Jonathan Franzen Talks with David Remnick About “Crossroads”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Jonathan Franzen’s sixth novel, “Crossroads,” is set in 1971, and the title is firmly on the nose: the Hildebrand family is at a crossroads itself, just as the America of that moment seemed poised to come apart. In the course of his career, Franzen has evolved away from an early postmodernist sensibility that highlighted “bravura” writing, and “with this book I threw away all the po-mo hijinks and the grand plot elements,” he tells David Remnick. “It’s really only in the course of writing ‘Crossroads’ that I have said to myself, What I am is a novelist of character and psychology. . . . It’s not about formal experimentation and it’s certainly not about changing the world through my social commentary.” Franzen also discusses the complex ethics behind writing a character of another race, and takes issue with the belief of some in the academy (and much of the political right) that leftist sensibilities are stifling free expression; he declined to sign the “Harper’s Letter” last year. Despite political polarization, Franzen says, “It’s a much better time to be an American writer than I would have guessed twenty-five years ago.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:08.6	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:12.1	Jonathan Franzen's new novel is called Crossroads, and that title hits it pretty much on the nose.
0:17.4	The story is about a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment in all of their lives.
0:22.9	It takes place in 1971, which was another kind of crossroads for the entire nation.
0:29.4	The utopian ambitions of the 60s seem to have foundered. We were heading toward Watergate
0:34.3	and what Jimmy Carter would later describe as a crisis of confidence.
0:39.4	Crossroads is the first book of a projected trilogy. I spoke with Jonathan Franzen, and we began
0:45.4	pretty much inevitably talking about the pandemic. I was finishing Crossroads during the first
0:52.7	four months of the pandemic, and I had an office
0:56.1	I could still go to, and we did no socializing, so I could go to bed at nine every night
1:02.5	and get up at 5.30, which was fantastic for a writer. And more recently, I haven't gotten COVID yet.
1:10.0	That's really all I can say.
1:11.7	Well, is that ideal for a writer that kind of, I mean, despite the tragedy of it all and taking
1:18.4	that aside, which is very, very hard to do? Is that kind of solitude and lack of interruption ideal for you?
1:25.8	Yeah, it's perfect.
1:29.0	So I try to keep quiet about that because I know the millions of people
1:31.4	who are suffering and I just go,
1:33.7	la, la.
1:36.1	Well, let me ask you this.
1:37.4	My understanding from talking to our mutual friend,
1:41.2	Henry Finder, your editor and mine,
	...

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