The New Yorker’s Josh Rothman finds it hard to get a conversation going about romance novels with male friends or acquaintances. He talked with Curtis Sittenfeld—whose fiction often contains a romantic story, though her books aren’t romance novels, per se—about why that is. Sittenfeld’s most recent book, “Eligible,” is a retelling of the ur-romance novel, Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s been many years since she devoured a trove of bodice rippers, but there’s one—featuring a sex scene on horseback—that Sittenfeld hasn’t let go of. Plus: Sherman Alexie reads from his story “Clean, Cleaner, Cleanest,” in which a motel maid struggles to reconcile her faith with everything her jobs shows her about human nature.
