“One truism about contemporary life is that there are no more secrets,” a New York Times article declared in January. “In the age of selfies, sexting, Twitter, and Facebook, people are constantly spilling every intimate detail of their lives. Video cameras trace our every move; our cellphones know where we are at all times; Google tracks our innermost thoughts; the N.S.A. listens in when we dream.” Add to that a crop of new social networks—among them the much-hyped apps Whisper and Secret—upping the collective threshold of oversharing by encouraging users to anonymously and without discretion broadcast their most intimate, unfiltered thoughts to their friend groups.
“Writers or not, we all live through stories,” Dybek replied when I wrote to ask about his interest in secrets. “Stories are the way in which we shape and memorize our lives. Secrets have the power to radically change the narrative, and that’s a profound and dangerous power.”
I.
Family secrets fill Julia Glass’s And the Dark Sacred Night
II.
The Book of Unknown Americans features a pair of powerhouse immigrant oral histories
III.
The politics of fiction in O, Democracy!
IV.
Colson Whitehead deals a weak hand with The Noble Hustle
V.
Chicago authors share their secrets
