This issue includes Mark Leyner’s bizarre “Gone with the Mind,” a stream of consciousness interview supposedly recorded at a New Jersey mall. Also an interview with Hillary Mantel, and her desire in “finding a shape, rather than imposing a shape” on her historical fiction.

James Lasdun’s novella, “Feathered Glory,” about school principal’s mid-life crisis, is reminiscent of John Cheever. An interview with Lydia Davis, who prefers her stories to be called, well, stories – rather than short stories. She also discusses how she has turned complaint letters into stories.

There’s an interview with Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, who states she has tried “to turn my prose into a tool that I could use elsewhere, like a good solid chain that can pull up the full bucket from the very bottom of the well.” She also believes “writing requires maximum ambition, maximum audacity, and programmatic disobedience.”

J.D. Daniels describes his experience at a “residential group-relations conference,” which is truly strange. ( )