The Questions That Matter Most

One of California’s leading writers, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, presents her first nonfiction volume on writing since 2005’s best-selling Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel.

Long acclaimed as one of America’s preeminent novelists, Jane Smiley is also an unparalleled observer of the craft of writing. In The Questions That Matter Most this Pulitzer Prize-winning writer offers steady and penetrating essays on some of the aesthetic and cultural issues that mark any serious engagement with reading and writing. Beginning with a personal introduction tracing Smiley’s migration from Iowa to California, the author reflects on her findings in the varied literature of the Golden State, whose writers have for decades litigated the West’s contested legacies of racism, class conflict, and sexual politics through their pens.

As she considers the ambiguity of character and the weight of history, her essays provide new entry points into literature, and we lucky readers can see how Smiley draws inspiration from across the literary spectrum to invigorate her own writing. With enthusiasm and meticulous attention, Smiley dives beneath surface-level interpretations to examine the works of Marguerite de Navarre, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Franz Kafka, Halldór Laxness, and Jessica Mitford. Throughout, Smiley seeks to think harder and, in her words, with “more clarity and nuance” about the questions that matter most.

"In this slim yet valuable book, Smiley gives educators, readers, and writers much to discuss. Highly recommended."

—Library Journal, starred review

"In this sharp compendium, Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley brings together her literary criticism, which brims with the same keen observations, inquisitiveness, and humor as her novels. […] Fleet-footed and smart, this delights."

—Publishers Weekly

"[The Questions That Matter Most] gathers essays (and two stories) composed with wit, enthusiasm, expertise, and candor […] Smiley's agile, seemingly blithe inquiries are wryly incisive, ethically rigorous, and propelled by her profound passion for literature as an endless source of illumination and liberation."

—Donna Seaman, Booklist

"Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley dives into the landscapes where much of her work is set—and the writing of authors who have redefined the novel. Smiley’s voraciousness as a reader drives the book, which is peppered with insights into Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Willa Cather, Franz Kafka, and others."

—Alta Journal

"The prescient questions Smiley addresses are angled at California and American literary history through the work of a cohort of seminal writers […] The ambiguity of the Golden State in terms of freedom, autonomy, race, class, identity, sex and other topics is filtered through Smiley’s perspectives as a resident of California and paired with the work of these classic writers whose work informs her own."

—East Bay Express