Jonathan Franzen – A Public Reading by a Private Man

Time Magazine put him on its cover. Oprah forgave him.

So, then, what does a writer write about another writer, especially at a time when the rest of the world is writing about him, too?

Jonathan Franzen, author of the best seller The Corrections and the recently released Freedom – widely labeled as the Great American Novel – made a guest appearance at the Cleveland Public Library on Sunday November 8. The audience filled the beautiful theater as well as other rooms because everyone present, including Cleveland’s own writing elite, wanted to see, listen to and meet the man whose work imprints not just the American reading community, but, also, European scholars who, typically and quickly dismiss American literature in favor of their own authors. Europeans, those purveyors of history who, only in the twentieth century finally had to bow their heads embracing American culture – we introduced them to jazz – are starting to love Franzen.

His novels speak of Midwest America, of those values that society holds near, and, yet, simultaneously, struggles to live up to on a daily basis. Generations have feuds and can love the other even deeper because of those feuds. Families also provide the greatest source of drama and those families create characters. Franzen’s characters are his gems and when readers develop their love affairs with his books, it’s because there’s recognition of the self. Deborah Schulman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biology at Lake Erie College, shares, “With The Corrections, I appreciated the depth of character the most. (Franzen) takes the time to actually fully flesh out the characters, rather than simply following the plot.”

This admiration of character and craft drew a significant crowd, immune to the nearby football game, to Downtown Cleveland. Jonathan Franzen, scoping the room after approaching what he called “the one pitch podium,” shared a lengthy essay that he had previously recited in Germany. For anyone in the audience, sitting there, observing, letting it all soak in, including the Madame Defarge-like woman in the corner knitting during most of the talk, the speech was far less about a self-congratulatory celebrity monologue and far more about a man who knows that to be the greatest artist you possibly can be, you must be vulnerable – to your friends, to your lovers, to your past and, mostly, to the craft. First and foremost, you must be vulnerable to yourself.

Franzen’s QQ (quotability quotient) held strong. An intelligent man knows many things and, therefore, can quickly comment, with humor and with simultaneous seriousness, on just about anything and can do so in very few words, which he did, on multiple occasions and audience inquiries. He also listed out the four most unwelcome questions a writer receives. He answered each with a delicious reply that those of us who pay the bills by creating new, fresh content daily, on demand, wish we could bottle and playback each time a non-writer assumed that the business of the written word is some arbitrary, romantic, leisure activity.

Writing is work.

So if you know any writers, please understand that these are, with a sampling of insight into his reply, per Franzen, Four Unwelcome Questions, for any professional writer:

Q: Who are your influences?

A writer has to start somewhere but it’s almost always random.

Q: What time of day do you work and what do your write on?

(This is the) most personal question. When working I don’t want anyone else in the room. Including myself.

Q: Is it true that your characters take over and tell you what to do?

(When that happens), there’s a loss of authorial will.

Q: Is your fiction autobiographical?

This one always feels most hostile.

There’s far more wisdom to articulate, like Franzen’s insight that a story’s structure comes before any of the details and that in order to write a new piece, a writer must first become a new person. And, yet, perhaps being there, in that room, at that time, listening to that man was the most powerful way to fully absorb the energy and wisdom that he so gently and generously shared with us, and not to be retold in any effective manner on any screen. We simply experienced a glimpse of a man that none of us really knows at all, but one who knows who he is, both as an author and as a man.

Enough said.

Reprinted with permission and gratitude from CoolCleveland.com. Photos: Thomas Mulready.