Hard Times Again? Jeff Boyd on Chicago, Charles Dickens and Curtis Mayfield
Keen On America
Character discovery in the writing process
Jeff explains his spontaneous approach to character development and how surprises shape the story's trajectory.
“If we don’t fight, then what are we doing?” — Jeff Boyd
How do you write fiction about contemporary America when reality itself is stranger than fiction? A country in which “alternative facts” is policy rather than satire. Where “truth” has been nationalized.
Jeff Boyd, an acclaimed young American novelist, sees fiction as refuge. For both writer and reader, it gets us inside the heads of people who both inflict and endure pain. And it enables the senseless to make sense. The news cycle can’t do that. A novel can.
Boyd’s second novel, Hard Times, out today, is his latest attempt to make sense of the senseless. No, the title isn’t Dickensian — it’s from Curtis Mayfield. The song on the 1975 “There’s No Place Like America Today” album, with its cover juxtaposing some happy Americans in a car with others waiting miserably in the unemployment line. America might be great — but for whom, exactly? That dichotomy shapes Hard Times, which is set in a school on the South Side of Chicago where an innocent student gets shot and nobody can agree on what happened or why.
Is the American Dream over? Boyd isn’t quite sure. “As much as it feels impossible,” he says, “some part of me always wants to believe.” His characters fight — backs against the wall, cards stacked against them, but they don’t give in. That’s what Curtis Mayfield was singing about in 1975 and it’s what Jeff Boyd is writing about in 2026. The times are hard. A time, once again, for novelists to seize back reality.
Five Takeaways
• How Do You Make Stuff Up When Reality Is Already Unbelievable? Boyd admits he sometimes wonders what the point of being a novelist is when the headlines are stranger than fiction. His answer: fiction is a refuge. It lets you get inside the heads of people who inflict pain or endure it, and try to make sense of what in reality remains senseless. The novelist can provide an answer. The news cycle can’t.
• Not Dickens — Curtis Mayfield: The title comes not from the 1854 novel but from the 1975 song on There’s No Place Like America Today. The album cover says it all: happy people in the car, desperate people in the unemployment line. America is great — but great for whom? That dichotomy drives the book.
• A Policeman’s Son on George Floyd: One of the officers who stood by while George Floyd died was black — a man whose family had been proud of him for getting the job, who went in wanting to do good. Boyd can’t write off an entire category of people. His black cop character in Hard Times exists to show the complexity of wanting to do right and getting caught up in wrong.
• Fate vs. Agency on the South Side: Boyd’s grad school friend — not religious but deterministic — argued you could draw a line from where someone starts to where they’ll end up. Boyd’s characters fight against that line. A kid from a broken home on food stamps doesn’t have to end where you think. The novel asks whether the line holds or breaks.
• The Fight Goes On: Is the American Dream over? Boyd isn’t quite sure. His characters have their backs against the wall and the cards stacked against them, but they don’t give in. That’s what Curtis Mayfield was singing about in 1975. It’s what Boyd is writing about in 2026. The times are hard. The fight goes on.
About the Guest
Jeff Boyd is the author of The Weight (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Hard Times (Flatiron Books, 2026). A former Chicago public school teacher and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received the Deena Davidson Friedman Prize for Fiction, he lives in Brooklyn with his family.
References:
• Hard Times: A Novel by Jeff Boyd (Flatiron Books, 2026) — the book under discussion, out today. Starred review from Publishers Weekly.
• The Weight by Jeff Boyd (Simon & Schuster, 2023) — Boyd’s acclaimed debut novel, set in Portland.
• Curtis Mayfield, “Hard Times” from There’s No Place Like America Today (1975) — the song that gives the novel its title.
• Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) — the Dickensian social realist tradition Boyd consciously works within.
• Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970) — referenced in the conversation.
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Chapters:
- (00:00) - Introduction: Hard Times from Dickens to today
- (01:19) - Not Dickens — Curtis Mayfield
- (02:44) - The Obama era and the fall back into hard times
- (05:32) - How do you fictionalize a reality stranger than fiction?
- (08:44) - Autobiography: teaching in a Chicago school
- (10:18) - Fate, predestination, and fighting the line
- (12:49) - The novelist as God — do your characters surprise you?
- (15:02) - A student is shot: the journalist-novelist
- (15:33) - Social realism in the Dickensian tradition
- (18:45) - Chicago stereotypes and the beauty between blocks
- (22:19) - A policeman’s son on George Floyd and the black cop who stood by
- (25:27) - Teaching as the most underappreciated job in America
- (27:57) - Money, class, and Black Chicago beyond the stereotype
- (29:43) - Trump, alternative facts, and who controls the truth
- (32:19) - The American Dream: is it over?
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