Joel Cox: 'It's fine to have jerks in stories, but you have to have something that makes the reader keep reading'

We've heard from Diana Evans and Bruna Martini already in this Spring series of podcasts, and we'll be welcoming Takiguchi Yūshō and the translator Jesse Kirkwood, and Holly Edwards over the next couple of weeks. But this podcast is devoted to Joel Cox and Variable Rewards.

Cox explains that this short story came out of his own move to the suburbs and his love for Richard Yates's novel Revolutionary Road.

"A few months into living in the suburbs," he recalls, "I was thinking this story sounds really familiar."

But while Yates's characters were all members of the Rotary club and hanging out at cocktail parties, in the 21st century the suburbs have become far more fragmented.

"I couldn't tell you the name of our neighbours, probably for the last ten years," Cox admits. "So you're living in this strange world where you're in a village, or the simulation of a New York village, that's in the middle of nowhere, where you don't know anyone."

This sense of disconnection is amplified by social media, he continues, which allows people to "project the image of the life you want to live, even if you're not really living it". And it's intensified by the wave of redundancies, as companies pivot to AI.

"There's a lot of scrambling right now for everyone to figure out what their role will be in this new AI world," Cox explains, "and how they can leverage AI to survive, to hide out while this transition takes place."

When people are jostling for position on a sinking ship, there's always room for fiction, he adds, but even if your characters are behaving like jerks you have to keep your sense of humour.

"I like to have fun while I write," Cox says. "If my characters are having a laugh at themselves, I think it balances out their jerkiness."

We'll be striking a balance with Holly Edwards next time, and her short story Little Lamb, Who Made Thee? 

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