WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.850 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.850 --> 00:00:02.850 align:middle line:84% So the section I'm going to read for you though, 00:00:02.850 --> 00:00:04.500 align:middle line:84% not to disappoint you, is not actually 00:00:04.500 --> 00:00:06.660 align:middle line:90% going to be the Arizona section. 00:00:06.660 --> 00:00:08.580 align:middle line:84% You can read that one on your own. 00:00:08.580 --> 00:00:12.540 align:middle line:84% It seemed too weird to read about Arizona in Arizona, 00:00:12.540 --> 00:00:15.840 align:middle line:84% and fraught with all the meta-complications 00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:18.270 align:middle line:84% that David was always so interested in, 00:00:18.270 --> 00:00:20.670 align:middle line:84% and to some extent, I think spooked by. 00:00:20.670 --> 00:00:23.400 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read you a little bit later, 00:00:23.400 --> 00:00:29.940 align:middle line:84% and this is a section from 1989, so David is 27. 00:00:29.940 --> 00:00:31.680 align:middle line:84% And the way I know David's age is-- he 00:00:31.680 --> 00:00:33.970 align:middle line:84% would be one year younger than I am. 00:00:33.970 --> 00:00:35.280 align:middle line:90% So he's 27. 00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:42.390 align:middle line:84% And in this moment, he has graduated from Arizona. 00:00:42.390 --> 00:00:44.850 align:middle line:84% And like many people who graduated from school, 00:00:44.850 --> 00:00:47.710 align:middle line:84% he's really not quite sure what to do next. 00:00:47.710 --> 00:00:50.010 align:middle line:84% But he also has finished these extraordinary Girl 00:00:50.010 --> 00:00:52.230 align:middle line:84% with Curious Hair stories, and he has submitted them, 00:00:52.230 --> 00:00:54.585 align:middle line:84% and they've been bought by the publisher who 00:00:54.585 --> 00:00:56.410 align:middle line:90% published Broom of the System. 00:00:56.410 --> 00:00:58.650 align:middle line:84% But I think at this point, he's intuiting 00:00:58.650 --> 00:01:01.740 align:middle line:84% that the reception that he's going to get for these stories 00:01:01.740 --> 00:01:04.680 align:middle line:84% is not the same as the reception that he 00:01:04.680 --> 00:01:07.205 align:middle line:84% got for Broom of the System, which was a kind of-- 00:01:07.205 --> 00:01:09.330 align:middle line:84% it's funny to think of it today, but it was sort of 00:01:09.330 --> 00:01:11.310 align:middle line:84% joined with books like Less Than Zero 00:01:11.310 --> 00:01:13.020 align:middle line:90% and Bright Lights, Big City. 00:01:13.020 --> 00:01:16.590 align:middle line:84% It's kind of this burst of, as he put it in an essay, 00:01:16.590 --> 00:01:19.170 align:middle line:90% the conspicuously young. 00:01:19.170 --> 00:01:22.590 align:middle line:84% Although I think the difference between his work and their work 00:01:22.590 --> 00:01:23.160 align:middle line:90% is enormous. 00:01:23.160 --> 00:01:30.520 align:middle line:84% But anyway, so it's 1989, and he is in a very different place, 00:01:30.520 --> 00:01:31.620 align:middle line:90% I think. 00:01:31.620 --> 00:01:34.350 align:middle line:84% And it's in this moment that the writer Jonathan 00:01:34.350 --> 00:01:37.708 align:middle line:90% Franzen comes into his life. 00:01:37.708 --> 00:01:40.000 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to read a little bit, and then I'm happy-- 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:43.800 align:middle line:84% I'm always thrilled and excited by questions. 00:01:43.800 --> 00:01:46.410 align:middle line:84% Questions often bring, I think, the most interesting things 00:01:46.410 --> 00:01:47.580 align:middle line:90% to talk about in one's book. 00:01:47.580 --> 00:01:49.680 align:middle line:84% So perhaps we can go to questions afterward. 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:52.633 align:middle line:84% Anyway, 1989, book, Broom of the System, 00:01:52.633 --> 00:01:54.300 align:middle line:84% has already come out, and a big success. 00:01:54.300 --> 00:01:57.240 align:middle line:84% He's graduated, and he's a little bit 00:01:57.240 --> 00:02:01.020 align:middle line:90% at a loss for what comes next. 00:02:01.020 --> 00:02:05.640 align:middle line:84% In August 1989, Girl with Curious Hair came out at last. 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:08.610 align:middle line:84% "The stories in his first collection," W.W. 00:02:08.610 --> 00:02:12.450 align:middle line:84% Norton's catalog stated, "could possibly represent the first 00:02:12.450 --> 00:02:16.213 align:middle line:90% flowering of postmodernism-- 00:02:16.213 --> 00:02:17.880 align:middle line:84% I'm glad you're not tuning that one out. 00:02:17.880 --> 00:02:20.170 align:middle line:84% Post-post-modern-- This is catalog copy. 00:02:20.170 --> 00:02:22.170 align:middle line:84% They don't write catalog copy like this anymore. 00:02:22.170 --> 00:02:23.430 align:middle line:90% I tell you that. 00:02:23.430 --> 00:02:26.760 align:middle line:84% --visions of the world that re-imagine reality as more 00:02:26.760 --> 00:02:29.130 align:middle line:90% realistic than we can imagine." 00:02:29.130 --> 00:02:30.240 align:middle line:90% It's terrific really. 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:33.250 align:middle line:84% Kirkus Reviews, though-- we always in biography, 00:02:33.250 --> 00:02:35.460 align:middle line:84% you always use Kirkus Reviews, though. 00:02:35.460 --> 00:02:38.400 align:middle line:84% It's an inevitable-- so you'll see what follows, 00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:40.740 align:middle line:84% but you can-- it's almost a kind of a macro, 00:02:40.740 --> 00:02:42.300 align:middle line:90% you can put in a biography. 00:02:42.300 --> 00:02:45.720 align:middle line:84% Kirkus Reviews though, found the writer, quote, "too much 00:02:45.720 --> 00:02:47.880 align:middle line:84% impressed with his own gifts and with 00:02:47.880 --> 00:02:49.890 align:middle line:90% some current critical theory." 00:02:49.890 --> 00:02:53.990 align:middle line:84% It was, Wallace wrote to his friend and editor, Brad Morrow, 00:02:53.990 --> 00:02:56.130 align:middle line:90% "a real brown helmet. 00:02:56.130 --> 00:02:57.870 align:middle line:84% I've told my editor, I'm just not going 00:02:57.870 --> 00:03:00.840 align:middle line:84% to read fucking reviews, good or bad, this time." 00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:04.830 align:middle line:84% A brighter spot was an essay by Sven Birkerts in Wigwag. 00:03:04.830 --> 00:03:06.310 align:middle line:90% How many remember Wigwag? 00:03:06.310 --> 00:03:06.810 align:middle line:90% Me. 00:03:06.810 --> 00:03:07.310 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:03:07.310 --> 00:03:09.220 align:middle line:90% Wigwag, no one? 00:03:09.220 --> 00:03:09.720 align:middle line:90% Wigwag. 00:03:09.720 --> 00:03:11.820 align:middle line:84% Amazing strange little splintered off 00:03:11.820 --> 00:03:14.700 align:middle line:84% magazine from The New Yorker when, I think, 00:03:14.700 --> 00:03:16.530 align:middle line:90% when Tina Brown took it over. 00:03:16.530 --> 00:03:18.378 align:middle line:84% A group of writers took their pens, 00:03:18.378 --> 00:03:20.670 align:middle line:84% and went off and created this wonderful little magazine 00:03:20.670 --> 00:03:23.100 align:middle line:84% called Wigwag that lasted for about, I think, 00:03:23.100 --> 00:03:24.780 align:middle line:90% maybe a year or so. 00:03:24.780 --> 00:03:26.640 align:middle line:90% And Sven went with it. 00:03:26.640 --> 00:03:29.850 align:middle line:84% Birkerts was Wallace's natural reader because he, too, 00:03:29.850 --> 00:03:31.920 align:middle line:84% was keenly interested in how writers 00:03:31.920 --> 00:03:33.660 align:middle line:90% adapt to a changing world. 00:03:33.660 --> 00:03:36.600 align:middle line:84% To the question, "What is the fiction writer? 00:03:36.600 --> 00:03:38.370 align:middle line:84% The writer who would try to catch us 00:03:38.370 --> 00:03:40.800 align:middle line:84% undistorted in our moment-- to do? 00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:44.610 align:middle line:84% What prose will raise a mirror to our dispersed condition?" 00:03:44.610 --> 00:03:46.560 align:middle line:90% He put forward Wallace. 00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:48.840 align:middle line:84% Quote, "we sense immediately that Wallace 00:03:48.840 --> 00:03:52.200 align:middle line:84% is beyond the calculated fiddle of the post-modernist." 00:03:52.200 --> 00:03:53.130 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 00:03:53.130 --> 00:03:56.040 align:middle line:84% "Wallace comes toward us as a citizen of that new place, 00:03:56.040 --> 00:03:57.870 align:middle line:84% the place that the minimalists have only 00:03:57.870 --> 00:03:59.280 align:middle line:90% been able to point toward. 00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:01.740 align:middle line:84% The rhythms, disjunctions, and surreally 00:04:01.740 --> 00:04:03.570 align:middle line:84% beautiful, if terrifying, meldings 00:04:03.570 --> 00:04:06.570 align:middle line:84% of our present-day surround are fully his. 00:04:06.570 --> 00:04:09.660 align:middle line:84% Wallace is, for better or worse, the savvy and watchful voice 00:04:09.660 --> 00:04:12.810 align:middle line:84% of the now, and he's unburdened by any nostalgia 00:04:12.810 --> 00:04:13.980 align:middle line:90% for the old order." 00:04:13.980 --> 00:04:15.990 align:middle line:84% It's a wonderful piece of writing, this, by Sven 00:04:15.990 --> 00:04:16.970 align:middle line:90% and he did tell me-- 00:04:16.970 --> 00:04:18.720 align:middle line:84% and I think there's an interesting example 00:04:18.720 --> 00:04:21.582 align:middle line:90% that kind of coexistence-- 00:04:21.582 --> 00:04:23.040 align:middle line:84% symbiotic relation between a writer 00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:25.230 align:middle line:84% and a critic, that he had been waiting 00:04:25.230 --> 00:04:26.520 align:middle line:90% for a writer like David. 00:04:26.520 --> 00:04:30.330 align:middle line:84% In other words, he had thought that such prose, such fiction 00:04:30.330 --> 00:04:32.640 align:middle line:84% should be written because it was his own take 00:04:32.640 --> 00:04:33.970 align:middle line:90% on the cultural condition. 00:04:33.970 --> 00:04:35.490 align:middle line:90% And so when he-- 00:04:35.490 --> 00:04:38.340 align:middle line:84% just as David needed a critic as smart as Sven Birkerts. 00:04:38.340 --> 00:04:40.500 align:middle line:84% It's Birkerts who needed a writer as in touch 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:44.040 align:middle line:90% with these issues as he was. 00:04:44.040 --> 00:04:46.950 align:middle line:84% Few other critics, though, felt as Birkerts did. 00:04:46.950 --> 00:04:49.980 align:middle line:84% Most newspaper reviewers skipped the book entirely, 00:04:49.980 --> 00:04:51.570 align:middle line:84% and those who wrote about it mostly 00:04:51.570 --> 00:04:53.580 align:middle line:84% evaluated the individual stories. 00:04:53.580 --> 00:04:55.560 align:middle line:84% Wallace felt that missed the point-- 00:04:55.560 --> 00:04:58.150 align:middle line:84% who cared if one story was better than another? 00:04:58.150 --> 00:05:00.490 align:middle line:84% The point was that the collection as a whole 00:05:00.490 --> 00:05:03.590 align:middle line:84% was meant to open the door to a new kind of fiction. 00:05:03.590 --> 00:05:06.400 align:middle line:84% A lot of it is like being told your soup need less salt, 00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:08.500 align:middle line:84% he complained to one of his editors. 00:05:08.500 --> 00:05:11.170 align:middle line:84% Not that Wallace himself didn't have clear favorites-- that's 00:05:11.170 --> 00:05:13.840 align:middle line:90% an odd little bug. 00:05:13.840 --> 00:05:16.510 align:middle line:84% Well, the Poetry Center's denizens. 00:05:16.510 --> 00:05:18.520 align:middle line:84% --didn't have clear favorites in the collection. 00:05:18.520 --> 00:05:21.490 align:middle line:84% These are evident in an exchange with Jonathan Franzen who 00:05:21.490 --> 00:05:24.400 align:middle line:84% began to play a significant role in his life now. 00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:26.650 align:middle line:84% Wallace had never had close literary friends. 00:05:26.650 --> 00:05:29.020 align:middle line:84% He was too competitive, judgmental, 00:05:29.020 --> 00:05:30.220 align:middle line:90% and perhaps self-absorbed. 00:05:30.220 --> 00:05:32.530 align:middle line:84% Most literary fiction, he did not care about, 00:05:32.530 --> 00:05:34.510 align:middle line:84% and what few books were worth reading, 00:05:34.510 --> 00:05:37.030 align:middle line:84% were worth writing, which meant in turn that he 00:05:37.030 --> 00:05:38.380 align:middle line:90% wished he'd written them. 00:05:38.380 --> 00:05:41.020 align:middle line:84% The no-writer-friends rule was not conscious, 00:05:41.020 --> 00:05:42.550 align:middle line:90% but grew out of his personality. 00:05:42.550 --> 00:05:44.140 align:middle line:84% And like most of his behavior, had 00:05:44.140 --> 00:05:45.940 align:middle line:90% something of a refractory edge. 00:05:45.940 --> 00:05:48.760 align:middle line:84% He also felt guilty that he felt this way, which 00:05:48.760 --> 00:05:51.010 align:middle line:84% made him all the more want to avoid the whole issue. 00:05:51.010 --> 00:05:54.310 align:middle line:84% But the past few years had been humbling ones for him. 00:05:54.310 --> 00:05:55.780 align:middle line:84% And the humbling had made him more 00:05:55.780 --> 00:05:57.980 align:middle line:90% open to other writer's writing. 00:05:57.980 --> 00:06:00.820 align:middle line:84% In fact, in such moments, some aspect of his behavior 00:06:00.820 --> 00:06:03.760 align:middle line:84% made him overestimate the work of others in order, 00:06:03.760 --> 00:06:05.740 align:middle line:90% perhaps, to diminish his own. 00:06:05.740 --> 00:06:07.780 align:middle line:84% Thus, during his time in Somerville-- 00:06:07.780 --> 00:06:14.320 align:middle line:84% he had moved to Somerville after Arizona, 00:06:14.320 --> 00:06:17.350 align:middle line:84% and then a stint at home, and also 00:06:17.350 --> 00:06:20.050 align:middle line:84% a stint back at Amherst College where he was an undergraduate. 00:06:20.050 --> 00:06:21.425 align:middle line:84% And he'd actually, at this point, 00:06:21.425 --> 00:06:23.680 align:middle line:84% I should have mentioned it-- sort of abandoned fiction 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:25.660 align:middle line:84% to become a philosophy professor. 00:06:25.660 --> 00:06:27.400 align:middle line:84% His mother was a professor of English, 00:06:27.400 --> 00:06:29.140 align:middle line:84% and his father professor of philosophy, 00:06:29.140 --> 00:06:33.110 align:middle line:84% and I think he was partially going from one to the other, 00:06:33.110 --> 00:06:34.750 align:middle line:84% but also, I think to some extent, 00:06:34.750 --> 00:06:38.590 align:middle line:84% just he'd been very interested in the work of William Gass. 00:06:38.590 --> 00:06:42.580 align:middle line:84% And he saw in Gass's career as a professor 00:06:42.580 --> 00:06:47.260 align:middle line:84% of philosophy, who also wrote fiction, a kind of model. 00:06:47.260 --> 00:06:48.760 align:middle line:84% Thus, during his time in Somerville, 00:06:48.760 --> 00:06:51.520 align:middle line:84% two authors had earned his intense admiration. 00:06:51.520 --> 00:06:54.400 align:middle line:84% One was William Vollmann, whose collection, The Rainbow 00:06:54.400 --> 00:06:58.060 align:middle line:84% Stories, Wallace had read three times that spring in galleys, 00:06:58.060 --> 00:07:01.690 align:middle line:84% and thought evidence, as he wrote to a friend, "of the best 00:07:01.690 --> 00:07:03.010 align:middle line:90% young writer going." 00:07:03.010 --> 00:07:06.070 align:middle line:84% One novella in the collection, "simply separates 00:07:06.070 --> 00:07:09.250 align:middle line:84% sock from pod," he reported to Franzen, whom he 00:07:09.250 --> 00:07:10.810 align:middle line:90% wanted to turn on to Vollmann. 00:07:10.810 --> 00:07:13.060 align:middle line:84% Now I'm not a farmer, I should admit that immediately, 00:07:13.060 --> 00:07:15.102 align:middle line:84% but it is my impression that the sock and the pod 00:07:15.102 --> 00:07:16.000 align:middle line:90% are the same thing. 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:17.350 align:middle line:90% Does anyone have a vote on that? 00:07:17.350 --> 00:07:17.890 align:middle line:90% Socks? 00:07:17.890 --> 00:07:18.400 align:middle line:90% Pods? 00:07:18.400 --> 00:07:19.190 align:middle line:90% Anyone? 00:07:19.190 --> 00:07:19.690 align:middle line:90% Right. 00:07:19.690 --> 00:07:20.607 align:middle line:90% We're all in the dark. 00:07:20.607 --> 00:07:23.140 align:middle line:84% But I looked it up which I did look it up because I 00:07:23.140 --> 00:07:24.340 align:middle line:90% use the phrase all the time. 00:07:24.340 --> 00:07:25.962 align:middle line:90% Because it's a great phrase. 00:07:25.962 --> 00:07:28.420 align:middle line:84% And in New York, you can impress even more people with that 00:07:28.420 --> 00:07:30.250 align:middle line:90% than you can in Somerville. 00:07:30.250 --> 00:07:33.220 align:middle line:84% But I do think the sock and the pot are one and the same. 00:07:33.220 --> 00:07:35.230 align:middle line:84% In person, though, Vollmann was too old 00:07:35.230 --> 00:07:37.382 align:middle line:84% for the basically bourgeois Wallace. 00:07:37.382 --> 00:07:39.340 align:middle line:84% The two had had dinner that spring in New York, 00:07:39.340 --> 00:07:41.980 align:middle line:84% and afterward, Wallace reported to a friend 00:07:41.980 --> 00:07:46.690 align:middle line:84% that his counterpart was, quote, "more than a bubble off plumb-- 00:07:46.690 --> 00:07:48.820 align:middle line:84% prefers bloody venison and chocolate cake 00:07:48.820 --> 00:07:50.680 align:middle line:84% washed down with stout for supper, 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:54.288 align:middle line:84% speaks easily of blowjobs and cooze while we're eating." 00:07:54.288 --> 00:07:56.830 align:middle line:84% Franzen, the more conventional of the two and a Midwesterner, 00:07:56.830 --> 00:07:58.600 align:middle line:84% was the better match for Wallace. 00:07:58.600 --> 00:08:01.570 align:middle line:84% For one thing, he was hungry for the company of other writers. 00:08:01.570 --> 00:08:04.420 align:middle line:84% A friendship for him consisted in equal parts of affection 00:08:04.420 --> 00:08:07.420 align:middle line:84% and challenge, a dynamic Wallace knew well from his days 00:08:07.420 --> 00:08:10.150 align:middle line:90% on the high school tennis team. 00:08:10.150 --> 00:08:11.650 align:middle line:84% Wallace had been exuberant the year 00:08:11.650 --> 00:08:13.400 align:middle line:84% before in his praise of The Twenty-Seventh 00:08:13.400 --> 00:08:15.160 align:middle line:90% City, Franzen's first novel. 00:08:15.160 --> 00:08:18.190 align:middle line:84% Now Franzen wrote Wallace after reading the galleys of Girl 00:08:18.190 --> 00:08:21.100 align:middle line:84% with Curious Hair from Norton to tell him that he thought he'd 00:08:21.100 --> 00:08:25.120 align:middle line:90% written half of a great book. 00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:27.910 align:middle line:84% He particularly loved, he wrote the author, "Here and There," 00:08:27.910 --> 00:08:29.470 align:middle line:84% the story of the young man who begins 00:08:29.470 --> 00:08:31.120 align:middle line:84% by trying to reinvent literature, 00:08:31.120 --> 00:08:34.450 align:middle line:84% and ends up failing to fix his uncle and aunt's old stove, 00:08:34.450 --> 00:08:37.809 align:middle line:84% and he particularly hated the long winding "Westward." 00:08:37.809 --> 00:08:41.440 align:middle line:84% Wallace's send up slash homage to John Barth, 00:08:41.440 --> 00:08:44.049 align:middle line:84% which he felt provided none of the nourishment 00:08:44.049 --> 00:08:45.220 align:middle line:90% of good fiction. 00:08:45.220 --> 00:08:48.530 align:middle line:84% For him, the heart of the story was the abbreviated end where 00:08:48.530 --> 00:08:50.470 align:middle line:90% such games were forgotten. 00:08:50.470 --> 00:08:54.340 align:middle line:84% He lectured Wallace, "by merely abstracting this story, 00:08:54.340 --> 00:08:56.890 align:middle line:84% aren't you showing pretty much the opposite 00:08:56.890 --> 00:08:58.090 align:middle line:90% of what you're telling? 00:08:58.090 --> 00:08:59.740 align:middle line:84% That you're too impatient, and too 00:08:59.740 --> 00:09:03.220 align:middle line:84% proud to do the stoop-work of creating character, suspense, 00:09:03.220 --> 00:09:04.690 align:middle line:90% and emotional involvement?" 00:09:04.690 --> 00:09:07.570 align:middle line:84% Anyone who's-- think of Infinite Jest-- when you think about-- 00:09:07.570 --> 00:09:11.350 align:middle line:84% Infinite Jest has not yet been written or actually not begun, 00:09:11.350 --> 00:09:12.550 align:middle line:90% I don't think. 00:09:12.550 --> 00:09:16.060 align:middle line:84% "For something that's 'not metafiction,' the piece as it 00:09:16.060 --> 00:09:19.340 align:middle line:84% stands is awfully short on these commodities. 00:09:19.340 --> 00:09:23.740 align:middle line:84% I think it should have been mailed to Barth not Norton." 00:09:23.740 --> 00:09:27.430 align:middle line:84% Franzen felt he'd gone too far, which is something. 00:09:27.430 --> 00:09:30.070 align:middle line:84% And crossed out the last line before he mailed it. 00:09:30.070 --> 00:09:32.470 align:middle line:84% But even so, Wallace, opening the envelope at Yaddo, 00:09:32.470 --> 00:09:36.730 align:middle line:84% was stunned to read that Franzen had liked only stories 1, 2, 6, 00:09:36.730 --> 00:09:40.010 align:middle line:90% 7, and 8 in the collection. 00:09:40.010 --> 00:09:42.370 align:middle line:84% He had never been written to in this way before. 00:09:42.370 --> 00:09:44.860 align:middle line:84% This Jonathan Franzen guy, he wrote to an editor 00:09:44.860 --> 00:09:47.290 align:middle line:84% in mystification a month later, keeps 00:09:47.290 --> 00:09:50.470 align:middle line:84% sending me these 15-page missives describing 00:09:50.470 --> 00:09:53.200 align:middle line:84% how I violated every precept of fiction 00:09:53.200 --> 00:09:56.220 align:middle line:84% as a moral exercise-- an affirmation of life. 00:09:56.220 --> 00:09:58.720 align:middle line:84% His own favorite stories in the book were nearly the reverse 00:09:58.720 --> 00:09:59.780 align:middle line:90% of Franzen's. 00:09:59.780 --> 00:10:01.820 align:middle line:84% The one Franzen had liked, he wrote the editor, 00:10:01.820 --> 00:10:04.730 align:middle line:84% had been part of the trade-offs he had to make with Norton 00:10:04.730 --> 00:10:06.680 align:middle line:90% to get "Westward" into the book. 00:10:06.680 --> 00:10:08.870 align:middle line:84% "Here and There," he wrote his new friend, 00:10:08.870 --> 00:10:12.560 align:middle line:84% was nothing but sentimental, pretentious, 00:10:12.560 --> 00:10:16.040 align:middle line:90% pseudo-autobiographical crap. 00:10:16.040 --> 00:10:18.650 align:middle line:84% Yet, he was happy to be attacked in this way. 00:10:18.650 --> 00:10:21.530 align:middle line:84% Just beneath his self-confidence was certainly plenty of doubt, 00:10:21.530 --> 00:10:23.150 align:middle line:84% and the attention was flattering. 00:10:23.150 --> 00:10:24.920 align:middle line:84% He thanked Franzen for his critique, 00:10:24.920 --> 00:10:28.100 align:middle line:84% adding that he found his extensively explaining dislike 00:10:28.100 --> 00:10:29.900 align:middle line:90% for "Westward" fascinating. 00:10:29.900 --> 00:10:33.680 align:middle line:84% It was in its violence, immensely gratifying, 00:10:33.680 --> 00:10:37.130 align:middle line:84% and he hoped they could meet in Boston soon to drink or eat 00:10:37.130 --> 00:10:38.270 align:middle line:90% or whatever. 00:10:38.270 --> 00:10:40.970 align:middle line:84% Franzen, in turn, suggested the Red Sox game. 00:10:40.970 --> 00:10:44.660 align:middle line:90% This is male friendship, right? 00:10:44.660 --> 00:10:46.490 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, Wallace was facing the reality 00:10:46.490 --> 00:10:49.460 align:middle line:84% that few readers cared as much as Franzen about his attempts 00:10:49.460 --> 00:10:51.200 align:middle line:90% to remake literature. 00:10:51.200 --> 00:10:53.570 align:middle line:84% He hoped for a torch to go with the publication of Girl 00:10:53.570 --> 00:10:56.180 align:middle line:84% with Curious Hair, but there wasn't much of one. 00:10:56.180 --> 00:10:58.460 align:middle line:84% He gave a reading at the Cambridge Public library 00:10:58.460 --> 00:11:00.210 align:middle line:84% with a handful of people in attendance, 00:11:00.210 --> 00:11:03.860 align:middle line:84% including a schizophrenic woman who kept shrieking. 00:11:03.860 --> 00:11:06.110 align:middle line:84% He went-- I've had readings like that by the way. 00:11:06.110 --> 00:11:08.750 align:middle line:90% So it's very familiar. 00:11:08.750 --> 00:11:10.970 align:middle line:84% For my first book, The Family that Couldn't Sleep, 00:11:10.970 --> 00:11:13.800 align:middle line:84% and I think this was my fate, and there is justice to it, 00:11:13.800 --> 00:11:14.780 align:middle line:90% so I'm not complaining. 00:11:14.780 --> 00:11:18.008 align:middle line:84% I would always have people fall asleep at the readings. 00:11:18.008 --> 00:11:20.300 align:middle line:84% Now and maybe that is it's because I published the book 00:11:20.300 --> 00:11:23.330 align:middle line:84% in the fall, and when it gets cold out, 00:11:23.330 --> 00:11:25.850 align:middle line:84% people come in to readings, whose main interest is not 00:11:25.850 --> 00:11:29.240 align:middle line:84% really in your book, but in the warmth of the environment, 00:11:29.240 --> 00:11:29.870 align:middle line:90% which is fine. 00:11:29.870 --> 00:11:32.870 align:middle line:84% But the irony of it was not lost on me. 00:11:32.870 --> 00:11:35.420 align:middle line:84% He went down to New York, and appeared with Vollmann 00:11:35.420 --> 00:11:38.060 align:middle line:84% at Dixon Place, a performance space. 00:11:38.060 --> 00:11:40.130 align:middle line:84% At the reading, Vollmann accompanied a story 00:11:40.130 --> 00:11:42.620 align:middle line:84% with a starter pistol shot into the air. 00:11:42.620 --> 00:11:44.660 align:middle line:84% Wallace covering his ears in pain. 00:11:44.660 --> 00:11:47.600 align:middle line:84% Afterward, he and his editor, Gerry Howard, and a few others 00:11:47.600 --> 00:11:50.000 align:middle line:84% went to Cafe Pig, a restaurant on Houston street. 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:52.160 align:middle line:90% Anyone remember Cafe Pig? 00:11:52.160 --> 00:11:52.970 align:middle line:90% No? 00:11:52.970 --> 00:11:53.840 align:middle line:90% I'm disappointed. 00:11:53.840 --> 00:11:55.970 align:middle line:90% Cafe Pig was something. 00:11:55.970 --> 00:11:59.060 align:middle line:84% Howard was unsettled to see Wallace drink three bourbons 00:11:59.060 --> 00:12:00.710 align:middle line:90% in disarmingly quick order. 00:12:00.710 --> 00:12:03.560 align:middle line:84% And then disappeared downstairs into a bathroom for a half hour 00:12:03.560 --> 00:12:06.890 align:middle line:84% with a woman he remembers as a proto-Goth girl 00:12:06.890 --> 00:12:08.090 align:middle line:90% with black lipstick. 00:12:08.090 --> 00:12:11.510 align:middle line:84% Actually, it turns out it was a young woman, very distinguished 00:12:11.510 --> 00:12:13.190 align:middle line:90% performance artist. 00:12:13.190 --> 00:12:17.150 align:middle line:84% But that was Gerry Howard's also fundamentally Bourgeois memory 00:12:17.150 --> 00:12:18.050 align:middle line:90% of it. 00:12:18.050 --> 00:12:21.050 align:middle line:84% He realized that the innocent boy in the U2 t-shirt he'd once 00:12:21.050 --> 00:12:22.610 align:middle line:90% known was gone. 00:12:22.610 --> 00:12:26.390 align:middle line:84% Worse for Wallace, Girl could barely be found in bookstores. 00:12:26.390 --> 00:12:29.720 align:middle line:84% The book is not yet out anywhere in New York or Boston, 00:12:29.720 --> 00:12:32.180 align:middle line:84% he complained to his agent in early November. 00:12:32.180 --> 00:12:35.030 align:middle line:84% And apparently, likewise, in the Midwest. 00:12:35.030 --> 00:12:38.870 align:middle line:84% Curiouser and curiouser, the non-reception of Girl 00:12:38.870 --> 00:12:40.760 align:middle line:84% was making its author more and more upset. 00:12:40.760 --> 00:12:44.450 align:middle line:84% After all, he had no new fiction with which to follow it. 00:12:44.450 --> 00:12:47.480 align:middle line:84% He'd risked a breakdown to create really serious work, 00:12:47.480 --> 00:12:51.650 align:middle line:84% and hadn't even gotten the review in The Daily Times. 00:12:51.650 --> 00:12:54.830 align:middle line:84% He inscribed a copy to a friend, the friend who would ultimately 00:12:54.830 --> 00:12:56.660 align:middle line:84% guide him into a recovery program, 00:12:56.660 --> 00:13:02.060 align:middle line:84% praising the pretty jacket, but adding, this book is dying. 00:13:02.060 --> 00:13:06.260 align:middle line:84% You probably have the only copy in Tucson. 00:13:06.260 --> 00:13:06.770 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:13:06.770 --> 00:13:13.760 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:13:13.760 --> 00:13:15.670 align:middle line:84% So that's not a trick I can do in every town. 00:13:15.670 --> 00:13:17.837 align:middle line:84% I don't end every reading with the name of the town. 00:13:17.837 --> 00:13:22.050 align:middle line:84% I've tried, but it's just-- it's just too darn hard.