Lorrie Moore's darkly humorous collection of stories, Bark (Knopf), follows men and women trapped by the absurdities of their everyday lives. Going through divorce or balancing care for others with their own desires, they express yearning but experience little satisfaction. Moore says she begins with feeling and people and then forages for language. Sometimes this means shadowing the work of others, as she shadows, in two stories, Vladimir Nabokov and Henry James. We discuss the permissibility of quoting prior authors when writers can't count on their readers having read the great books. She views these stories as referential echoes: conversations in the form of something new.

Read an excerpt from Bark.