Elissa Bassist shares her personal notes after having a conversation with Jennifer Egan:
Hot news item: Egan Wins National Book Critics Circle’s Fiction Prize. “Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad bests Jonathan Franzen’s work. The nonfiction award goes to ‘The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.‘”
Instead of mentioning how the Los Angeles Times reported this news with a picture of Franzen rather than of one of the stunning Egan, I’ll share some notes I took from Egan’s reading and our post-reading conversation.
On Writing A Visit from the Goon Squad:
-She was trying to write a different book and wrote this one instead.
-She started writing from “that moment” (for the first chapter, she imagined a woman stealing someone’s wallet in the bathroom; Egan began writing from “this moment,” and from it came clothing, humor, dialogue, and an ending [the thief will “get well”]).
Notes on characters:
-Establish “meaningful connection of shared experience” to “knowing each other too much.”
-The “yes/no smile”
-I’m changing, I’m changing, I’m changing, I’ve changed.
-Changes happen offstage (there’s always an inner logic).
-Care about minor characters.
-We never really know each other.
-Deliver up the past.
She set three rules for writing this book:
1. Every chapter must have a different protagonist.
2. Every chapter must have a different theme and feel.
3. Each chapter must stand alone.
She hoped to:
-Find little things and explore them deeply.
-Leap into lives of minor characters later in life.
-Insert dramatic possibilities so as make each chapter jump when read in succession.
Her process:
-Start with a time and a place.
-Be excited/surprised by the process (notetaker intrusion: I’m learning this; rather than be depressed and blocked by the process, why not be thrilled by it? Replacing “depressed” with “excited” has changed my experience of writing/living.)
-Avoid going backward instead of forward (so simple, and yet, so unyieldingly difficult).
-Start with as little as possible (this is the scariest advice I’ve ever heard–what about all my Word documents/false starts from seven years ago? What about all my scraps of paper with dashed-off brilliance? What about all the quotations I’ve retyped from every book I’ve ever read???)
-She numbers her drafts (sometimes 50 drafts)
-“Process” is what you learn (she said nonfiction forces you to learn faster–she writes both)
Re: outlining, she charts:
-What she has
-What she needs
-How to get it
On writing groups:
-She has one.
-Instead of emailing or printing drafts, each writer reads aloud and receives verbal responses on the spot. This way there is no homework or outside preparation. Also, when she reads aloud, she can see what matters and what doesn’t. (I have since tried this, and she is right. When you read your writing aloud, you find out faster when and where you should like an idiot.)
A brief reenactment of our brief conversation:
Elissa: “Hello, Jennifer Egan, my name is Elissa.”
Jennifer Egan: “Nice to meet you, Elissa.”
Elissa: [!!!]
Elissa (again): “I recently co-edited this famous and important book, I’m sure you’ve heard of it, Rumpus Women, Volume I. It’s a collection of personal essays by women. I think women writing and being published and having their unique voices heard is the most important thing. I want to thank you for A Visit from the Goon Squad–it is like a guiding light in bookstore windows [kiss-ass, but earnest]–it’s one of the few hardcover books by a woman that is always there. Every time I spot your turquoise cover next to Franzen’s book, I think Anything you can do, we can also do.”
Egan: It’s good to know young women are thinking hard about the situation of women in publishing.
Elissa: But I have a question. How did you maintain the courage to create something out of nothing? What I mean to say is, if I pitched a book outlining the rules you made for your book (1. Every chapter must have a different protagonist; 2. Every chapter must have a different theme and feel; 3. Each chapter must stand alone), I think people would look at me like I’m crazy and say it cannot be done this way (unless there is a vampire, etc.).
Egan: That’s why you don’t tell anyone about it. Just write it. (Worked out for her.)
Closing notes:
After her reading, when I was alone in my apartment, I opened my newly signed copy of A Visit from the Goon Squad. She wrote, “Keep the faith.”
20 responses
Wait, wouldn’t it be equally insulting that Franzen’s picture was used were Egan NOT “stunning?”
What on earth do her looks have to do with anything here?
@Lauri: Elissa doesn’t imply otherwise. “Stunning” is just an adjective she uses to describe Egan.
Hooray! This made me so HAPPY! Thank you, Elissa.
Isaac: Defensive and not persuasive. Lauri’s is the obvious read, if only a minor point.
Whats more relevant about the original LATimes article is not just the photograph (it actually fits the story) but how twisted their whole take is. Why is the story “Franzen gets beaten by a girl”? Imagine how ludicrous this headline would sound if the outcome were reversed: “Franzen beats Egan in NBCC fiction prize.”
The subhead is even worse: Jonathan Franzen [a person] … lost to Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From the Good Squad.” [a book] Bizarre.
Since when is being a finalist for a prestigious award “losing”? And weren’t there three other finalists involved?
Is the LATimes really pushing the subtext “we disagree”?
The whole article is very troubling.
The fact that the L.A. Times article spins the story as “Franzen loses to a book written by a girl, and we’re not even going to do her the honor of publishing her picture even though she won the award” is disturbing, shameful, and rage-provoking, but not at all surprising.
That said, bravo to Jennifer Egan – a great writer!
There’s something so whiny about focusing on the stupid LA newspaper thing. Here a woman *wins* — beating the same Franzen everyone’s been resenting for the supposed advantages he has in the sexist industry — and instead of being happy, everyone’s obsessed with one dumb newspaper (out of our country’s thousands) that said something inane. It’s LA, for Christ’s sake. Consider the source. Resenting LA for being sexist is like resenting the NY Post for being obnoxious.
“Be excited/surprised by the process”
Yes! Yes! This was the advice someone gave me about parenting when I was crawling/clawing my way out of post-partum depression. At the time, I thought, “Huh? I can barely eat or sleep or think. YOU be excited and suprised. I’ll be a quivering mess.”
But it’s so true. I think of it almost daily now. So apt for writing and living too, though it’s hard to remember not to be terrified and/or depressed and/or paralyzed when blocked.
Jennifer Egan is brilliant. So glad she won.
The LA Times kerfuffle is weird to me. Of course it is newsworthy that Egan beat Franzen. Why is this so shocking to everyone?
“Underdog Beats Favorite”– this is a very standard-issue journalism angle to report on any competition. If the Timberwolves beat the Lakers on Friday, don’t be surprised to see a picture of Kobe Bryant on the front page of the sports section instead of Kevin Love.
Also, Franzen has been on Oprah, so there is a fair chance some LA TImes readers will recognize his picture. Egan, while obviously fetching, is unlikely to elicit the same kind of image recognition from an otherwise disinterested browser. I don’t really see anything malicious in it. Seems like newspaper business as usual.
ditto to what Britt Speakman said. Thank you! Made me happy! Will try to be excited/surprised too about all sorts of things. What a lovely interaction. Elissa, you are very fun to read.
“I’m changing, I’m changing, I’m changing, I’ve changed.”
“Avoid going backward instead of forward.” But still: “Deliver up the past.”
Thanks for this reminder.
And a big yay for Jennifer Egan!
El, this must have been a blast for you. It is certainly a blast for me to read you, having such a blast. If Egan were the butcher’s boy, Sonny, we’d all be lamb-blasted. Thank you for sharing this! You give good groove.
Aaron,
The headline as it appears now is not the one they originally ran with. The original basically disappeared Egan completely. That’s the reason for the backlash.
Thanks for sharing. These are come great notes, seriously.
*some great notes.
Not every day are tips from award-winning as practical as these.
Thank you for this. Some of the ideas here about process and approach are really stimulating, and seem to have come along at just the right time (for me, because this is all about ME), as good things tend to do.
Chris Roberts:
I like how you never even bother to modify your comments on every article about the Egan/Franzen outrage. A mark of a true troll. Truck on, sir.
@Kristel Apologies about that Chris Roberts guy. We try and make our site a safe place for conversation, but sometimes a troll gets through.
Isaac:
I do appreciate the response. I normally would’ve let it go but the article itself is only tangentially connected with the LA Times debacle and Egan’s parade has been rained upon enough already. I read through this website multiple times a day and appreciate the kind of impassioned but non-malicious discourse I’ve been enjoying so far.
i wish inane comments were not removed so that the troll in question would have his foul deed on display as a resume for future character inquiries. maybe isaac could create a wall of shame for the most ignorant or rude comments.
needless to say, elissa rocks and is a perfect interlocutor for so many of us, male or female, who are interested or active in the publishing world. rock on, girl.
Great notes, very helpful and enlightening for other writers to see how Jennifer Egan’s process works for her. I liked the book a lot and found it very innovative and the stories recognizable for the time period.Thanks for the interview, brief and to the point.
Johanna van Zanten
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