of speaking about literature and certainly sees things with a clarity that even I lack; I am so glad to be friends with her!