A generation ago, a new book
by a fiction writer
was anticipated with the kind of excitement and buzz
that is not seen anymore.
In the age of Internet, information and images,
many publishers doubt the younger generation reads very much.
Who and what are the future of American fiction?
Joining me, David Foster Wallace, whose 1,000 page novel,
Infinite Jest, has become the season's most talked-about book;
Jonathan Franzen -- his latest book is Strong Motion;
and Mark Leyner, author of Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog.
Welcome.
Great to have all of you here and the reason we have convened
you here is to talk about that very subject.
Mark, let me begin with you.
I mean, what's happening to fiction, do you think,
and its appeal to young people today?
I don't know who young people, where the division is, but--
I don't know.
In a way--
Is there an audience, do you think?
Is it growing?
Is it decreasing?
Is it impacted by all these things we talk about?
You know, honestly, it's something I never think
about as a writer.
I-- there's an image I have of Bobby Fischer-- you know,
the chess player--
Yes.
--when he was a kid-- 16, 15. And he's in his
room every night, listening to WABC on some little transistor.
Playing through all the chess games of history obsessively.
I don't think, at that point, he cared about
how popular chess was or who was interested
in it or not. It was just
his obsession, his compulsion, what he did.
He knew at that point.
And that's pretty much how I feel about it.
You know, I'm not-- I didn't sign on as a sociologist or a
professor or-- I mean, this is what I do.
I write these books and I'm loyal-- I mean, I'm grateful for
whatever loyal readership I have.
I'm privileged by it and sort of write for that readership.
So generally, I don't get the sense, when I go out there-- if
So generally, I don't get the sense, when I go out there--
if I go out on a book tour, for instance-- this is just
you know-- my empirical evidence is that there seems to be a lot of
interest in books out there.
Notwithstanding all the distractions, not
withstanding the Internet and all that, notwithstanding the
technology that plays out there?
I think not withstanding the distractions.
I don't-- I don't think additional media
supplant other media.
I think they crowd it.
I think they sort of impact on the kinds of readers we have.
But I'm not certain that there are less readers and
I'm not certain that there are less enthusiastic readers and
I'm certain that there are more readers out there for me
that haven't read my books.
So I guess once I exhaust them, then I'll worry about it.
Does any of these questions we're talking about
influence the way-- how you write and the way you write and --
I mean, because your style is unique and different?
Well, I was just listening to
what Mark said.
In a-- you know, in a way I agree.
If you think about that stuff, like the size of the audience
and how much it will appeal to a reader, you go
nuts fairly quickly.
(off-camera) Yes. Yes.
But on the other hand, I think that--
I think where Mark and I differ a little bit is-- is I think, in a
weird way, the condition sort of commercially for fiction has--
bears a little bit on the aesthetics of writing right now
because at least-- at least the generation that I think of
myself as part of was raised on television, which means that at
least I was raised to view television as more or less
my main kind of artistic snorkel to the universe.
And I think television, which is a commercial art
that's a lot of fun,
that requires very little of the recipient of the art,
I think affects what people are looking for
in various kinds of art and I think can make the sort of fiction
which-- if I can lump a bit, I think all three of us do stuff
that's at least harder than average, weird,
requires some work to read.
What's interesting to me is the very phenomenon that perhaps
demographically cuts into our audience is a big part of sort
of what's going on in the country that I think
fiction writers are trying to capture in some way.
Okay, what's that?
Oh, boy.
I hope this is a four-hour segment.
Well, okay, it is. Go.
As-- as--
Reduced by three hours and 45 minutes.
Yeah.
I guess, as far as I can see, fiction for me, as-- mostly as a
reader, is a very weird, double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it can be difficult and it can be
redemptive and morally instructive and all the
good stuff we learned in school.
On the other hand, it's supposed to be fun.
It is a lot of fun.
And what-- what drew me into writing was mostly
really fun rainy afternoons spent with a book.
It was a kind of a-- it was a kind of a relationship.
Now, why did that draw you into writing?
Because, I mean, the love of the book make you want to make
those-- make them, be a part of the--
Well, I think-- see,
this gets real abstract.
I think part of the fun for me was being part of some kind of
exchange between consciousnesses,
a way for human beings to talk to each other
about stuff that we normally can't talk about.
Like, we're sure not going to be able to talk about this stuff
here, you know?
The thing that-- the thing that interests me in a lot of the
stuff I think that I do has to do with I think a lot--
commercial entertainment, its efficiency,
its sheer ability to deliver pleasure in large doses
changes peoples relationship to art and entertainment.
It changes what an audience is looking for.
I would argue is changes us in deeper ways than that and that
some of the ways that commercial culture and commercial
entertainment affects human beings is one of the things that
I sort of think serious or arty fiction ought to be
doing right now.
And it cuts in in a different way, too,
because I think 50 years ago, somebody setting out to write a
scene at a precinct house, basically, you know, would go to
a precinct house and feel that pretty much anything they had to
say about it would be fresh and interesting.
And now if I sit down to write about-- I won't-- I basically
won't write about a precinct house because I see so many of
them on T.V.
They do such a slick job.
I'm completely captivated by that.
And so that's in my head, whether I want it to be in my
head or not.
(off-camera) And in your reader's head.
And in my reader's head, as well.
And so I-- you know, I consider myself my own reader and so I
kind of consult my entertainment habits.
To say that I don't think about an audience is both true and not
true because I think about myself as an audience.
And that audience is one that has had its expectations
regarding all kinds of narrative art
profoundly changed by what's
happened in the last 50 years.
You know, I think it's a-- it's a tough audience.
I mean, if we can make a monolith out of this audience
we're talking about, for the sake of discussion,
a young audience raised on television is used to receiving
its entertainment in these kinetic bursts
and it's tough to sway people like that to reading a book.
I mean, if you go to public places now-- first of all, I
think one of the terrible things that's happening--
I mean, I watch a lot of T.V. myself.
I-- you know, I don't think it's evil in any sense, but I do
think compulsory viewing of television is evil.
One of the last refuges in which we can read anymore
are these-- (crosstalk)
And it's only between 9:00 and 12:30, too.
(off-camera) Exactly.
(off-camera) You know.
It could be worse.
A brutal regime.
(off-camera) We have these--
Dictatorial, I'd say.
Now what was I going to say?
Now what was I going to say?
Yeah.
These-- these sorts of interstitial zones where people read
--like waiting for planes, waiting for things--
Yeah.
You know, that's sort of the last refuge of peace and quiet.
Well, it's no longer because now you go to an airport
and they have televisions there.
Yeah.
So--
(off-camera) Check-out lines.
Now we're dealing with people who
almost never experience any sort of down time in their life
from electronic media.
But I think-- one of the things I've always tried to do is
accept that as a given, that this is a pretty tough crowd I'm dealing with.
And that I have to come up with the kind of work
that's able to somehow compete with that.
You know, there's-- in-- Beaudelaire wrote this great
little preface to Flowers of Evil where he said,
''Hypocrite reader, my brother''
I have the same kind of feeling where
I have realized pragmatically that I have to
bond with people-- I have to somehow devote my work to people
that may not be such great readers anymore.
But that sounds as if you're almost
saying the opposite of what you started out saying.
It sounds like you're molding your fiction very much to the
kind of readership you expect.
Whereas if--
No, I wouldn't say ''molding.'' I think you have
to be aware and realistic and pragmatic about
who's reading you work because
I mean, I'm not going to say you-- you know,
you don't have to.
Thank you, Mark.
But I-- you know, my relationship with my readers
is somewhat theatrical.
I mean, I really-- one of the-- one of the main things I try to
do in my work is delight my readers and-- you know, and the
work is-- is hopefully funny.
(off-camera) Right.
In order to do that, you have to
know who they are.
I mean, you have to have some notion of how they're taking in
this information and what they're used to, to play off it,
in some way.
So it's not a matter of molding your work necessarily, but you
have to know, sort of, who the patient is you're dealing with--
Yeah, but--
--as a doctor.
Yeah, but didn't you say, in a sense, without
(unintelligible) point, I heard this same thing.
When we were talking about in the beginning the
Bobby Fischer notion--
That he was merely obsessively--
Was obsessive--
--pursuing this--
--pursuing chess. He wasn't thinking about the
role of chess or all those other questions.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, who was watching who.
Well, I'll make a distinction.
I mean, I don't-- I don't think about-- I don't think in
sociological terms about dwindling readership--
Yeah.
--and why and-- when I'm writing.
But you do think about--
But I do think
I think about the people who do read my books.
--what are they demands.
Yeah. And what-- and what their habits are.
Well, because
it's an act of communication.
(off-camera) Right.
But where the-- what makes the analogy okay,
but also makes it break down, is that part of the
Fischer-like obsession Mark's talking about consists of a kind
of mental and emotional dance with a constructed reader that
you figure has a life more or less like yours and whom, in a
weird way, you're talking to, you know?
Again-- again, I'm, like, totally with you
about 50 percent of it.
The thing about it is that delight and fun and all that
stuff is definitely-- that-- that's part of what makes art
magical for me, but there's another part.
There's a-- there's the part-- and, see, I'm afraid I'm going
to sound like a puritan or a prig, but
there's this part that's--
That's okay. Go ahead. (crosstalk)
No, there's this part-- there's this
part that's-- that's-- that
makes you feel full.
There's this part that is-- that is redemptive and instructive,
where when you read something, it's not just delight.
You go, ''My God, that's me.'' You know,
''I've lived like that.
I've felt like that.
I'm not alone in the world.'' I mean, you can get
very kind of abstract in the way you talk about it.
What's tricky for me is, see
it would be one thing if everybody was absolutely delighted
it would be one thing if everybody was absolutely delighted
watching T.V. 24-7, but we have, as a culture, not only an enormous daily
watching rate, but we have a tremendous cultural
contempt for T.V.
I mean, from Newton-- Newton Minnow's ''the vast wasteland''
has become kind of culture-wide, such that now T.V.
that makes fun of T.V.
is itself popular T.V.
There's this way in which we who are watching a whole lot are
also aware that we're missing something, that there's
something else, there's something more, while at the
same time, because television is really darned
easy-- you sit there.
You don't have to do very much.
And in many ways--
It's not easy to do, though.
Oh, no, no. We'd never suggest that.
But, you know-- but there's-- there's also-- I mean, there's--
there's a second model you can sort of come at
the audience from--
Yeah.
--which-- with-- which is that people who
read books, who seriously read books, who read a lot of books,
nowadays, it's, like, a priori not of the mainstream.
You have a weird audience who is defined, in
large part, by their
non-participation in mass entertainments of that kind and
I think another way you can go about it is to just basically
keep on doing the same old kind of book, making little subtle
nods to the fact that it's now 1996 and--
So what, the only people who--
--not 1896.
The only people who read, like serious
fiction, are people who don't watch T.V.?
No, no.
Thank you for drawing that out for me, Dave.
No, if I've misheard, enlighten me.
My impression is that people who read feel--
who read a lot of books -- just seat of the pants sense -- is
that they don't-- they-- they do that because they don't fit in
in some way.
At some point in their lives, they-- they have found solace--
they have found it necessary to engage with books because the
community, the society around them is not giving them
everything they need.
And I think that's a-- that's a fair description of a person who
continues to read challenging books that require sort of an
effort of concentration.
Yeah, I want to ask that-- you-- especially you
about that.
Is-- it is that do you think that your books are known to
be-- the one-- this book is known to be complicated and
long, compared even to the Internet.
Is it simply because that's the way you express what you have to
say or is it some sense of design there?
Oh, there's some sense of design.
Part of it, I think, is, for me, it's weird.
I feel like I'm kind of-- if you put these
two guys in a blender--
What two guys?
--I am these guys-- these guys-- these
guys sitting right here.
guys sitting right here.
I mean, part of it-- one of the things that I want is to do
something that is-- yeah, it's complicated and it's hard and
it's weird, but it's also seductive enough so that you're
willing to do the work to go through that.
And a lot of that has to do with trying-- trying,
yes, to be-- to
be delightful and to have it be
delightful. (crosstalk)
--if you put us in a blender.
So I'm the one who's not delightful here? Is
that what you're saying?
A very soft blender and
not with sharp blades.
No, I-- no.
I'm just-- I-- I guess-- (crosstalk) I mean, it's not any
kind of tactic or whatever, but I think, at least for-- the way
I am as a writer comes very much out of what-- what I sort of
want as a reader and what sort of got me off, you know,
when I was reading.
And a lot of it has to do with-- ''Good Lord, I'm really
stretching myself.
I'm really having to think and process and feel in ways I don't
normally feel.
And the book-- the book has motivated me to do that.''
Let me ask this because we
talk all around this.
Is what you like to read different today than it might
have been 10 years ago, what you like to read?
And why?
Oh, 10 years ago, what-- (crosstalk) Yeah,
Oh, 10 years ago, what-- (crosstalk) Yeah,
Hardy boys. Exactly.
Well, but you know what I mean. I mean, in
terms of what's on the landscape today
and what you want to read-- is it different than--
and what you want to read-- is it different than--
I don't read-- I don't really read-- I don't read
much contemporary
fiction, I have to say.
(off-camera) Yeah.
Why not?
You know, I'm not quite sure why not.
I-- there may be some anxiety about the influence of it, in
some way-- you know, just wanting--
A subconscious influence on the
way you write or--
Yeah. Yeah.
I-- I also love reading non-fiction and just grab it at
I-- I also love reading non-fiction and just grab it at
the library every week, just books about every sort of thing.
And I'm also catching up, I think, on what I should have
read, you know, when I was getting high and screwing around
all the time.
I mean, I'm re-educating myself, to some degree.
You might want to edit that part.
You what?
Might want to edit that part.
I said I'm finished with that now.
You're recovered.
Which I found is not a bad thing to do.
I mean, it's not a bad thing to read all-- to read the books we
were supposed to have read in college--
You read mostly, then--
--when--
But-- you don't read
contemporary fiction, but--
Not really.
--do you read mostly non-fiction, then?
Mostly non-fiction and then
older sorts of things.
Mostly, you read what today?
If I understand your question, 10 years
ago I was reading a lot more avant-garde stuff and I
thought it was very cool.
One of my complaints right now is that because I think
commercial entertainment has conditioned readers to want kind
of more easy fun, I think avant-garde and art fiction has
sort of relinquished the field and is now-- basically, I don't
read much contemporary avant-garde stuff because it's
hellaciously un-fun.
A lot of really serious literary stuff--
But was it hellaciously un-fun--
Yeah.
--five years ago and ten years ago?
Well-- well, the stuff I was reading 10
years ago was avant-garde stuff from, like, the '60s and early
'70s, which as far as I can see, was kind of the
heyday, at least of contemporary avant-garde stuff.
But these days, a lot of it is very academic and cloistered and
basically written for critics and college teachers and Ph.D.
students and it's something that I-- I feel a lot more strongly
about that than I do about T.V.
Let me-- for those-- in a sense, Jonathan, for
those who say the novel is dead and, you know, the age of
fiction is past, you three are witness to what or
testimony to what?
Oh, I'd say we're-- we're witness to-- we're
testimony to the fact that it is not dead, that people are still
doing it.
There's still audience for it.
It might be the kind of big clout audience that Mailer and
Hemingway had in the '50s--
And?
And the novel dead? I think the novel-- the
novel and its audience may be
returning to a point before-- there was kind of a golden 100
years before T.V.
and movies had fully taken over, but after
universal education or
nearly universal education had produced a large
audience of readers.
That-- the novel was the only game in 1880, 1890, 1900s.
Infinite Jest, DAVID FOSTER WALLACE;
Strong Motion, JONATHAN FRANZEN;
and MARK LEYNER's Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog-- I thank you for coming.
(off-camera) Thank you.
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