<h4>Jenny Davidson teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her latest book, <em>Reading Style: A Life in Sentences</em>, is out in paperback this summer. She gave an earlier version of this piece as the Lillian and Robert Drake Endowed Lectureship at Hendrix College in March 2015, and would like to thank Dorian Stuber for the invitation and everyone at Hendrix for their hospitality.</h4>

Jenny Davidson

Novels in Third Places: The Case for More Classrooms in Our Literature

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

Jenny Davidson teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her latest book, <em>Reading Style: A Life in Sentences</em>, is out in paperback this summer. She gave an earlier version of this piece as the Lillian and Robert Drake Endowed Lectureship at Hendrix College in March 2015, and would like to thank Dorian Stuber for the invitation and everyone at Hendrix for their hospitality.