In a subtle and well-aimed swipe at the inclinations of U.S. publishing, Vladimir Nabokov once referred to a reader who suggested Lolita be rewritten as the story of a young man seduced by Humbert Humbert in “short, strong, ‘realistic’ sentences like the following: ‘He acts crazy. We all act crazy, I guess. I guess God acts crazy. Etc.’”

For a period of some years, this was a style acceptable and even encouraged for a certain kind of writer: generally white, generally male, possibly working-class, hopefully alcoholic and depressed. The reasons for its abeyance are many, but one is surely the sense — I say “sense” because no one really knows what readers want — that we have had enough of that kind of writing and that there is a thirst for newer, more diverse voices. This perception exerts great pressure on the white male author aware of the imperative to “check his privilege” and acknowledge the greater struggles of women and people of color but who also has no real subject apart from his enthusiasms and the bad things that have happened to him. A reaction to this dilemma, a plea for continued relevancy, can be found in The Good Hand, a purported memoir of Micheal Patrick F. Smith’s time as a “hand” in the oil fields of Williston, North Dakota, at the tail end of the fracking boom.