Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that meaningful fiction should stem from an author's personal exploration of deeper themes, rather than simply being a commercial endeavor.
In this quote, Jonathan Franzen emphasizes the importance of authenticity and personal experience in writing fiction. He argues that literature should be a reflection of the author's journey into the challenging or mysterious aspects of life, rather than just a product created for financial gain. By highlighting the need for genuine exploration in storytelling, Franzen advocates for a deeper connection between the author's experiences and the themes they choose to explore in their work.
In practice
In a writing workshop, a facilitator could use this quote to encourage participants to draw on their own life experiences.
Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination.
The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn't covetous, he wasn't envious. But without money he was hardly a man.
Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.
If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life.
To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.
Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.
I understood that synergistic dance between photographer and object - 'muse,' if you will, 'model,' whatever you call us. It's that silent language of communication, like being psychic with each other.
I haven't stopped painting or drawing - I've just added another medium.
I try to represent specific experiences of specific characters, and that's all I want to try to do. I don't ever try to think about representing a culture, because its impossible, and someone will fault you. And it just doesn't interest me.
It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it.
Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.