Minneapolis author Curtis Sittenfeld’s new book delves into love, friendship and being wrong

Minneapolis author Curtis Sittenfeld writes fiction based on what “fascinates and perplexes” her.

Her newest collection of short stories “Show Don’t Tell” continues that theme. The New York Times bestselling author (“Eligible,” “Romantic Comedy”) sat down with MPR News senior editor Euan Kerr for an interview about her work and creating intelligent characters who turn out to be wrong.

The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player button.

Why the title?

“Show Don’t Tell” is considered a creative writing truism where it means: don’t say that the coworker was annoying, give examples of the coworker being annoying. Give the coworkers dialogue.

I’m trying to do that within the stories. I’m trying to show rather than tell. And the story with that title is… about students in a creative writing program. So it was all kind of irresistibly self-referential.

What keeps bringing you back to short stories?

Like a lot of novelists, I sort of trained myself on short stories. That was what I wrote, actually, probably even like as a kid, as a teenager into my 20s. There’s something irresistible to me about [the] form. You can read it in one sitting and it can give you this window into a very complex situation or a whole life, but it’s also very contained. As a writer, there can be this intrigue or juiciness that hinges on a fleeting moment, and that’s also very enticing to me.

How did these particular 12 stories come together?

So there’s 12 stories, nine have been published, although even if you really sought them out, you probably would have trouble finding all nine online because of paywalls and whatever. And one is a sequel story to my first novel “Prep” that came out 20 years ago.

These are stories that I’ve been working on since 2017 and I think they just kind of reflect my preoccupations and interests, and my confusion about life and middle age and the United States and pop culture. It’s almost like I choose to write stories based on what kind of fascinates and perplexes me.

What is the place of stories like these in our world today?

We live in such an incredibly fractured society and I definitely… don’t think it’s everyone’s responsibility to see the other side’s perspective… But I think that there can be situations where there’s a middle ground, or where you can have something in common with a person [despite being] demographically different from them, or having led a very different life.

And I think that fiction — it can be so intimate and so internal in terms of what it is to be a person, that it can remind us of things we have in common and sort of universal aspects of longing and awkwardness and self-consciousness and loneliness and yearning to belong. I think that it can be sort of unifying.

But again, I don’t think that it’s like all of us are morally obligated to… put ourselves in the shoes of everyone with whom we disagree.

It took me a long time to realize that one of my favorite topics or kind of characters is an intelligent person who turns out to be wrong in their views. And that, to me, is much more interesting than an unintelligent person who’s wrong or right, or an intelligent person who’s right.

I find life very, very humbling and about kind of being like, well… I have some degree of life experience and some intelligence, and I should be able to anticipate or figure things out, and then I still feel really confused and baffled.

I was a general assignment reporter for a daily newspaper right when I graduated from college back in 1997 and something that was really striking to me was… I could interview a person who did not seem terribly intelligent, but often had random insights and sort of the opposite, like we’re so rarely all one thing or the other.

Sittenfeld’s book launches early in Minneapolis at a free event Sunday afternoon. “Show Don’t Tell” releases everywhere on Tuesday.

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