An affair with a Pilates instructor, a couple’s
experiences with literal and figurative strangulation, an academic
whose specialty in moral philosophy doesn’t preclude him from
delving into promiscuous sex with students and colleagues ““
such is the world laid out by Jonathan Franzen, the National Book
Award-winning author who spoke Wednesday evening at the UCLA Hammer
Museum.
The reading with Franzen, known for his novel “The
Corrections,” was the second in a series of three, and part
of a program English professor and author Mona Simpson started this
year. Simpson said she hopes bringing Franzen and other authors to
the Hammer Museum will encourage students to dabble in fiction, a
world she adored during her college days.
With a deep, slightly scratchy voice and humor in the form of
wit, Franzen began the night reading a few short pieces on
breakups, drawing laughs from an audience of about 300 who filled
chairs and lined the walls.
In a question-and-answer session following the reading, Simpson
asked Franzen for an update on his outspoken views regarding the
state of reading and the novel in today’s society.
The author has placed his mark on the literary world in past
years by disparaging a television-driven culture and putting forth
his vision of how people’s perceptions and interactions with
fiction need to change.
While Franzen told readers Wednesday, “I’m not going
to blame people for not reading,” he reiterated a point he
made in a 1996 essay he wrote for Harper’s magazine and
reprinted in his book of essays, “How To Be Alone”: New
Yorkers who had time to read 25 novels a year in 1945 now have time
for, perhaps, something more like five.
The declining role of fiction in modern society is lamentable,
Franzen said. Writers use the genre to discuss the taboo, giving a
voice to people’s inner fears and indulgences.
“It is a place where stuff that nobody’s saying is
being said,” he said.
The inspiration for the short fiction he read Wednesday came
from his consternation at a friend’s relationship troubles,
Franzen said.
“I was upset. One of my best friends had been brutally
discharged in a kind of heinous fashion late last fall. … I just
found (the stories) somehow consoling to write,” he said.
“I don’t care about you if you don’t care
about fiction,” he added. “I don’t want to put
you in a detention camp, but you’re not my kind of
people.”
His message resonated with many in the crowd, which was heavily
English students. Erin Templeton, who has taught “The
Corrections” as a teaching assistant, said while people read,
she believes they prefer magazines and newspapers ““
“things that are shorter.”
Jeff Pfeiffer, a 26-year-old writer from Los Angeles, said the
novel’s declining role reflects people’s growing
interest in alternative, but not necessarily more substantive,
forms of entertainment.
“We’re watching more reality shows, and we’re
tending away (from) fiction,” Pfeiffer said. “But at
the same time, we’re getting away from more serious
things,” he said.
While “The Corrections” and other fiction works may
not be true stories, they derive their life and intimacy from real
people and experiences, Franzen said. He shared with the audience
the way his struggles as a human being intertwine with his writing.
Franzen said his mother’s death, his father’s battle
with Alzheimer’s and his own relationship strifes all left
traces of sentiment readers might find woven into his prose.
Mara Zehler, a third-year English and art history student, said
though she read in The New Yorker magazine the pieces Franzen
presented Wednesday, hearing the words from the author instilled in
them a different quality.
“They just kind of take on this life when the person who
wrote it reads it,” she said.