Jonathan Franzen: "If this country fell into fascism, then I would surely take a bullet"

Reading time: 29 min

In this interview with Jonathan Franzen, journalist Isaac Chotiner notes that: "Each of the writer's forays into public life, whether giving an interview or writing essays, almost always results in controversies”. This one is no exception.

Published on August 31, this great interview sparked controversy, in particular because of a passage:

This will even have resulted in tweet clashes between very respectable novelists:

We are translating the entire interview here.

***

“There are only bank branches left in Manhattan,” laments Jonathan Franzen as he walks through the living room of his home in Santa Cruz, California. When he returns to his old neighborhood on the Upper East Side, he can only say to himself: “There was a nice grocery store there; now it is a bank. That used to be a nice liquor store, now it's a bank." Santa Cruz, a university and seaside town, suits him better. Franzen's house, although integrated into a generic housing complex, is perched above a magnificent ravine with a very pretty view of both the ocean and the natural park below. Opportunities for birdwatching, an occupation dear to Franzen's heart, abound (when the conversation turned to Jamaica, he casually mentioned that he had the opportunity to see 27 of the 29 endemic bird species in the island). He shares the place with his longtime partner, Kathy Chetkovich, also a writer.

I first spotted Franzen, casually dressed, picking up his mail outside the house. Inside, the modest living room is tidy and less cluttered with books than you might expect. Franzen is now 56, but despite his graying hair and stubble, his face is still youthful. For someone so often described as aloof, even grumpy, he is surprisingly friendly and open. When I confess to him that I am not a bird lover, he recommends bird watching with passionate generosity and suggests special places in my hometown of Oakland, California, with the sincerity of someone who does not try to tell you what to do but suggests something that he genuinely believes will give you pleasure.

Franzen published his first novel, La 27e ville, in 1988. But it was not until his third book, Les corrections (2001), that he became a once an object of large-scale adulation and controversy. Ever since he feuded with Oprah Winfrey—the media equivalent of an invasion of Russia—after The Corrections was picked up by the presenter's literary club, he's largely avoided publicity. Straddling the nerd and the middle class, he is a monumentally successful commercial novelist capable of appearing uncomfortable with the commercial success of his work. Each of his forays into public life, whether he gives an interview or writes essays, almost always gives rise to controversy.

In recent years, for example, he has been widely mocked for considering adopting an Iraqi orphan, and criticized for writing an article on global warming for the New Yorker in which he claims that given the scale of the problem , humans brush off urgent matters such as the protection of birds. His detractors have sometimes happily fossilized him in the role of “white novelist who knows nothing about it”, an intellectual disconnected from realities who, according to them, squats the cultural spotlight much more than he deserves.

Freedom, published in 2010, and Purity, released last year, are both 500-plus-page novels that garnered considerable praise and then furious debate over whether their glowing reception was exaggerated—and a symptom of gender bias in literary criticism.

The rights to Purity, which was released last week in paperback, have already been bought out by television—in its Showtime adaptation, Daniel Craig will play Andreas, the Julian Assange-style character who dominates the greater part of a story whose plot takes place all over the world (and partly in Santa Cruz).

READ ALSO

Franzen, the Tolstoy of the internet age

Read the article

Before starting the interview, Franzen offers me an espresso and suggests that we sit down at the table so he won't be tempted to fall asleep. We will talk for over an hour. Often, a very long silence precedes his answers to my questions; he articulates clearly and visibly cares about finding the right word—more for expressing himself correctly than for sacrificing political correctness. But he sometimes gets carried away and then expresses himself with theatrical speed.

During our conversation, edited and condensed for clarity, we talked about the impact of fame on an author, the idea of ​​them writing a novel about racial issues, and mental health of Donald Trump.

Isaac Chotiner: America has just had a very weird year. Has your way of thinking about the country fundamentally changed?

Jonathan Franzen: Well, there are two big separate things going on right now. One is the state of race relations, and the other, quite unrelated—although there are points of convergence between the two—is the emergence of Trump and Sanders as protest candidates with won their party's nomination or came close to doing so. The racial question is very present in the information at the moment because of these shootings of the police.

This phenomenon seems quite distinct. I read somewhere, I believe it was in the New Yorker, that radicalism tends to emerge not when times are tougher but when people have been given hope and was disappointed.

Have you ever considered writing a book about race?

I'm embarrassed to admit it–I don't have many black friends. I have never been in love with a black woman. I think if that had happened to me, then I could have dared to write a book on the racial question

I thought about it, but—I'm embarrassed to admit it—I don't have many black friends. I have never been in love with a black woman. I think if it had happened to me, then I could have dared to do it.

[I adjust the microphone, which he stares at for a moment.] Good, good, good. The mic. You pointed the microphone at me. It's just me talking here. [He is silent.]

You said you had never fallen in love with a black woman.

It's true. I didn't come into a black family through marriage. I write about characters, and I have to like a character to write about him. If you haven't had the direct experience of loving a class of people—someone of a different color than you, or deeply religious, things that are real differences—it seems to me It's very difficult to dare to write from this person's point of view, or even to want to.

For Purity, I had all this material about Germany. I had been there for two and a half years. I knew the literature quite well, yet I could never have written about it because I had no German friends. What made me able to write about it was suddenly meeting these friends that I really loved. So I was no longer the hostile stranger; I was the loving initiate.

Yet in your novels there are obviously characters that we cannot like.

Ah, but how would you define love?

Actually, I was just wondering what you meant by the word love.

Hmmmmmm.

At the start of Purity, we get inside Pip's head, as she lists what it means to her to love her mother: she pities her, shares her pain, she feels an attraction disturbing for her body, she wishes him to be happier, she cares about her. I think it has to do with recognizing that another person is other, and feeling that deeply. And wanting to be with that person, loving being with them despite their flaws. So actually (in Purity) Andreas has a lot of repulsive flaws but because he had a tough childhood, because I think he probably struggled his whole life with mental illness, and because I I've met people like that, and because he's not just a bad guy—he's constantly striving to get better—I was very touched by his desire, and I believe he's sincere, d to be someone better. This is my connection point with him. No matter what he does, he is aware of what he is doing, he thinks about it, and he tries to be honest. He also has many qualities. And also, you know, love is largely an identification with the other. And I am, you know, a multifaceted person. And I don't necessarily want all these facets to be revealed to the world in non-fictional form.

This interview is an opportunity to do just that.

Exactly. I know what paranoia looks like. I know what it's like to worry about what people say about you, and become obsessed with what people say about you. All of this stuff that (Andreas) lives—he's way more famous than any author will ever be—but some of the things around fame, you see, I identified with it.

READ ALSO

Emma Bovary's sex plans or French literature seen through the eyes of Amazon critics

Read the article

Have you ever been obsessed with what people say about you?

(Long pause.) Yes, in a very negative way. To the extent that I'm capable of great things not to hear what people say about me. But that's a form of, well, a form of self-protection because I know all I have to do is hear one sentence—I'm going to be told in all innocence, oh, that someone said a stuff about me or something I've written, like when I wrote this piece for the New Yorker a year and a half ago where I thought I had made some reasonable arguments about the reality of global warming and the inexorability drastic climate change, and people said, 'Oh my God, someone called you a lunatic. Someone said you were disproving the reality of global warming."

All it takes is one tiny sentence about me to keep me up at night for hours

Jonathan Franzen: “If this country fell into fascism, then I would surely be shot

And all it takes is a tiny little sentence like that to keep me awake at night for hours, constructing pithy and devastating repartee for some moron... no, really, a one sentence is enough to keep me awake for hours.

It sounds like you're all for giving your point of view on controversial topics though.

Uh, yeah.

It's quite surprising if you know you'll be hurt by the reactions.

Well it's true, but you only get hurt if you hear the reactions.

Okay, but these things have a way of sneaking up to our ears.

Things work their way around the firewall sometimes, true, but it's a complicated equation. I am aware that I have been very fortunate—to have probably been objectively over-rewarded as an American novelist and occasional journalist and essayist—and I am aware that I have benefited from the outset from privileges in which I was not for nothing, starting with good health, being white, having had the parents I had, a good education up to a certain level, and also, because I am over-gratified for what I do, I don't need to worry about house bills every month. So I feel like because I have these privileges, these luxuries, it's my duty to speak up whenever I can because I'm in a better position to take the penalty than someone would be. in a less secure position. That partly explains it.

I'm not one to seek confrontation; I don't consider myself a brave person, but I suspect that if this country fell into fascism and journalists were persecuted and free speech trampled on, then I would stand up against that and take myself surely a bullet, simply because there are a few things that are really important to me.

READ ALSO

The ravages of Bret Easton Ellis on French literature

Read the article

Do stupid comments on social media affect you? And the long, thoughtful reviews? Do you get into that sort of thing?

No. I don't even read the good reviews unless eight different people have absolutely assured me that they didn't contain the slightest thing that would upset me.

Really?

Yes. You know, even a really nice review is going to say, is going to do a little covert criticism—not covert but just lip service, because they don't want to be seen as completely, pitifully positive, when obviously what the writer really wants is to read pitifully positive reviews. And it's like (he changes his voice): "That's a great review, too bad you have this little negative paragraph". (He laughs.) “Because I disagree with your criticism! Don't you understand why I did this?!" Or, or, even better, an absolutely rave review but whose author has misunderstood something and puts you down for misinterpreting it. And there it is: "Arrrrrrrrghhh, but it's clear in the book, you just read it wrong!" Why would you do that?

I don't want you to feel like you have to lie on the couch to answer, but why does this stuff bother you so much?

(He gets up).

Are you going to the couch?

No, no. (He takes my glass to pour me more water).

So why do you think it upsets you so much?

Well, I don't think I'm the only one.

Think you're just being more honest about it?

I don't know. One of Denny Hastert's great lines was, "I don't brag about my own humility."

OK, good.

You can get lost in this sentence and spend long minutes trying to get out of it.

That's exactly what I'm doing.

I don't know my level of humility.

My longtime editor, Jonathan Galassi, likes to say (he takes a deep voice): “A writer never forgets a slight.” I believe it is universal. We never forget a slight. Writers are incredibly jealous, and also, lo and behold, they are resentful.

READ ALSO

David Foster Wallace, the infinite philosopher

Read the article

Are there any writers you are jealous of?

Not so much now that I am well settled in my identity.

But in the cartoon universe that is the writer's imagination, every two, three, four, five years, the whole country should stop whatever it's doing and s occupy for several months of the new book of such a writer. And there should be reviews everywhere, and people should be scrambling to find out what this author wrote, and it should stay on top of the books for several years, and then everything should go downhill until the next book comes out. . So no matter how successful you are, if you don't have a book that just came out and you see someone getting all the attention, there's a little voice inside you that says, "Why are they? interested in this person? Has everyone read my book? It's crazy. What the writer secretly desires is completely insane.

I happen to be, even though I feel like I'm over-gratified for what I'm doing, I'm like, 'Okay, but I didn't win that award. What happened?" It's not really jealousy, but in the writer's imagination, there is a zero-sum game. Everything others get is taken away from you. You can be very rational about it and decide, "This is stupid, there's room for everyone under the sun." But I do not know. Maybe it's not a universal feeling. Maybe I'm a really bad person.

The writer works from scratch. We don't even have an instrument. That's all: your poor little ego is there, without any protection

I'm sure this sentiment extends to other professions.

But that’s very specific to writers. The writer feels it especially because we are working from scratch. We don't even have an instrument. That's all: your poor little ego is there, without any protection, without a percussionist or bassist to hide behind. You can choose any words in any order—there is no rule for that. So this thing has your name on it, and you are the absolute author of it. It is an expression of who you are. So I think in the writer, the ego is uniquely exposed to the vicissitudes of reality.

How do you balance not wanting to read reviews on social media with how important certain issues about the internet and democracy are to you and your willingness, I imagine, to speak out on the subject? To understand social media, do you have to get involved?

(He doesn't say anything).

Because you don't spend your days on Twitter, I guess.

No, I don't spend my day on Twitter. (My feeling on the matter) is drawn from my experience as a fiction writer, which is that it is better not to know too much. Go ahead, taste it a little, follow your intuition: what does your instinct tell you about what you are observing? And then step back and really think about it, and use your imagination. You know, the grudge I have against Silicon Valley simply goes back to this animal instinct that tells me that this technology doesn't seem to have liberated humans. Looks like people are walking around chained to their smartphones. From a behavioral point of view, that's the impression it gives.

(And also, I studied) in the kind of humanities college where you are rewarded for giving scholarly speeches on subjects of which you just skimmed a chapter quickly the day before the exam. But as a fiction writer… if you really pay close attention to the little things, you can get a lot out of it. A single intensely lived experience can greatly inspire the writer.

Is there any contradiction between that and what you said earlier about not wanting to write about racial issues because of your lack of experience? ?

I find it really dangerous for a progressive white American to assume that your good intentions are enough to get you into some imaginative work of black America

No, it was about love. This was about love. I find it really dangerous for a progressive white American to assume that your good intentions are enough to get you into some imaginative work of black America. I am particularly vigilant on this point. I thought about it—you know, racial issues are very important in America.

READ ALSO

Why in France are the covers of books so sober?

Read the article

Have you ever thought about writing a shorter book, or a short story? Your last books were cobblestones.

All my novels are the same thickness: around 530, 540 pages. This is the size that suits me. Nell Zink is pestering me to write some sort of Ethan Frome-like (Edith Wharton's) short story that would be studied in high school because she wants my literary heritage to continue to receive huge sums of money that could be directed towards the protection of birds.

Going back to Trump: George Saunders wrote this article for the New Yorker where he recounts going to Trump rallies—

This is a great article.

Would you have been interested in being asked to write it?

That was a great article for George. Exactly what he needed. I tried one summer to be a correspondent for the New Yorker in Washington.

Is that when you wrote about Hastert?

My article on Denny Hastert, yes.

It was not a very good experience when I was in Washington. Saunders obviously did a totally different story, where his incredible empathy and involvement with those working at the very bottom of America's social ladder came in handy. It was ideal for him. But I also find politics very confusing lately. I find Washington delightfully boring.

You mean you wouldn't feel the same empathy?

Saunders is much better than me at striking up a conversation with a Trump supporter. I can do it, but it makes me uncomfortable. He can do it with a kind of sincerity that I wouldn't have, I think. I don't know. I work well abroad because people don't have a fixed idea of ​​what kind of person I am based on my glasses or my clothes.

What do you think your glasses and your clothes reflect as an image of you?

(Or) just my way of speaking.

It's a matter of diction, perhaps. Just the way vowels and consonants are articulated and pronounced.

You articulate well.

I articulate well. It's not intimidating when I'm speaking through an interpreter, so when I'm reporting overseas it's not a problem, I just start talking to people. Here it is a little different.

You seem to have rather progressive political views—

Absolutely. I am a progressive democrat.

You know a lot of the reactions you get are probably that you're a white guy writing about white guy stuff.

And yet some people like it, so we can't please everyone. Besides, if everyone likes you, you better worry. I write for people who like the kind of books I like.

How would you define the books you write?

Well in any case these are not political novels, that's for sure.

You don't think your books are political? Okay, it's not Storm in Washington. But they are political all the same, right?

They take into account the world of politics, but they do not advocate any one in particular. And you don't have to share the author's opinions to appreciate them.

What are your work habits when you write your books?

Oh, I so rarely have a writing habit. (He's laughing). I would like to write all the time, but the days when that happens are tragically rare. When I was writing my last article that was published, a piece on Antarctica for the New Yorker, I got up at 8 a.m., ate my breakfast, and read the print version of The New York Times, at which I am still subscribed.

And then I would take the car and drive ten minutes to my office on campus. It's a dark, cold, quiet little room, I work there ideally for six hours and I try to come up with 1,000 words, and I come home where I spend two hours on my emails. Then I go to the gym, or I play tennis, I have a drink; Kathy returns from going to see her mother; we have dinner, we watch television; We read. These are happy days.

It could be worse.

It could be much worse, indeed. I get paid for this. It's amazing.

READ ALSO

Will booktubers become the new fashion YouTubers?

Read the article

You said you had an office on campus. What do you teach?

I don't teach. I haven't taught since 1997.

Are you breaking into someone else's office?

No, no, how to say that? I have a working relationship with one of the faculties (at UC–Santa Cruz) and I do things like give graduation speeches.

Two hours on your emails is interesting.

Yes enough, it's true. We'll say at least an hour. I run a business already, so every day I get emails from work asking me to do a lot of things, and I don't have anyone who would be able to figure out how to kindly say no to them. So I have to do this. And it's boring. You can have three requests in a day, and you can't satisfy any of them, but at least you want to be nice to the person asking.

You were nice to me every time you said no before agreeing to do this interview.

Well, I'm glad that's what you remember. It was not written by an assistant, let me tell you. You have to take that into account. And then there's the agent stuff, and lately television, and then all the friends. These are not necessarily very long emails. One of the reasons I try to stay up to date is that you don't have to write a long email if you reply quickly, whereas if you let a week or two pass you feel compelled to write any further. If you leave it hanging for a while, you feel like you have to write a whole letter.

You mentioned television. What does it mean to you that your work is adapted?

As they say in New York, Forensic Police, “Your honor, they opened the door to this question.” (He's laughing). “He is right, master.”

I interviewed Jhumpa Lahiri a few years ago and asked her what it meant to her that her novel One Name for Another was made into a movie, and she simply said, basically, it was Mira Nair [the director] who did it: “It was her One name for another of hers.”

I derived great satisfaction from the failure of attempts to adapt Les Corrections

Well, The Corrections foiled any attempt at an adaptation other than a 12-part radio play for the BBC. I think that's the only thing anyone has ever managed to do with this book. Which includes the team I was on that tried to make a TV series for HBO over four years, which ended up being a poorly conceived attempt. I got—I wouldn't say perverse satisfaction—I got frank satisfaction from the failure of attempts to adapt this book. Like, “Yeah, because it’s a novel. Novels are novels, that's all.

The Godfather was also a novel.

It's true. Well, The Corrections was a little less direct in the story it told, a little structured in a different way. No, not a bit—it wasn't structured the same. And in the end I was very relieved that this series was not chosen after the realization of the pilot because I felt that I was going back to something that was finished for me.

Today, I am once again involved in an adaptation as executive producer and writer. I'm adapting it with two other people, including Todd Field, a talented guy who has an idea that I'm very excited about. I don’t get the same “Yuck, I’m sick of this topic” feeling that I had with The Corrections. I think it probably has something to do with the timing. No other book stands between me and Purity. It's still kind of fresh. I was still working on this book fifteen months ago. The wound is still open, so it's not as painful to go back.

Purity also seems easier to adapt.

You noticed it, Todd noticed it, yes.

READ ALSO

What the series have taught us about female sexuality

Read the article

What do you watch on TV? I'm sure you've heard the cliché that TV shows are the new novels of the 19th century.

I had to revise my definition of the novel to include cable television series, simply because it is striking how television finds its way back into the soap opera form a la Dickens and Dostoyevsky.

Does TV count for a lot in your current cultural consumption?

Terribly, yes. So much so that I had to revise my definition of the novel to include cable television series, simply because the way television is finding its way back to the Dickens-Dostoevsky soap opera form is striking. They were all writing in this soap opera form at the time. The social novel is dead, killed by film and television, and yet it gave pleasure and satisfaction in the 19th century. People have been born after the death of this form of storytelling, but I think there's still a natural hunger for this stuff.

Any favorite series?

Well, it's a bit embarrassing to admit: we've started the third season of Silicon Valley, we've already watched two episodes. We thought we really loved this series, and since we couldn't remember all the twists and turns that had brought the characters to this point, so we just finished re-watching the first two seasons.

What are you reading at the moment? Contemporary fiction or older stuff?

Both. I've read a lot of classics, but I'll re-read them. There was that wonderful moment a year and a half ago when I realized that I had sidelined Hardy because of a traumatic experience in my first years of college with Dark Jude. In fact, Hardy happens to be one of the greatest English-language novelists of all time.

What about current novels?

Well, I'm always on the lookout for a good novel. There's one that I really liked and admired a few months ago, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I don't know how to pronounce his last name, it's Tony Tulathimutte. It's a book called Private Citizens. In his genius, he does a bit too much. But it's a real book. He has great talent. It transported me. I'm reading Hannah Tennant-Moore's novel Wreck and Order. I'm about a third of it. It's good.

How interested are you in pop culture? Do you feel compelled to do so when you write big books about America?

No. I am lazy. I don't like doing research for my books. Sometimes I put a gun to my own head and force myself to do research when I don't know anything about a subject, but the idea of ​​doing stuff to myself just to collect impressions—I blame myself for myself for not being a real novelist because I don't go out with a notebook to collect impressions. I don't put myself in difficult situations to try to fish for material.

No, I only consume pop culture that I enjoy. So I know quite a bit about the NFL because I keep—it's a bit of a pathetic confession, but I still really enjoy watching NFL football games. (He's laughing).

Football is so good on TV that—

It's great on TV! All. The rules, the decisions of the referees. It's a wonderful thing. I know a little about baseball too. And I'm very into a fairly small number of rock bands that I found myself extremely involved with at a time when I needed to have music to listen to.

I'm two-thirds of the way to my life. There are whole genres of music that I will never know anything about. OK, okay, so what? There are plenty of people who don't know much about the styles I like. When I talk about Wussy most of the time people look at me with wide eyes. Even with the Mekons they look at me with round eyes.

That's what's happening here.

That's it, exactly. They don't know these bands and I don't know their bands and that's fine. And the rest is everything that goes through my filter, and my filters are actually the New Yorker and the New York Times. And I spend a lot of time looking after birds and bird protection, so that's intruding on my pop culture consumption.

Just to go back to the criticism: having to deal with criticism is one of the downsides of fame, right?

There are plenty of people who aren't famous who get rocks thrown at them every day.

It's true, but it's more rare that it's continuous.

Yeah. I come back to New York, judicial police, and I say: “Objection, a famous writer, that does not exist”. And the judge answers, "Let him continue."

How much do you think fame has changed you or your life?

By stipulating that a famous writer does not exist.

You are not George Clooney. I'm not saying it's the same thing.

You amaze me. Because George Clooney can't take the bus in New York. Your possibilities of being a person in the world are really limited when you are very famous. You don't go out without a bodyguard, for example.

Yours let me in.

I know. I fired them when I saw you coming.

I have probably been contacted by more people from my childhood than if I had not been known a little. Of course, all I had to do was go to Facebook, and I would have heard from all these people.

Haven't ventured onto Facebook?

No, no, I don't see where I would find the four hours needed for that in my day. (He's laughing). No, I'm wrong to play the smirk on the subject. Professionally, I don't have to be there. (He takes a sarcastic voice). I recognize that it is a privilege, my editor does not harass me so that I do my own promotion on Facebook.

But I try to take your question seriously.

Once in a while, we have an opportunity to talk and draw attention to something because we are known

OK, I was in Australia. It's really anecdotal, but the Australian government has a productivity commission that basically tries to take away their protection from Australian booksellers, publishers and authors, in the sense that many other countries with more free trade oriented policies like the United States and the United Kingdom still protect their authors, their publishers and their booksellers. So I attended the annual meeting of a booksellers association and I presented an award to someone. I said that even in America we're not so foolishly enamored with the free market that we don't protect our publishers. That's all I said. And it worked. And it wouldn't have worked if I hadn't been a well-known visiting American writer. I felt like I did a little mitzvah there. Once in a while, we have an opportunity to talk and draw attention to something because we are known.

But don't you feel that people treat you differently?

I'm sure some do. And we can very well become paranoid: “They don’t like me. They love me because of my toys. They like me because I live in my parents' big house" or all those paranoid fantasies that were so nicely treated in, uh, not Wolfcatcher (snaps his fingers), you know, the Steve Carell movie, Fox …

Foxcatcher.

Thank you. Foxcatcher—my brain bugged—which is a great movie about just that isolating power of wealth, in this case. But fortune and fame work a bit the same way in that they make you wonder if people like you, or if they like what you represent.

I wondered about Trump, and how much wealth and fame affected him. I think he might have a mental illness.

Yeah, that one honestly doesn't bode well for the future. If he's elected president, it's only going to get worse, this mental illness.

I live with someone who already loved me when I had nothing

You said your courage would show if a fascist took over and started jailing journalists, and you wouldn't be afraid to stand up to it—well, maybe you can.

Exactly, exactly. What stands in the way of this possibility is my aversion to meetings. But just to complete this thought (he pauses for 30 seconds.) My friends are still my friends, and most of them have been for so long that I know they love me for who I am and yes, it is quite easy to spot when someone is nice just because of what you represent and your public persona. And I can tolerate it. But basically, I'm surrounded by a lot of reality. I live with someone who already loved me when I had nothing.

And now we can finally talk about birds.

OK. (He's laughing). What do you want to know?