{"id":2271,"date":"2014-06-20T13:23:03","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T13:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/news\/specialcollections\/?p=2271"},"modified":"2014-06-20T13:23:03","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T13:23:03","slug":"novelist-finds-his-place-as-a-modern-myth-maker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/2014\/06\/20\/novelist-finds-his-place-as-a-modern-myth-maker\/","title":{"rendered":"Novelist finds his place as a modern myth-maker"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2272\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2272\" style=\"width: 496px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/news\/specialcollections\/files\/2014\/06\/Zentner-pik1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2272 \" alt=\"Alexi Zentner, assistant professor of English at Binghamton University, stands along Cayuga Lake in Ithaca. Zentner's latest novel, The Lobster Kings, will be released May 27. Photo by Jonathan Cohen\" src=\"http:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/news\/specialcollections\/files\/2014\/06\/Zentner-pik1.jpg\" width=\"496\" height=\"315\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2272\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alexi Zentner, assistant professor of English at Binghamton University, stands along Cayuga Lake in Ithaca. Zentner&#8217;s latest novel, The Lobster Kings, will be released May 27.<br \/>Photo by Jonathan Cohen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>By Rachel Coker<\/p>\n<p>n\u00a0<em>The Lobster Kings<\/em>, Alexi Zentner weaves a story that feels at once perfectly realistic and like a legend borrowed from another era. The novel, published this month by W.W. Norton, arrives just three years after Zentner\u2019s critically acclaimed debut,\u00a0<em>Touch<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Zentner, an assistant professor of English who joined Binghamton University\u2019s faculty in 2013, describes his style as mythical realism, an idea related to (but separate from) the tradition of magical realism established in Central and South America.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI try to work the myth through the fabric of the entire story,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in using myth or magic as a showy parlor trick. I hope what I\u2019m doing is something new and different.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>The Lobster Kings<\/em>\u00a0is new and different on a number of levels. The novel, which pays homage to Shakespeare\u2019s King Lear, centers on the relationship between an aging man and his three daughters, one of whom is named Cordelia. But it\u2019s also an entirely modern tale featuring meth dealers and a female ship captain who hopes to stop them before they wreck her hometown. There\u2019s homicide, a rape, the legacy of a world-famous painter and stormy seas, too.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.binghamton.edu\/inside\/index.php\/inside\/story\/novelist-finds-his-place-as-a-modern-myth-maker\">Read more here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Rachel Coker n\u00a0The Lobster Kings, Alexi Zentner weaves a story that feels at once perfectly realistic and like a legend borrowed from another era. The novel, published this month by W.W. Norton, arrives just three years after Zentner\u2019s critically acclaimed debut,\u00a0Touch. Zentner, an assistant professor of English who joined Binghamton University\u2019s faculty in 2013, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-faculty","8":"category-university-archives"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}