"What should I write about? If I am writing contemporary literature set in contemporary times, the answer feels obvious to me, but I know it’s not really that simple. There must not be mandates on topicality or relevance in art or it ceases to be art and we risk descending into the type of society that conscripts artists to produce propaganda for the ruling class. To take the opposite tack, however, gives rise to a dilemma you might call the Seinfeld dilemma or that a contemporary HBO viewer and/or pop culture critic might have called the Girls dilemma until that show finally introduced a black character. Those criticisms are tricky because, let’s be honest, not every white person knows a person of another race. America remains painfully segregated, socially and economically, and it’s not literature’s job to fix that. But what does it mean if literature ignores it?"