For inspiration, I'm reading Mary Gaitskill's Veronica, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, and Wayne Koestenbaum's "My 1980s." If you haven't figured it out by the title, I'm working on something set in the 80s, which seems to be a stylistic choice more than anything, but I do this sometimes to free myself from the current political climate. It's kind of an ass move, but it's one that works for me.
The Gaitskill book I'd read years ago, and erased from my memory, until halfway through when I found myself having the same reaction I did when I read it the first time: a sort of wistful apathy, but that's not right. More an aspirational wistful apathy. I wanted to feel something, but I didn't. It wasn't even the studied kind of emptiness that permeates a lot of critically acclaimed contemporary fiction, just nothingness. I think that's the point though, but I as a reader I'm not sure I'd call it successful.
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