Karen Russell's fiction is more than just a literary combo platter.

What a conversation it was. The Book of Job. Hippos. The road life. The writer's life (which, more and more these days, is the road life). Philly. Iowa. Rutgers. Bryn Mawr. Florida. Kafka. Dorothy Day. George Saunders (more on him later). Sharing an apartment with your sister. A bumper-car arcade of ideas and language.