Jonathan Franzen
I went to hear Jonathan Franzen speak on Saturday night. I went with some buddies from the best ever bookclub (word to the BDBC!!!). Not everyone wanted to go because several people still hate The Corrections with a passion. I hadn't read that one, but had really liked a lot of things about Freedom. Not the super bad sex scene(s). Not the bazillion pages about mountain top removal. I loved the characters, particularly Patti. I wanted to jump into the book and be her friend when she needed one.
Franzen was way more charming than I expected and significantly more handsome, too. He had this fantastic grin. He'd get lost in something or digress down some little rabbit hole, realize it and then look up and flash this fantastic smile and I found myself forgiving that whole ugly Oprah thing.
I so wish I had brought a notebook with me, though. He'd say things and I really felt like I needed to really look at them and decide what I thought about them, but then he was already talking about something else and I didn't have time. Of course, it appears I might have a chance since I saw a deal in Pub Lunch today for a book of essays from him one of which has the same title as the talk he gave.
Anyway he had this list of things he considered his enemies when writing a book and I'm pretty sure he did at least two of the things on the list in Freedom and I thought, well, well, well, people in glass houses shouldn't introduce pots to kettles. Just as I was about to start to feel somewhat smug, though, I started to wonder how many things I hate in other people's books I might do in my own and opted to cancel the self-righteousness for the moment.
One thing I couldn't quite stop myself from laughing out loud about, though, was when he was talking about writing The Corrections. At one point, he said he'd been working on one character for about a year and at the end of the year had 30 pages written. THIRTY PAGES!!!!!!! Jumpin' Jehosophat! That's not even a page a week. Can you imagine an active romance writer producing 30 pages in a year! Thumb your nose at our mechanistic plotting (yes, he said that, but not just about romance writers. He said it about all genre fiction writers.), at least we get the words on the page.
Has there been an author you've heard speak that defied your expectations? Or met them? Who?
Franzen was way more charming than I expected and significantly more handsome, too. He had this fantastic grin. He'd get lost in something or digress down some little rabbit hole, realize it and then look up and flash this fantastic smile and I found myself forgiving that whole ugly Oprah thing.
I so wish I had brought a notebook with me, though. He'd say things and I really felt like I needed to really look at them and decide what I thought about them, but then he was already talking about something else and I didn't have time. Of course, it appears I might have a chance since I saw a deal in Pub Lunch today for a book of essays from him one of which has the same title as the talk he gave.
Anyway he had this list of things he considered his enemies when writing a book and I'm pretty sure he did at least two of the things on the list in Freedom and I thought, well, well, well, people in glass houses shouldn't introduce pots to kettles. Just as I was about to start to feel somewhat smug, though, I started to wonder how many things I hate in other people's books I might do in my own and opted to cancel the self-righteousness for the moment.
One thing I couldn't quite stop myself from laughing out loud about, though, was when he was talking about writing The Corrections. At one point, he said he'd been working on one character for about a year and at the end of the year had 30 pages written. THIRTY PAGES!!!!!!! Jumpin' Jehosophat! That's not even a page a week. Can you imagine an active romance writer producing 30 pages in a year! Thumb your nose at our mechanistic plotting (yes, he said that, but not just about romance writers. He said it about all genre fiction writers.), at least we get the words on the page.
Has there been an author you've heard speak that defied your expectations? Or met them? Who?
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