A generation ago, a new book by a fiction writer was anticipated with the kind of excitement and buzz that is not seen anymore. In the age of Internet, information and images, many publishers doubt the younger generation reads very much. Who and what are the future of American fiction? Joining me, David Foster Wallace, whose 1,000 page novel, Infinite Jest, has become the season's most talked-about book; Jonathan Franzen -- his latest book is Strong Motion; and Mark Leyner, author of Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog. Welcome. Great to have all of you here and the reason we have convened you here is to talk about that very subject. Mark, let me begin with you. I mean, what's happening to fiction, do you think, and its appeal to young people today? I don't know who young people, where the division is, but-- I don't know. In a way-- Is there an audience, do you think? Is it growing? Is it decreasing? Is it impacted by all these things we talk about? You know, honestly, it's something I never think about as a writer. I-- there's an image I have of Bobby Fischer-- you know, the chess player-- Yes. --when he was a kid-- 16, 15. And he's in his room every night, listening to WABC on some little transistor. Playing through all the chess games of history obsessively. I don't think, at that point, he cared about how popular chess was or who was interested in it or not. It was just his obsession, his compulsion, what he did. He knew at that point. And that's pretty much how I feel about it. You know, I'm not-- I didn't sign on as a sociologist or a professor or-- I mean, this is what I do. I write these books and I'm loyal-- I mean, I'm grateful for whatever loyal readership I have. I'm privileged by it and sort of write for that readership. So generally, I don't get the sense, when I go out there-- if So generally, I don't get the sense, when I go out there-- if I go out on a book tour, for instance-- this is just you know-- my empirical evidence is that there seems to be a lot of interest in books out there. Notwithstanding all the distractions, not withstanding the Internet and all that, notwithstanding the technology that plays out there? I think not withstanding the distractions. I don't-- I don't think additional media supplant other media. I think they crowd it. I think they sort of impact on the kinds of readers we have. But I'm not certain that there are less readers and I'm not certain that there are less enthusiastic readers and I'm certain that there are more readers out there for me that haven't read my books. So I guess once I exhaust them, then I'll worry about it. Does any of these questions we're talking about influence the way-- how you write and the way you write and -- I mean, because your style is unique and different? Well, I was just listening to what Mark said. In a-- you know, in a way I agree. If you think about that stuff, like the size of the audience and how much it will appeal to a reader, you go nuts fairly quickly. (off-camera) Yes. Yes. But on the other hand, I think that-- I think where Mark and I differ a little bit is-- is I think, in a weird way, the condition sort of commercially for fiction has-- bears a little bit on the aesthetics of writing right now because at least-- at least the generation that I think of myself as part of was raised on television, which means that at least I was raised to view television as more or less my main kind of artistic snorkel to the universe. And I think television, which is a commercial art that's a lot of fun, that requires very little of the recipient of the art, I think affects what people are looking for in various kinds of art and I think can make the sort of fiction which-- if I can lump a bit, I think all three of us do stuff that's at least harder than average, weird, requires some work to read. What's interesting to me is the very phenomenon that perhaps demographically cuts into our audience is a big part of sort of what's going on in the country that I think fiction writers are trying to capture in some way. Okay, what's that? Oh, boy. I hope this is a four-hour segment. Well, okay, it is. Go. As-- as-- Reduced by three hours and 45 minutes. Yeah. I guess, as far as I can see, fiction for me, as-- mostly as a reader, is a very weird, double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be difficult and it can be redemptive and morally instructive and all the good stuff we learned in school. On the other hand, it's supposed to be fun. It is a lot of fun. And what-- what drew me into writing was mostly really fun rainy afternoons spent with a book. It was a kind of a-- it was a kind of a relationship. Now, why did that draw you into writing? Because, I mean, the love of the book make you want to make those-- make them, be a part of the-- Well, I think-- see, this gets real abstract. I think part of the fun for me was being part of some kind of exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff that we normally can't talk about. Like, we're sure not going to be able to talk about this stuff here, you know? The thing that-- the thing that interests me in a lot of the stuff I think that I do has to do with I think a lot-- commercial entertainment, its efficiency, its sheer ability to deliver pleasure in large doses changes peoples relationship to art and entertainment. It changes what an audience is looking for. I would argue is changes us in deeper ways than that and that some of the ways that commercial culture and commercial entertainment affects human beings is one of the things that I sort of think serious or arty fiction ought to be doing right now. And it cuts in in a different way, too, because I think 50 years ago, somebody setting out to write a scene at a precinct house, basically, you know, would go to a precinct house and feel that pretty much anything they had to say about it would be fresh and interesting. And now if I sit down to write about-- I won't-- I basically won't write about a precinct house because I see so many of them on T.V. They do such a slick job. I'm completely captivated by that. And so that's in my head, whether I want it to be in my head or not. (off-camera) And in your reader's head. And in my reader's head, as well. And so I-- you know, I consider myself my own reader and so I kind of consult my entertainment habits. To say that I don't think about an audience is both true and not true because I think about myself as an audience. And that audience is one that has had its expectations regarding all kinds of narrative art profoundly changed by what's happened in the last 50 years. You know, I think it's a-- it's a tough audience. I mean, if we can make a monolith out of this audience we're talking about, for the sake of discussion, a young audience raised on television is used to receiving its entertainment in these kinetic bursts and it's tough to sway people like that to reading a book. I mean, if you go to public places now-- first of all, I think one of the terrible things that's happening-- I mean, I watch a lot of T.V. myself. I-- you know, I don't think it's evil in any sense, but I do think compulsory viewing of television is evil. One of the last refuges in which we can read anymore are these-- (crosstalk) And it's only between 9:00 and 12:30, too. (off-camera) Exactly. (off-camera) You know. It could be worse. A brutal regime. (off-camera) We have these-- Dictatorial, I'd say. Now what was I going to say? Now what was I going to say? Yeah. These-- these sorts of interstitial zones where people read --like waiting for planes, waiting for things-- Yeah. You know, that's sort of the last refuge of peace and quiet. Well, it's no longer because now you go to an airport and they have televisions there. Yeah. So-- (off-camera) Check-out lines. Now we're dealing with people who almost never experience any sort of down time in their life from electronic media. But I think-- one of the things I've always tried to do is accept that as a given, that this is a pretty tough crowd I'm dealing with. And that I have to come up with the kind of work that's able to somehow compete with that. You know, there's-- in-- Beaudelaire wrote this great little preface to Flowers of Evil where he said, ''Hypocrite reader, my brother'' I have the same kind of feeling where I have realized pragmatically that I have to bond with people-- I have to somehow devote my work to people that may not be such great readers anymore. But that sounds as if you're almost saying the opposite of what you started out saying. It sounds like you're molding your fiction very much to the kind of readership you expect. Whereas if-- No, I wouldn't say ''molding.'' I think you have to be aware and realistic and pragmatic about who's reading you work because I mean, I'm not going to say you-- you know, you don't have to. Thank you, Mark. But I-- you know, my relationship with my readers is somewhat theatrical. I mean, I really-- one of the-- one of the main things I try to do in my work is delight my readers and-- you know, and the work is-- is hopefully funny. (off-camera) Right. In order to do that, you have to know who they are. I mean, you have to have some notion of how they're taking in this information and what they're used to, to play off it, in some way. So it's not a matter of molding your work necessarily, but you have to know, sort of, who the patient is you're dealing with-- Yeah, but-- --as a doctor. Yeah, but didn't you say, in a sense, without (unintelligible) point, I heard this same thing. When we were talking about in the beginning the Bobby Fischer notion-- That he was merely obsessively-- Was obsessive-- --pursuing this-- --pursuing chess. He wasn't thinking about the role of chess or all those other questions. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who was watching who. Well, I'll make a distinction. I mean, I don't-- I don't think about-- I don't think in sociological terms about dwindling readership-- Yeah. --and why and-- when I'm writing. But you do think about-- But I do think I think about the people who do read my books. --what are they demands. Yeah. And what-- and what their habits are. Well, because it's an act of communication. (off-camera) Right. But where the-- what makes the analogy okay, but also makes it break down, is that part of the Fischer-like obsession Mark's talking about consists of a kind of mental and emotional dance with a constructed reader that you figure has a life more or less like yours and whom, in a weird way, you're talking to, you know? Again-- again, I'm, like, totally with you about 50 percent of it. The thing about it is that delight and fun and all that stuff is definitely-- that-- that's part of what makes art magical for me, but there's another part. There's a-- there's the part-- and, see, I'm afraid I'm going to sound like a puritan or a prig, but there's this part that's-- That's okay. Go ahead. (crosstalk) No, there's this part-- there's this part that's-- that's-- that makes you feel full. There's this part that is-- that is redemptive and instructive, where when you read something, it's not just delight. You go, ''My God, that's me.'' You know, ''I've lived like that. I've felt like that. I'm not alone in the world.'' I mean, you can get very kind of abstract in the way you talk about it. What's tricky for me is, see it would be one thing if everybody was absolutely delighted it would be one thing if everybody was absolutely delighted watching T.V. 24-7, but we have, as a culture, not only an enormous daily watching rate, but we have a tremendous cultural contempt for T.V. I mean, from Newton-- Newton Minnow's ''the vast wasteland'' has become kind of culture-wide, such that now T.V. that makes fun of T.V. is itself popular T.V. There's this way in which we who are watching a whole lot are also aware that we're missing something, that there's something else, there's something more, while at the same time, because television is really darned easy-- you sit there. You don't have to do very much. And in many ways-- It's not easy to do, though. Oh, no, no. We'd never suggest that. But, you know-- but there's-- there's also-- I mean, there's-- there's a second model you can sort of come at the audience from-- Yeah. --which-- with-- which is that people who read books, who seriously read books, who read a lot of books, nowadays, it's, like, a priori not of the mainstream. You have a weird audience who is defined, in large part, by their non-participation in mass entertainments of that kind and I think another way you can go about it is to just basically keep on doing the same old kind of book, making little subtle nods to the fact that it's now 1996 and-- So what, the only people who-- --not 1896. The only people who read, like serious fiction, are people who don't watch T.V.? No, no. Thank you for drawing that out for me, Dave. No, if I've misheard, enlighten me. My impression is that people who read feel-- who read a lot of books -- just seat of the pants sense -- is that they don't-- they-- they do that because they don't fit in in some way. At some point in their lives, they-- they have found solace-- they have found it necessary to engage with books because the community, the society around them is not giving them everything they need. And I think that's a-- that's a fair description of a person who continues to read challenging books that require sort of an effort of concentration. Yeah, I want to ask that-- you-- especially you about that. Is-- it is that do you think that your books are known to be-- the one-- this book is known to be complicated and long, compared even to the Internet. Is it simply because that's the way you express what you have to say or is it some sense of design there? Oh, there's some sense of design. Part of it, I think, is, for me, it's weird. I feel like I'm kind of-- if you put these two guys in a blender-- What two guys? --I am these guys-- these guys-- these guys sitting right here. guys sitting right here. I mean, part of it-- one of the things that I want is to do something that is-- yeah, it's complicated and it's hard and it's weird, but it's also seductive enough so that you're willing to do the work to go through that. And a lot of that has to do with trying-- trying, yes, to be-- to be delightful and to have it be delightful. (crosstalk) --if you put us in a blender. So I'm the one who's not delightful here? Is that what you're saying? A very soft blender and not with sharp blades. No, I-- no. I'm just-- I-- I guess-- (crosstalk) I mean, it's not any kind of tactic or whatever, but I think, at least for-- the way I am as a writer comes very much out of what-- what I sort of want as a reader and what sort of got me off, you know, when I was reading. And a lot of it has to do with-- ''Good Lord, I'm really stretching myself. I'm really having to think and process and feel in ways I don't normally feel. And the book-- the book has motivated me to do that.'' Let me ask this because we talk all around this. Is what you like to read different today than it might have been 10 years ago, what you like to read? And why? Oh, 10 years ago, what-- (crosstalk) Yeah, Oh, 10 years ago, what-- (crosstalk) Yeah, Hardy boys. Exactly. Well, but you know what I mean. I mean, in terms of what's on the landscape today and what you want to read-- is it different than-- and what you want to read-- is it different than-- I don't read-- I don't really read-- I don't read much contemporary fiction, I have to say. (off-camera) Yeah. Why not? You know, I'm not quite sure why not. I-- there may be some anxiety about the influence of it, in some way-- you know, just wanting-- A subconscious influence on the way you write or-- Yeah. Yeah. I-- I also love reading non-fiction and just grab it at I-- I also love reading non-fiction and just grab it at the library every week, just books about every sort of thing. And I'm also catching up, I think, on what I should have read, you know, when I was getting high and screwing around all the time. I mean, I'm re-educating myself, to some degree. You might want to edit that part. You what? Might want to edit that part. I said I'm finished with that now. You're recovered. Which I found is not a bad thing to do. I mean, it's not a bad thing to read all-- to read the books we were supposed to have read in college-- You read mostly, then-- --when-- But-- you don't read contemporary fiction, but-- Not really. --do you read mostly non-fiction, then? Mostly non-fiction and then older sorts of things. Mostly, you read what today? If I understand your question, 10 years ago I was reading a lot more avant-garde stuff and I thought it was very cool. One of my complaints right now is that because I think commercial entertainment has conditioned readers to want kind of more easy fun, I think avant-garde and art fiction has sort of relinquished the field and is now-- basically, I don't read much contemporary avant-garde stuff because it's hellaciously un-fun. A lot of really serious literary stuff-- But was it hellaciously un-fun-- Yeah. --five years ago and ten years ago? Well-- well, the stuff I was reading 10 years ago was avant-garde stuff from, like, the '60s and early '70s, which as far as I can see, was kind of the heyday, at least of contemporary avant-garde stuff. But these days, a lot of it is very academic and cloistered and basically written for critics and college teachers and Ph.D. students and it's something that I-- I feel a lot more strongly about that than I do about T.V. Let me-- for those-- in a sense, Jonathan, for those who say the novel is dead and, you know, the age of fiction is past, you three are witness to what or testimony to what? Oh, I'd say we're-- we're witness to-- we're testimony to the fact that it is not dead, that people are still doing it. There's still audience for it. It might be the kind of big clout audience that Mailer and Hemingway had in the '50s-- And? And the novel dead? I think the novel-- the novel and its audience may be returning to a point before-- there was kind of a golden 100 years before T.V. and movies had fully taken over, but after universal education or nearly universal education had produced a large audience of readers. That-- the novel was the only game in 1880, 1890, 1900s. Infinite Jest, DAVID FOSTER WALLACE; Strong Motion, JONATHAN FRANZEN; and MARK LEYNER's Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog-- I thank you for coming. (off-camera) Thank you.
