Last Saturday, flocks of readers congregated in Washington D.C. for the 10th annual National Book Festival, which gathered dozens of renowned writers under white tents on the National Mall. The writers ranged from Suzanne Collins, author of the young adult phenomenon The Hunger Games, to Chilean writer Isabel Allende, from former First Lady Laura Bush to Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. Unsurprisingly, the festival's headlining name was Jonathan Franzen, whom Time has called the "Great American Novelist."
Franzen was promoting his latest novel Freedom, which has earned rave reviews across the board and was recently chosen by Oprah as the first selection of 2010 for her book club - a bit ironic considering his past run-in with Oprah. Back in 2001, his novel The Corrections was similarly picked by Oprah. After the selection was revealed, Franzen remarked, "I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience and I've heard more than one reader in signing lines now at bookstores say, 'If I hadn't heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women. I would never touch it.'"
To no one's surprise, Oprah rescinded the choice. The incident, however, was representative of the kind of media attention that Franzen tends to bask in - another instance of irony, especially because his novels criticize our media-centered culture and the consumer-driven world that we live in. It's difficult not to blame him - I'm recalling, for instance, Kanye West's famous quote that he is a "proud non-reader of books" and "would never want a book's autograph." (The rapper later - again, ironically - released a book of advice entitled Thank You and You're Welcome.)
The National Book Festival, then, was a welcome affirmation that reading is indeed not dead: More than 150,000 bibliophiles were in attendance. Thus, the event was probably right up Franzen's alley, and his talk drew huge crowds that raptly listened to him bemoan the state of literature, discuss his writing process and, of course, try to convince us to buy his latest book.
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