Description: Franzen's literary touchstones, decades in, decades out.

Transcript:

Reference points for me decade in, decade out, Shakespeare and Kafka, decade in and decade out, it’s so much depends on like what you happen to read when you’re 19 or 20 and your eyes are open to literature and then I don’t know if Rilke’s novel, his only novel is a great book or not but it was one of the touch tone texts for me.  I learned how to read literarily in part by reading that book and part by reading Kafka and in part by reading Shakespeare, Ibsen another, I mean if one can mention two playwrights in a list of five books.  Because they were where I learned how to read, they remain the examples that come to mind when I’m trying to say something about literature.  So we have Ibsen and we have the Rilke novel, we all of Kafka, we have all of Shakespeare and I think probably I’d wanna say somebody like, I’d probably wanna say “The Great Gatsby” just to make sure there’s an American on the list.

 

 

Recorded On: 4/1/08