Dovey cherishes the novel that is honest about its own limitations.

Question: What's in your personal literary cannon?

DoveyI would say “Waiting for the Barbarians” by Coetzee. I would say . . . It’s not fiction, but I would say “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” by Joan Didion. I would say . . . I don’t know if it’s a great . . . but “My Life as a Man” by Phillip Roth. I would put that in my canon. And anything by Margaret Atwood maybe. I’m trying to think of a fifth one. Maybe ____________ the periodic table. I’d put that in there. I guess there’s nothing really in common with all of them except that they all, to me, succeeded in making the novel what it is meant to be, which is an objective form of communication that I think, when done really well, actually builds empathy in the world, and a kind of compassion, and a sort of imaginative compassion. And there’s a kind of humility to them as well in the sense that they accept their own limitations as works of art that, as again, sort of honest about the . . . this weird creative process.

Recorded on: 12/6/07