In this week’s New York Times Magazine Riff column, author Garth Risk Hallberg brought up his infatuation with a group of YouTube clips from 2006′s Le Conversazioni, an Italian literary conference. The clips show short bites of Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Jeffrey Eugenides and Zadie Smith among others speaking about writing and its fundamentals, namely inspiration and failure.
Aside from the YouTube gems he points out, Hallberg’s entry on its own is worth a read. Titled “‘Why Write Novels at all?’” he ponders that question, and by default a sister question, “Why are novels still read?” As Hallberg explains, the discussion is at least partly the subject of Eugenides’ recent book “The Marriage Plot,” in which the protagonist, while reading Roland Barthes’s “Lover’s Discourse,” is struck that “Here was a sign that she wasn’t alone.” This feeling of connectedness may be the most powerful reason for any generation to read and write. In one of the Le Conversazioni clips Franzen says, “My guess is that there will always be people who don’t fit in and would love to find their way to a book,” and as Hallberg explains, that theme comes up both in the work and conversations of all the mentioned writers.
It’s an interesting read on its own, as well as for pointing out the clips in which our generation’s most popular authors share bits of wisdom about their craft, and particularly the inevitable experience of failure. If you haven’t seen them, check out the two below, one of Eugenides on the difference between failing well and failing badly, the other of the late great Wallace articulating why, in his words, “everything that is a failure, is also a victory.”
Also view this clip of Franzen explaining to the Italian crowd, “What’s hard to convey to European readers is how deeply irrelevant American writers are to American culture…” He’s right, and it’s such a shame.
For more clips from 2006′s Le Conversazioni go to dazzlecom‘s YouTube page.
