:00:00. > :00:00.body and making a payment to Michel Platini which he denies. Next it is
:00:00. > :00:09.HARDtalk. Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Stephen
:00:10. > :00:14.Sackur. So much of our developed world
:00:15. > :00:17.culture is driven by the instant, Our opinions, our fantasies,
:00:18. > :00:19.our lives, delivered in bite sized chunks,
:00:20. > :00:28.consumed with a glance and a click. Jonathan Franzen writes novels, long
:00:29. > :00:30.novels, that take years to complete He's become one of the defining
:00:31. > :00:38.voices in contemporary American literature, why does he hate
:00:39. > :01:21.so much of the culture around him? Jonathan Franzen, welcome to
:01:22. > :01:24.HARDtalk. Nice to be here. Friends and fans have learned to be patient
:01:25. > :01:28.as they wait for the next book. It takes you years to complete the next
:01:29. > :01:40.novel. Why is it such a long process? Well, these are not short
:01:41. > :01:43.books. And they are about characters and the characters take a long time
:01:44. > :01:49.to develop because they are not simple. And I have to start loving
:01:50. > :01:52.the characters before I can write about them and put them through the
:01:53. > :02:00.miseries I subject them to. And you know, it just takes a while. And I'm
:02:01. > :02:02.exhausted when I am done with the book and I feel like I have nothing
:02:03. > :02:06.left, so there is a certain amount of just letting the well be filled
:02:07. > :02:12.up White isn't agonizing as a process? Agonizing? No, I am
:02:13. > :02:16.fortunate to be allowed to do it. There is a certain kind of happy
:02:17. > :02:23.unhappiness to it. Because I am doing
:02:24. > :02:23.what I am good at. And in the misery, it is entirely voluntary.
:02:24. > :02:46.Misery is a word you are using. had written that didn't come to
:02:47. > :02:49.fruition and I just wonder how depressing that is, to be so focused
:02:50. > :02:56.on something and then have to tear it up? You know, once I sense,
:02:57. > :03:07.almost smell that there is a novel to be written, what's it like... It
:03:08. > :03:12.is a delayed gratification. I'm tired now, I've been touring for
:03:13. > :03:18.five weeks so I will just say, when you are trying to reach a sexual
:03:19. > :03:20.climax, there is a sense of really wanting to get there but it is going
:03:21. > :03:26.to take a while. And there is a sort of kind of agony of suspense about
:03:27. > :03:30.that, but it is not like you want to stop doing it and give up on
:03:31. > :03:33.achieving what you are after. Maybe that is a great way of explaining
:03:34. > :03:38.the pleasure and pain at the same time. That in itself is not
:03:39. > :03:42.depressing. What is depressing as the moments when you feel there is
:03:43. > :03:48.nothing and everything you have been doing for a couple of years is not
:03:49. > :03:51.working and you start... You start counting out how many months it has
:03:52. > :03:56.been since he wrote a good sentence. That is depressing. That is
:03:57. > :04:02.interesting, because I wonder if that filters through to the rest of
:04:03. > :04:05.Jonathan Franzen. The writer at his desk having problems. When it is at
:04:06. > :04:11.its worst, does that sometimes lead to a more general depression? Sure.
:04:12. > :04:16.I think most people who do creative things spend time being somewhat
:04:17. > :04:24.depressed. I am fortunate never to have been in an institution for it.
:04:25. > :04:28.Have you been close? I got pretty seriously depressed in the 90s but a
:04:29. > :04:33.lot of things were going on. My father was dying, my marriage was
:04:34. > :04:40.coming apart, my second novel had disappeared without a trace and
:04:41. > :04:44.naturally, rather than at first doing what I should've done, which
:04:45. > :04:47.is look inward, I thought there was something wrong with American
:04:48. > :04:50.culture. I thought the novel might be dying as a form because that is
:04:51. > :05:02.what writers whose books are not going well tend to say. The novel is
:05:03. > :05:07.over. But in fact, this is the kind of optimistic Midwesterner in me, I
:05:08. > :05:11.think of depression for myself, someone who doesn't get radically
:05:12. > :05:15.clinically depressed, I think of it as a growth opportunity, kind of.
:05:16. > :05:20.There was something... It is like my whole mind is going on strike,
:05:21. > :05:23.shutting down, refusing to work and usually at the root of that is that
:05:24. > :05:27.I'm trying to make myself do something that I don't want to do.
:05:28. > :05:33.In your first answer, you explain that your novels are long and many
:05:34. > :05:36.viewers and listeners who hadn't read them will not real life there
:05:37. > :05:42.are many hundreds of pages on the whole... 560 is typically how long
:05:43. > :05:47.they are, actually. They are longform. They are all 560 pages. I
:05:48. > :05:53.don't know if that is true, they are long. The point I'm getting to is
:05:54. > :06:01.that in a way, it seems that your ambitions, frankly the epic scale of
:06:02. > :06:07.your novels, some Mike Adams ? a different time or place, to Tolstoy
:06:08. > :06:14.or Dickens, a lot of characters and action and complexity -- some might
:06:15. > :06:21.compare it to, are they novels of a different age? If that is how it is
:06:22. > :06:25.taken. When I was starting out, I didn't have that social novelist
:06:26. > :06:32.ambitions because somehow I failed to notice that it was no longer
:06:33. > :06:36.1870. That it was 1985. And I still imagine that the world needed
:06:37. > :06:40.instruction from novels. But since then, it has really been up about
:06:41. > :06:45.the links comes out of something else come out of an unwillingness to
:06:46. > :06:49.tell the story of one character. That it is much more interesting to
:06:50. > :06:53.me if I can get for five main characters and they will to hear
:06:54. > :06:56.from each of them. I want to turn it around and see things from multiple
:06:57. > :07:02.points of view and they want to let some time pass, because often what
:07:03. > :07:06.seems true at first glance, if you let years or decades go by,
:07:07. > :07:10.something else emerges as the truth. So to me, it is a way of telling
:07:11. > :07:16.stories that can be told in a novel and that is how I do it. Your latest
:07:17. > :07:20.novel that has just come out which you are currently touring and
:07:21. > :07:24.talking about is Period she, and a big thing in Purity is the nature of
:07:25. > :07:33.the Internet and its impact on individuals in our societies --
:07:34. > :07:39.Purity. It is potentially a very negative impact as it is pretrade.
:07:40. > :07:44.Is that the way you it? Not really. Not particularly. Not the way I see
:07:45. > :07:48.the novel. I would never use a novel at this point in my life to convey
:07:49. > :07:54.some point of view of mine, some political opinion I might have. I
:07:55. > :07:58.would be much more inclined to use the novel to argue against my
:07:59. > :08:03.preconceptions and to try to entertain, as strongly as possible,
:08:04. > :08:08.the opposing view. And if you look at a novel as a whole, I don't want
:08:09. > :08:12.to give anything away, but the Internet is represented by one
:08:13. > :08:17.particular figure, a former East German dissident, a whistleblower
:08:18. > :08:22.type with a huge amount of Internet fame, and at first glance, he seems
:08:23. > :08:26.like he's doing bad things, but it is not entirely clear that he
:08:27. > :08:30.doesn't wind up doing a lot of good things and I think the same may be
:08:31. > :08:35.true for the Internet. If we ban divorce your own feelings... I have
:08:36. > :08:38.my own personal feelings about it. You have feelings about the way
:08:39. > :08:50.social media works in this digital age of hours. Would you say --
:08:51. > :08:54.ours, that there is a sort of tyranny and groupthink that comes
:08:55. > :08:58.with the Internet which, as it happens, in the book at least, seems
:08:59. > :09:02.to have connections with different forms of totalitarian isn't going
:09:03. > :09:08.back to communist groupthink? There was a lot in that question and maybe
:09:09. > :09:13.I should break it down. I think my fundamental critique of the Internet
:09:14. > :09:19.and social media as we now have them is an economic one. Because of the
:09:20. > :09:23.way it is structured, which is essentially as a commercial
:09:24. > :09:31.enterprise, dominated by a few extremely profitable platforms. The
:09:32. > :09:37.tech giants like Amazon? Facebook, Amazon, Apple, a few others...
:09:38. > :09:47.Because of the economics of the Internet, short, attention grabbing
:09:48. > :09:51.communications are privileged. And what grabs the attention is extreme
:09:52. > :09:57.statements, extreme and rather simplistic statements grab the
:09:58. > :10:03.attention. And if you have something complicated or simply not sure to
:10:04. > :10:07.say, you're not going to get clicked on, there is no incentive on
:10:08. > :10:13.anyone's part to encourage that this course online. To be crude about
:10:14. > :10:17.it, you seem to be suggesting that the Internet is dumbing down our
:10:18. > :10:25.culture? It is rewarding extremism and divisiveness. And even though it
:10:26. > :10:32.seems to be a democratizing force, in certain respects it is in fact
:10:33. > :10:36.doing, it seems in the wages consumed... People find themselves
:10:37. > :10:41.in their own sort of echo chamber getting ever more extreme versions
:10:42. > :10:45.of what they already believe. It is not, by an large, as far as I can
:10:46. > :10:52.tell, fostering complex discourse between opposing views. In your own
:10:53. > :10:56.world of literature and publishing, it would seem like a company like
:10:57. > :11:02.Amazon and many others, and their democratization of publishing, say,
:11:03. > :11:05.helping people to self publish and helping others to easily promote
:11:06. > :11:09.their work and getting reviewers to easily review online, not just the
:11:10. > :11:14.ivory tower critics, you could argue all of this is opening up literature
:11:15. > :11:18.in a weight has never been opened before? If it worked in the way it
:11:19. > :11:24.was supposed to work, it would. But it doesn't actually, I think. You
:11:25. > :11:28.can find it... There are always these miracle stories that someone
:11:29. > :11:32.couldn't find a publisher and self published and is now published
:11:33. > :11:36.several 100 thousand copies of their book and has half a million
:11:37. > :11:39.followers on Twitter, there are those stories. And there are also
:11:40. > :11:44.stories of people who prayed to Jesus and bought the house with a
:11:45. > :11:48.three car garage. Amazon would clearly make the case that they have
:11:49. > :11:53.been a huge positive for people's ability to reach out to literature,
:11:54. > :11:59.to make it more accessible, easier to read, and it has changed the
:12:00. > :12:04.business of breeding. And actually, many would say has made it more
:12:05. > :12:11.accessible to so many people -- reading. Really? I know they would
:12:12. > :12:16.say that. Do you believe it? Reading culture has been driving for
:12:17. > :12:21.hundreds of years. Was it really so broken that it needed to be fixed?
:12:22. > :12:25.That is an interesting question. There is also a personal element to
:12:26. > :12:31.this. I know you have talked about despising Twitter. You have gotten
:12:32. > :12:36.sucked into certain facts which have been driven by social media, to a
:12:37. > :12:38.certain extent and you have had semi- humourous exchanges with
:12:39. > :12:42.people like Sulman Rushdie about whether you should be on Twitter. He
:12:43. > :12:48.said you can stay in your ivory tower if you want to. To know he is
:12:49. > :12:51.now saying? Jonathan Franzen with right. Check out his most recent
:12:52. > :12:59.interview in the New York Times. He's getting off Twitter. But he and
:13:00. > :13:02.I have gone... That is completely friendly. If I were on Twitter,
:13:03. > :13:07.there were zingers I could have delivered but I am not on Twitter
:13:08. > :13:16.and she gets to deliver the zingers. But he is fed up with that as well.
:13:17. > :13:20.What I'm getting at is that some see you as a prickly character in the
:13:21. > :13:24.way he defended your reputation, and you talked about the Internet
:13:25. > :13:29.shredding and trashing reputations. And I wonder if, on reflection, with
:13:30. > :13:34.all the success you have had, at times you have been too careful
:13:35. > :13:46.about what people say about you, to easily hurt? Need? Easily hurt --
:13:47. > :13:51.me? I don't read anything about me on the Internet or social media.
:13:52. > :13:57.Sometimes I get it second hand but it can't hurt me because I don't
:13:58. > :14:02.even see it. I can feel like somewhat of a failure as a writer of
:14:03. > :14:05.public stature, it would be a failure of mine if I were not
:14:06. > :14:09.generating criticism, if I were not trying to call attention to things
:14:10. > :14:10.that no one else wants to talk about. And one of the things people
:14:11. > :14:19.don't want to talk the stimulation of these devices
:14:20. > :14:25.is. And when you fact, people who are spending a lot
:14:26. > :14:29.of time, and are more or less captive to their smartphones, they
:14:30. > :14:35.don't enjoy that, having that pointed out. They will react
:14:36. > :14:42.negatively, they will want to shoot the messenger, and you know, so be
:14:43. > :14:47.it. It doesn't mean that I shouldn't say how the world looks to me and I
:14:48. > :14:52.don't see people particularly being happy about having these devices in
:14:53. > :15:02.their lives that they can't get away from. And if somehow, all of the
:15:03. > :15:09.time people were spending on them was profitable to them, and lead to
:15:10. > :15:13.highly capitalised platforms, I would perhaps feel more OK about
:15:14. > :15:17.it. But if you look at freelance writers, journalists, all of the
:15:18. > :15:21.content providers are being driven out of business because there is an
:15:22. > :15:25.expectation that everything should be free. Your novels have coincided
:15:26. > :15:31.with different presidencies, from the first Bush or Clinton... Lincoln
:15:32. > :15:33.was president when I was working on my first book. It was a very bitter
:15:34. > :15:45.book. -- rated. You said that no books don't try to
:15:46. > :15:53.say big political things but I wonder what you think about America
:15:54. > :16:00.today, what you think about the disillusion, the absolute sickness,
:16:01. > :16:04.it seems, about the 2-party status quo, which might explain Donald
:16:05. > :16:08.Trump on one hand and Bernie Sanders on the other. Did you feel the
:16:09. > :16:15.disillusionment in your country today? It turns out that the Cold
:16:16. > :16:18.War period was the last gasp, at least in America, of people
:16:19. > :16:24.believing that government was a primary force in the world. And what
:16:25. > :16:31.you see in America now is increasingly a libertarian, pro- or
:16:32. > :16:35.Brook Street, where technology and the efficiencies of the market will
:16:36. > :16:39.solve the problems. -- pro corporate. Government is not seem by
:16:40. > :16:48.either side as a force for good. Bernie Sanders is more or less an
:16:49. > :16:52.old-fashioned socialist, and yet his insurgent, nascent campaign against
:16:53. > :16:57.Hillary Clinton is fuelled precisely by this kind of libertarian
:16:58. > :17:05.anti-government platforms and technologies. And Hillary Clinton is
:17:06. > :17:07.seen as old school... This is governing, this is reasonable,
:17:08. > :17:13.people getting together and trying to make legislation. And there is a
:17:14. > :17:17.great deal of impatience with that. People really feel like they have
:17:18. > :17:22.given up on government. And I see it here as well. The market has become
:17:23. > :17:27.the dominant ideology and that is what happens when you win the Cold
:17:28. > :17:38.War. Do you regard yourself as a shy person? Not so shy that I cannot
:17:39. > :17:41.talk to you here. Shy? And my shy? I tell you why I ask. You say the
:17:42. > :17:47.writing involves a huge amount of self revelation and yet it is a
:17:48. > :17:50.particular kind of self revelation because you sort of there yourself
:17:51. > :17:54.or part of your psyche in characters and stories and it is never quite
:17:55. > :18:02.clear how much of you is in the book. Exactly. That is the beauty of
:18:03. > :18:05.fiction, isn't it? You can smuggle in an enormous amount of personal
:18:06. > :18:13.distress, shame, anxiety... And musket. But is that what drives you?
:18:14. > :18:18.Is there an impulse to go public, in a sense, to go public with the
:18:19. > :18:26.darker recesses of your psyche, your mind, but you have to do it in a way
:18:27. > :18:29.that is not too raw. Honestly, no. I think that there is an exhibitionist
:18:30. > :18:33.side to me and I noticed that my blood pressure is never lower than
:18:34. > :18:39.when I go on stage in front of a full house. Is the house is full,
:18:40. > :18:45.I'm just dead calm. I have a low pulse rate. I'm so happy to go out
:18:46. > :18:48.and perform. I do love performing. But I think that there is a
:18:49. > :18:54.fundamental misunderstanding out there about how suffering and self
:18:55. > :19:00.revelation relate to artistic production. I think that people who
:19:01. > :19:04.can do these things... I believe it was an Italian writer who said that
:19:05. > :19:07.literary traditions are not sustained by people who want to,
:19:08. > :19:15.they are sustained by people who can. And it is like, I found that I
:19:16. > :19:19.have an ability to throw my voice, to empathise my way into other
:19:20. > :19:24.people and to create characters and to do that in true is that you might
:19:25. > :19:29.want to read. That is a skill I was lucky to develop and that I was
:19:30. > :19:33.lucky to recognise and I was very young. I think that if I had not
:19:34. > :19:38.done that, I probably would not... I would just be as shy and reticent as
:19:39. > :19:42.the next man. And so, in a way, it is because I can do these novels
:19:43. > :19:46.that I have been forced to put myself through all of this. Does
:19:47. > :19:51.that make sense? It is like, which came first? The ability comes first,
:19:52. > :19:57.not particularly the wish, certainly the wish to embarrass my family by
:19:58. > :20:04.saying things I probably shouldn't say about myself or my parents...
:20:05. > :20:09.You don't do that directly at all. I have in my non-fiction, which really
:20:10. > :20:13.freaks out my brothers. Really? They don't get angry, they just say,
:20:14. > :20:18.maybe don't publish any of those essays any more if you possibly
:20:19. > :20:22.can. A couple of things you have just said interest me. You love it
:20:23. > :20:36.when a whole is for and you can go and talk to a lot of people. -- when
:20:37. > :20:43.a hall is full. How much did it hurt you when you're only book did not
:20:44. > :20:46.sell? And how did you find the way to write a book that was true to
:20:47. > :20:51.yourself but managed to cross the threshold into becoming a
:20:52. > :20:56.bestseller? That is a good question. I don't... It is hard to
:20:57. > :21:06.answer without seeming to praise myself. Oh, go on. There came a
:21:07. > :21:15.point after the sales failure of my second ball when... And I was living
:21:16. > :21:20.in a one room on the third floor of someone's house and I was paying
:21:21. > :21:25.$300 a month... You had some big depression. It was getting into the
:21:26. > :21:32.period when I was fairly depressed. Marriage a wreck. Parents old.
:21:33. > :21:43.Father dying. And I just thought, I cannot do this. It started to be me
:21:44. > :21:47.sending out resumes to law firms for workers and word processor, because
:21:48. > :21:51.I was so discouraged. I was shocked because I had a college degree, I
:21:52. > :21:56.could type rapidly, and they were not even calling me back. They
:21:57. > :22:02.looked at my resume and they said, well, he got this prize, he has this
:22:03. > :22:07.book is published, this is just not right. I should probably not be
:22:08. > :22:10.working as a word processor in a law firm. In a way, even though the
:22:11. > :22:16.books had not sold, and looked at that and I said this does not look
:22:17. > :22:21.like... Something is wrong with this picture where I do not try to write
:22:22. > :22:25.a third novel. But did you change anything fundamental to give the
:22:26. > :22:30.readership you had not got before? Totally accidentally. With the first
:22:31. > :22:34.two books, I was reaching with these social issues. The first book was
:22:35. > :22:39.about any number of things but about media, the failure of Americans that
:22:40. > :22:44.is, immigrants to America. The second book was about abortion and
:22:45. > :22:49.again about media. It is interesting that I have always been interested
:22:50. > :22:55.in media. But the third one was a family saga, basically. I basically
:22:56. > :22:58.gave up instructing anyone, telling people what was wrong with the world
:22:59. > :23:01.according to me, and decided that I was just going to write a book for
:23:02. > :23:06.myself and that, paradoxically, was wanted it. Have to finish in a
:23:07. > :23:11.minute. Martin Amis was on the show not long ago but he said that time
:23:12. > :23:18.is the only true test of the merits of a book. If it is being read 50
:23:19. > :23:23.years later, if it is still being read 50 years on, it probably is and
:23:24. > :23:28.was a rewarding piece of work. Do you relate to that? Do you care
:23:29. > :23:38.about the legacy aspect of what you have done? Michael Gallacher would
:23:39. > :23:42.be no. -- my quick answer would be no. If I'm honest with myself, it
:23:43. > :23:45.would be nice to think that I'm doing quick enough work that it
:23:46. > :23:52.would stick around but I'm a child of the 1960s and 1970s and I'm
:23:53. > :23:58.pretty concerned with people I can reach, be of service to, entertain
:23:59. > :24:02.right now. That is what it is about for me. I would like to do it well
:24:03. > :24:04.and I would like to think that if I do it well enough, people will be
:24:05. > :24:12.reading it, but you really never know. We do have to end it there.
:24:13. > :24:34.That is what I do know. Thank you for joining us. My pleasure.
:24:35. > :24:37.Good news - if you have plans for the weekend, it's looking fine
:24:38. > :24:41.and dry for many of us and indeed today is shaping up pretty well.