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How Could I Have Thought That I Needed To Cure Myself In Order To Fit Into The 'real' World? I Didn't Need Curing, And The World Didn't, Either; The Only Thing That Did Need Curing Was My Understanding Of My Place In It. Without That Understanding - Without A Sense Of Belonging To The Real World - It Was Impossible To Thrive In An Imagined One.

-Jonathan Franzen

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How Could I Have

Jonathan Franzen

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How Could I Have Thought That I Needed To Cure Myself In Order To Fit Into The 'real' World? I Didn't Need Curing, And The World Didn't, Either; The Only Thing That Did Need Curing Was My Understanding Of My Place In It. Without That Understanding - Without A Sense Of Belonging To The Real World - It Was Impossible To Thrive In An Imagined One.

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Our Visual Cortexes Are Wired To Quickly Recognize Faces And Then Quickly Subtract Massive Amounts Of Detail From Them, Zeroing In On Their Essential Message: Is This Person Happy? Angry? Fearful? Individual Faces May Vary Greatly, But A Smirk On One Is A Lot Like A Smirk On Another. Smirks Are Conceptual, Not Pictorial. Our Brains Are Like Cartoonists - And Cartoonists Are Like Our Brains, Simplifying And Exaggerating, Subordinating Facial Detail To Abstract Comic Concepts.

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Readers And Writers Are United In Their Need For Solitude, In Their Pursuit Of Substance In A Time Of Ever-increasing Evanescence: In Their Reach Inward, Via Print, For A Way Out Of Loneliness.

I'd Be Surprised If Non-fiction Writers Hate To Be Interviewed. We All Hate Them, Because There's Really Nothing To Say Except "read The Book." Right? At Least With Non-fiction, You Can Kind Of Convey Some Information, And People Can Decide For Themselves Whether They Want More Of That Kind Of Information. But With A Novel, What Am I Going To Do?

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Seriously, The World Is Changing So Quickly That If You Had Any More Than 80 Years Of Change I Don't See How You Could Stand It Psychologically.

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Fiction That Isn't An Author's Personal Adventure Into The Frightening Or The Unknown Isn't Worth Writing For Anything But Money.

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Background Music

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I Feel As If I'm Clearly Part Of A Trend Among Writers Who Take Themselves Seriously - And I Confess To Taking Myself As Seriously As The Next Writer.

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He Watched A Catbird Hopping Around In An Azalea That Was Readying Itself To Bloom; He Envied The Bird For Knowing Nothing Of What He Knew; He Would Have Swapped Souls With It In A Heartbeat. And Then To Take Wing, To Know The Air's Buoyancy Even For An Hour: The Trad Was A No-brainer, And The Catbird, With Its Lively Indifference To Him, Its Sureness Of Physical Selfhood, Seemed Well Aware Of How Preferable It Was To Be The Bird.

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But The First Lesson Reading Teaches Is How To Be Alone.

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The Human Species Was Given Dominion Over The Earth And Took The Opportunity To Exterminate Other Species And Warm The Atmosphere And Generally Ruin Things In Its Own Image, But It Paid This Price For Its Privileges: That The Finite And Specific Animal Body Of This Species Contained A Brain Capable Of Conceiving The Infinite And Wishing To Be Infinite Itself.

Use Well Thy Freedom.

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An Ink Bottle, Which Now Seems Impossibly Quaint, Was Still Thinkable As A Symbol In 1970.

Nothing Got Inside The Head Without Becoming Pictures.

It'sthe Fate Of Most Ping-pong Tables In Home Basements Eventually To Serve The Ends Of Other, More Desperate Games.

Deploring Other People--their Lack Of Perfection--had Always Been Our Sport.

He Had A Happy Canine Way Of Seeking Approval Without Seeming Insecure.

How Wrong To Have Been So Negative, How Wrong To Have Been So Gloomy, How Wrong To Have Run Away From Life, How Wrong To Have Said No, Again And Again, Instead Of Yes.

Mr. Franzen Said He And Mr. Wallace, Over Years Of Letters And Conversations About The Ethical Role Of The Novelist, Had Come To The Joint Conclusion That The Purpose Of Writing Fiction Was “a Way Out Of Loneliness.” (ny Times Article On The Memorial Service Of David Foster Wallace.)

Fiction Is A Particularly Effective Way For Strangers To Connect Across Time And Distance

It Took Hours To Turn The Clock Back 30 Seconds.

Each New Thing He Encountered In Life Impelled Him In A Direction That Fully Convinced Him Of Its Rightness, But Then The Next New Thing Loomed Up And Impelled Him In The Opposite Direction, Which Also Felt Right. There Was No Controlling Narrative: He Seemed To Himself A Purely Reactive Pinball In A Game Whose Only Object Was To Stay Alive For Staying Alive's Sake.

As With All Forms Of Liberation, Of Which The Liberation Of Women Is Only One Example, It Is Easy To Suppose In A Time Of Freedom That The Darker Days Of Repression Can Never Come Again.

There's A Hazardous Sadness To The First Sounds Of Someone Else's Work In The Morning; It's As If Stillness Experiences Pain In Being Broken.

This Evening I Begin A Notebook. If Anyone Reads This, I Trust They Will Forgive My Overuse Of "i". I Can't Stop It. I'm Writing This.

The Personality Susceptible To The Dream Of Limitless Freedom Is A Personality Also Prone, Should The Dream Ever Sour, To Misanthropy And Rage.

I Admire Your Capacity For Admiring.

It's Doubtful That Anyone With An Internet Connection At His Workplace Is Writing Good Fiction.

I Wanted All Of Her And Resented Other Boys For Wanting Any Part Of Her.

And When The Event, The Big Change In Your Life, Is Simply An Insight-- Isn't That A Strange Thing? That Absolutely Nothing Changes Except That You See Things Differently And You're Less Fearful And Less Anxious And Generally Stronger As A Result: Isn't It Amazing That A Completely Invisible Thing In Your Head Can Feel Realer Than Anything You've Experienced Before?

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