Jeffrey Eugenides Talking Books


Jeffrey Eugenides

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Darren and the landowner. BBC News now says it's time for Talking

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is the American writer Jeffrey Eugenides. He's only written three

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novels, but so startling was his debut of The Virgin Suicides in

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1993 that everything he has written since has been eagerly anticipated.

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In 2003 he ran the Pulitzer Prize for Middlesex, and his third novel

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The Marriage Plot is difficult to cat gorise. We met in a London

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hotel and he told me why his writing takes him in so many

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different directions. Jeffrey Eugenides, welcome to Talking Books.

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Thank you. I want to start with your latest novel, The Marriage

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Plot, which seems on the surface to be the most conventional of your

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novels. The Virgin Suicides, about five girls committing suicide, from

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the same family, middlesex about a family. Do you feel that you have,

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over the three novels mellowed as a writer? I think if you look at my

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first two novels, it will be easy to have the new one seem

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conventional by comparison. What I was concerned with with the book

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was goinging a deeply as I could into the characters. Each book

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teaches you certain things. You gain anability to write in a

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certain way. Middlesex I created full-blooded characters. When I

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finished that book I knew I wanted to proceed in that direction. That

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was the directive I gave myself, to write a dramaticised book about two

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or three figures, and to map out their consciousness, but stay close

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to the mental processes and emotions and have a character

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driven novel. Middlesex was plot driven. Narratives were looping

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around, interconnecting. This has a gentle art. There's lots of

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surprises and violations. I tried to have a light hand through the

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process. Essentially it's a story, a love triangle. The central

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character is a woman set in the 1980s, in the east coast college,

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they are Liberal arts graduates and it's a year after they have

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graduated. You go back to their time at college. Because of the

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academic backdrop I wondered whether - it seems the clash

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between post modernism and traditionalism is a subject in the

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novel. Whether you wrote the novel thinking, "I want this to be a

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corrective to all the experimentational novels", that's

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what I'm interested in, the socialist realist novel. I am

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interested in the socialist realist novel. I'm interested in trying to

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do something new. I found the way to do that is combine traditional

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elements of the novel with post- modern elements. You can read the

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story as a traditional red-blooded love story about young people. You

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can read it as a deconstruction of the traditional marriage plot from

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Austin, if you are academically inclined. You don't have to think

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of it that way. I played with both ideas. In general I wanted to seize

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the reader's attention and give them an experience akin to those

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that I encountered in reading Toll store and great writers, where you

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em-- Toll star, where you empathise with the characters. That's what I

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was thinking about. Does it matter which way the reader reacts to it?

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There's a sense in this modle and in Middlesex, you have to know a

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lot. Whether it's about hermaphroditSm, Or in the marriage

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plot about post-modernism, or whether you need to know about a

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lot. Do you expect readers to know or do you want to educate them?

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don't think you need to know the references in my books. You

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understand that I quote a theoretical writer, the thorny bits.

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It's always explained in the context. You could read it having

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not taken any symiotics. You may enjoy the book if you are an

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English major, but you don't need to. The names are the furniture of

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the novel. I never want a book to be research-heavy or a formal

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exercise. It's fine if people pick up things along the way. How hard

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is that. Clearly you have to do the research and try to wear it lightly.

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You need to do more research than you use. And that you can feel when

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I write the scenes, when it's too heavy. If you put in information

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because it's a great bit of information, but it's not

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functioning narratively, I cut it out. With Middlesex there's rams of

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notes that did not make its -- reams of notes that did not make

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its way into the title. Marriage in the 19th century novel mattered and

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social equality and divorce killed the novel since that time, is that

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something that concerns you, that you as a novelist, that you want to

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make the novel important in social culture? Well, I was The argument

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that the novel is dead, because marriage no longer means what it's

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used tox There's a reason I put the -- used to. There's a reason I put

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the argument in the mouth of a professor. These are thought I had,

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toyed with. I don't believe them. I began with modernism. I never felt

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the novel depended on older structures from Austin or James.

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That was one of the tastiest plots that the novel came across, the

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marriage plot. And I did lament the fact that a contemporary novelist

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was no longer able to treat the plot. I wanted to she was there a

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way for a contemporary novelist to grab energies of the marriage plot

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but write a contemporary novel where none of the same principles,

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outcomes would occur. That's what I thought about. I wasn't worried

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whether the novel mattered, I feel like it does. Let's talk about

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whether this issue of the novel being relevant or not is important.

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Are seen as a generation of writers -- writers are seen as a generation

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of wrirs where this is an issue, whereas you say it doesn't seem as

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much. I think you are right, I and others, are of a generation where

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we want the novel to matter. We think it can convey meaning and

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represent the world. How will we do that? We don't want to write novels

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that are academic exercises and of interest to other creative writing

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professors. We want to reflect our experience and are moving away from

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the ironic posture of high-post modernism, where everything was a

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slight comment on the inability to convey meaning or the falsity of

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social conditions, social interaction. We want to go back and

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tell stories again. In doing so, we don't think we are necessarily

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being retroyaid. I would agree with that, -- retrograde. I would agree

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with that, but many writers have done that all along. There was a

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tradition, maybe not an undercurrent, of people that have

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told stories about America in a way where readers can find their own

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lives depicted and reflected. I think we are coming at the end of

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that. But I'm not sure that it's so different than many things going on

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in the '40s, '50s, and '60s in the United States. Why choose the 1980s

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to set the novel? It's clearly a pre-9/11. The world has changed so

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much in the last decade. Why did you choose the 1980s. I guess I'm

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pre9/11 in my heart. I chose the '80s... In terms of what, you are

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an innocent. I'm an in the. I live in my memory. My books had a

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nostalgic quality. I chose the '80s for a simple reason. I went to

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college in the '80s. This book connected with semiotics, it's in

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the '80s. I wanted to be accurate about the times at college that my

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characters were living in, that's when I went to college. I remember

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the music, what it was like, the intellectual debates that were

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going on. I wanted to set it there. I feel that this book is completely

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contemporary. It's contemporary in the main. When I read from this

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book, at a college campus, the students respond as though it's

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happening - their lives are the same now, emotionally, in terms of

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their romantic lives. Even the whole backdrop of intellectualising

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all kinds of things? They read the writers. I get e-mails from people

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graduating. Boyfriends are as bad now as in the 1980s, so it hasn't

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changed. Cell phones, Internet and different ways of communicating,

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but in the main the stuff I'm writing about in this book are

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eternal questions. I didn't think setting in the '80s unnecessarily

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made it historical or passe. heard you quoted that autobiography

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is art and when you use it, you a have a pare and find the fiction

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outside of the autobiography. There are big autobiographical elements

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in your work, or do you reject that idea. No, there certainly are.

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Autoio biographical writing is dangerous -- autobiographical

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writing is dangerous, because you represent totality of your life.

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The section of The Marriage Plot which dovetails to my life is when

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Mitchell goes to India and volunteers with with Mother Theresa,

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which I did. I wrote that section. It's 40 pages in the novel. I

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described everything I saw. Every person I met was described,

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everything I ate, everything that I could remember. It was an

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overwhelming experience for me. When I read it back, there was no

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shape to it. It needed to function in a novel dramatically, that

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section. It didn't need to be representative of my life. It

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needed to be representative of Mitchell's transit through the book.

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I had to cut out almost everything in order to get it to work. It was

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the most difficult part of the novel. Whereas the section about

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Leonard and his mental illness, something I have not experienced, I

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wrote quickly, because I could see what needed to be there. I didn't

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have to compete against my memories Part of the portrait of Leonard has

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been interpreted by many critics as being a partial portrait of David

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Foster Wallace. Is that accurate? It is not correct at all. I could

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list a number of differences between Bernard and David Foster

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Wallace. I began this novel in the late 90s before I had even met

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David Foster Wallace. When I write a character, I think, what kind of

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person is this? Then I think of all the people who might resemble that

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person and take details from a host of real-life characters and then I

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poured a huge amount of myself into the character. My own actions,

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memories, thoughts about things. You play around with all these

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different elements until finally you have a character that diverges

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from everyone you know and becomes his own person. I think when it

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does. All of that speculation began on a blog from New York magazine

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that was based on the fact that both of these characters wore

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bandanas. I pointed out that my bandana comes from Axel Rose Room

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Guns N' Roses. Learned is very interested in heavy metal. -- or

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Leonard. They ran wild with the bandana idea. Not that people are

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reading the book and seen him as a character, I hope that is dying

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down. Is it to do with the fact that there is a group of writers,

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including yourself and David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen, who

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were writing a roundabout the same time and there is a sense that what

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you had similar concerns and there was a kind of rivalry, sharing

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their ambitions? Is that partly what makes people say... When it is

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based on Jonathan Franzen. I will tell you for the first time here. I

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just disguise to be the bandana so no-one would realise. There is a

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review that said that Madeleine is Jonathan Franzen! All of my

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characters are Jonathan Franzen! I can't get enough of him! I think it

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is true, because they are lumping us to get banned writing an article,

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the author of the article is a very good writer. I enjoy talking to him,

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but the truth is that we did not know each other. We were really

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young and starting out. I had other writer friends there were very

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helpful to me early on. The article in New York magazine was called

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Just Kids. I think that is because we met each other when we were in

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our 20s. The truth is I met Jonathan Franzen when I was 34. We

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had many discussions about the novel. He was writing The

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Corrections then and I was writing Middlesex. I do not think it was

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true to say we were all competing in some kind of small hot house

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together. We may have competed with each other and netted each other by

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reading each other before we ever met. Boasters what an hour about

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David Foster Wallace I learnt from reading his novels. Not from any

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discussions. But writers are put together and are together in some

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way. So finally they wrote an article and acted as if we were

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always hanging out and discussing things. But David Foster Wallace

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beaches in Jonathan Franzen's writing. Could you talk about his

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influence? Can you say a bit about his influence on your generation of

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writers? When you read David Foster Wallace the first time, what you

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are whereof is someone who captured the sound of his time, the sound of

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our generation better than anyone. Every now and then that happens.

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You read a writer and that is exactly how people think and sound.

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Mrs Our World represented. It seems so fresh and excited many come

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across that. That is what I think was his great power and why

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everyone admired his work so much. They were very close, Wallace and

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friends in. -- Jonathan Franzen. One of the things that are clearly

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interested Wallace was being a seeker of truth. I would like to

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ask you about the centrality of religion and the pursuit of the

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fate. Mitchell is clearly somebody who, he is a divinity student, he

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is engaged with that, but is it a fundamental data. What made you

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want to place that as a central theme? The The Marriage Plot

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references many traditional novelistic themes. One thing I find

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curiously absent from contemporary novels his religion. The search for

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truth. People have not stopped asking themselves this question.

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How should I move? What does it mean to be a good person? Is a

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meaning to existence or is it meaningless? I wanted to bring that

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back to my novel. Wallace was interested in that also. That gives

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our generation, the novels about generation, it marks the difference

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between them and the writers who came before because I think we are

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trying to find out what trick is and saying that maybe there is a

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truth or Dare is the possibility of describing a partial truth in the

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novels. That goes against the reader and others -- director and

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others. -- Derrida. There is an absence in contemporary novels

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given how large religion looms in contemporary society. If you are in

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the US, you can't be -- help but be aware of religion. Usually in a

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form that is slightly scary. With Mitchell, the difficulty was

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writing about a character who is sincere in his religious

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inclinations but also full of doubt and scepticism. I did not want to

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make him a figure of fun. Just a college kid who goes to India to

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find himself. I wanted to be gracious to him and tender about

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these feelings he has and yet, I also knew he is intelligent and

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does not accept many of the doctrines he is being asked to

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believe. It is a fine wine to walk and it gave me a lot of difficulty

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to write. There is a sense that you could argue that all three of your

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novels are coming-of-age novels. In the Virgin Suicides, although the

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list -- was then sisters all kill themselves, there is a -- an

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undercurrent of reluctance to enter into the adult world. Middlesex is

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about being on the cost of being a teenager. With the The Marriage

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Plot, the three characters are trying to navigate their way

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through the world as adults. All three novels are about being on the

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cusp of being an adult. It seems to be what I have done. You could

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describe The Marriage Plot as a coming-of-age novel if you agree

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that they do all, they each. These figures are fully adult when

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describing the things they are thinking and examining their lives.

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I thought I could be intelligent as possible in their approach to

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recreate their thoughts. I was not writing about people who did not

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have a deep self understanding. They do. Yet, they are young and

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confused and passionate. I have always enjoyed writing about

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characters like that. Young people are trying to pick him out today

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are and are often putting on different cells to see if they fit.

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You are writing about a character who is writing himself or herself,

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trying to create themselves. That is very rich material for a

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novelist. You never know what they're going to do. Mitchell goes

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off on his religious search. Leonard becomes very different then

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he might be otherwise.Writing about characters who are changing and

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perhaps growing. Mutating. These characters are not static. I have

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found in my three novels writing about young people to be conducive

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to dramatic treatment. So insular debut with the Virgin Suicides, you

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have written two other and novels. Do you feel you have come of age as

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a novelist? Do you feel at ease as a writer? I think I'm getting the

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hang of it. I am getting a sense that I can do it again. Don DeLillo

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once told me, your first book comes to is a gift. You don't know how to

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rotate. The second book is the book that teaches you you can actually

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do it. I agree with that but after the third, I feel more so. I am not

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the kind of novelist he will always repeat the same novel. I do feel a

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kind of anxiety on the level of the sentence for the first 20 years of

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my writing career. I did not know how I wanted my books to sound. I

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did not know if I could actually get my point across. That started

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