A feature by Jeff Bursey
Scholar, editor, and literary historian Steven Moore has gained notoriety as the preeminent explicator of William Gaddis’s fiction. A tireless champion of maximalist and so-called “experimental” fiction, Moore has helped to publish and edit works by David Markson, Joseph McElroy, Rikki Ducornet, Alexander Theroux, and David Foster Wallace, among many others. In 2004, Moore embarked on the ambitious, multi-volume The Novel: An Alternative History, the second volume of which was released this past summer. The project, nearly a decade in the making, is as much an effort to reconceptualize the contemporary definition of the novel form as it is an attempt to revolutionize the manner in which we discuss fiction. On a hiatus from writing, Moore reflects on his own early development and the project that has changed his life with fiction writer and literary critic Jeff Bursey.