Friday, September 10, 2010

Franzenfreude

Vicki, Skye, and I went to see Jonathan Franzen - center of the latest lit kerfuffle regarding the NYTimes gender biased book reviews. Jonathan was twitchy, somewhat uncomfortable in his own skin (he fell off the little stage stool at the podium more than once) and struggled to answer the big concept questions ("do you have hope for humanity?") that came his way after the 25 minute reading. He even requested no photos. Luckily I was able to take this shot at the signing in the church basement without a flash with the camera peeking out of my coach bag.


Of course, Vicki and Skye do NOT have a no photos policy so I got several shots of them during the looooooong line to the signing table.


When I finally got reached Jonathan I said, "Could you write - To Jennifer, thanks for that wonderful night in the Poconos"? It clearly threw him and after several long seconds he responded with "I can't think fast enough to respond. How about this?" and wrote 'With Thanks'. Of course, we will always have the Poconos.



2 comments:

amp said...

Sounds nothing like the self-important dink we'd been led to believe...well, hmmm.

amp said...

On a related note, William Gibson is speaking in Brookline next week but I think I will pass since his latest book, Zero History, pretty much stunk and he's also squirmy and self-important.