Goodreads asked Andrew Armacost:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Andrew Armacost I'm putting edits on a project called THE DAY THE NOVEL DIED. It's about a book machine that threatens society with cultural Armageddon. In shaping the book, I was looking for a protracted allegory, a symbol to represent the threat of homogeny...the strip malls...the big box stores...the chain stores...all the factors that are bleaching our culture, making Indianapolis interchangeable with Jacksonville, and so on. So I thought, what if the supply chain rationalization principles of a Walmart were applied to the creation of fiction? That was my starting point.

flag