What is Dexter Palmer reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Dexter Palmer, author of Version Control: A Novel.

His entry begins:

One of the most interesting things I read last year was The Library of America's four-volume set The Civil War Told by Those Who Lived It. It's a recounting of Civil War history assembled from contemporary documents, each one introduced with a paragraph or two of neutral commentary, enough to provide the necessary context for the reader who's not a Civil War historian.

There is a singular pleasure in reading a history comprised of mostly unmediated primary sources (even if you can sense the editors' presence in the selection of the pieces and the order in which they are placed). History seems different when recorded from the point of view of someone who didn't know how things would turn out--encountering the Civil War from the perspective of someone in the midst of the events in 1863 is oddly suspenseful, even if...[read on]

About Version Control, from the publisher:

The acclaimed author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion returns with a compelling novel about the effects of science and technology on our friendships, our love lives, and our sense of self.

Rebecca Wright has reclaimed her life, finding her way out of her grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days working in customer support for the internet dating site where she first met her husband. But she has a strange, persistent sense that everything around her is somewhat off-kilter: she constantly feels as if she has walked into a room and forgotten what she intended to do there; on TV, the President seems to be the wrong person in the wrong place; her dreams are full of disquiet. Meanwhile, her husband's decade-long dedication to his invention, the causality violation device (which he would greatly prefer you not call a “time machine”) has effectively stalled his career and made him a laughingstock in the physics community. But he may be closer to success than either of them knows or can possibly imagine.

Version Control is about a possible near future, but it’s also about the way we live now. It’s about smart phones and self-driving cars and what we believe about the people we meet on the Internet. It’s about a couple, Rebecca and Philip, who have experienced a tragedy, and about how they help--and fail to help--each other through it. Emotionally powerful and stunningly visionary, Version Control will alter the way you see your future and your present.

Visit Dexter Palmer's website.

Writers Read: Dexter Palmer (March 2010).

Writers Read: Dexter Palmer.

--Marshal Zeringue