Politics

TheDC’s compilation of Franzen-isms

Laura Donovan Contributor
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Freedom” author Jonathan Franzen had a “delightful” White House visit with President Barack Obama Monday, just a month after Franzen told Salon that he “didn’t vote for [Obama] in expectation of his mooning around pondering literary novels.”

When asked what Franzen hoped Obama would take away from “Freedom,” the author told Salon, “I hope he was so preoccupied with urgent national affairs that he wasn’t able to take away much more than a general enjoyment of the experience.”

In light of this hush-hush presidential meet-up, TheDC has compiled a list of Franzen’s most interesting (and puzzling) quotes:

“I have one precious day of bird watching scheduled next month in north Norfolk, a magnificent spot in England.” — The Telegraph

“If we’re in California I just sit down on our back porch and absorb the bird life for 45 minutes.” — The Telegraph

On the 2008 suicide of author David Foster Wallace: “I was mad. I was mad. I got motivated by anger at him. ‘Well, goddamn it, Dave! I’ve got one advantage over you, and that’s that I’m still alive, and I’m going to show what I can do.’ ” — The Guardian

Also on suicide of author David Foster Wallace: “It was like, man, if you’re going to do that? Be the heroic, dies-young genius? That’s … that’s a low blow. I’m going to have to get off my ass and actually write something.” — Time

“In 2002, when I tried to get going on a new novel, just meagre little shreds would come out that mostly reminded me of bad Franzen.” — The Guardian

“The kind of person who recognises me is an interesting person, with enough sensitivity to not be intrusive, simply polite.” — The Telegraph

On his novel “The Corrections” being selected for Oprah’s Book Club: “As the reviewer in the New York Times said, this is too edgy to ever be an Oprah pic.” — NPR

“So much of reading is sustained in this country, I think, by the fact that women read while men are off golfing or watching football on TV or playing with their flight simulator…I continue to believe that, and now, I’m actually at the point with this book that I worry…I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience, and I’ve heard more than one reader in signing lines now in book stores that said, ‘If I hadn’t heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women and I would never touch it.’ Those are male readers speaking…I’m a little confused about the whole thing.” — NPR

“The categories by which we value fiction are skewed male, and this creates a very destructive disconnect between the critical establishment and the predominantly female readership of novels.” — The Guardian

“I so dislike the word ‘dysfunctional.’” —  The Telegraph

“I find the [process of writing] miserable in a way, I am very anxious and very doubtful.” —  The Telegraph
“I seem to have grown into a time and a place where adults didn’t really want to be adults in the same way I understood them to be, which was well-mannered people who dressed differently than children and…put their children’s interests before their own, and all around, just were of a different class. They liked being adults.” — NPR

On characters in his book: “There was extra work involved in making them very specifically not me.” — The Telegraph

“I could probably just stay home and the book would do fine, but in the noisy culture we live in, novelists sometimes feel like the last few Aborigines. I feel a certain ambassadorial obligation to get out there and say: ‘We’re not endangered. Try it – you might like it.’” — The Telegraph