SOUNDTRACK: BOOKWORM-Jeffrey Eugenidies: The Marriage Plot (December 1, 2011) (2011).
Since “Just Kids” mentions Eugenides’ book, and since Eugenides happened to appear on Bookworm at around the same time as I read this article, it seemed like a good pairing.
Obviously, from the title of the episode you can tell that this is all about Eugenides’ new book, The Marriage Plot. Michael Silverblatt raves about this book like no other book I have heard (granted I haven’t listened to all that many episodes of Bookworm, but still). In fact while listening to this episode, I put The Marriage Plot on hold at the library. I always planned to read it but figured I’d just get around to it some day. Now I feel more of a sense of urgency.
They talk at length about the state of marriage in the 21st century. Not as in its decline but in how it differs so much from classic literature in which women had to get married by 21 or risk spinsterhood. Eugenides set out to write a book about people getting married without having the trappings of classical literature.
It sounds wonderful.
The reason I mention this interview at all is because in the article below, Hughes talks about contemporaries of DFW using DFW as the basis for a character in their books. So, in Franzen’s Freedom, there is character who is very much like DFW (I haven’t read Freedom yet so I can’t say).
And in The Marriage Plot, there is a character who resembles DFW. When I read the excerpt of this story in The New Yorker, I had to admit he did seem an awful lot like DFW–a tobacco chewing, bandanna wearing philosopher. Eugenides had been mum about it for a while, but now, under the gentle nudging of Michael Silverblatt, he comes clean.
He admits that there are some characteristics of DFW in the character. However, he says that he didn’t know DFW all that well and the character has been kicking around since he went to college (long before he knew DFW). Tobacco chewing was rampant at Brown in the 80s apparently. But it’s a nice revelation and it ties in very well with the article.
You can listen to the show at KCRW.
[READ: December 7, 2011] “Just Kids”
I have always grouped together certain authors in my head. When there were a bunch of Jonathans publishing, I kind of lumped them together. I think of Mark Leyner and Bret Easton Ellis in the same breath. It’s fairly common, I suppose. But I never really thought of David Foster Wallace in terms of a group of authors. He seems so solitary that it’s funny to even think of him as having friends. But according to Hughes, many of today’s established authors prove to have been a part of a kind of nebulous writer’s circle. A kind of 1990’s update of Dorothy Parker’s vicious circle. But more insecure.
The article bookends with Jeffrey Eugenides. In 1983 he and Rick Moody drove to San Francisco with the intent of being writers. Five years later with no written works, Eugenides moved to Brooklyn, alone. In that same summer, Jonathan Franzen was in Queens, also feeling alone (even though he was married–unhappily) and desperate for friends and peers. And then Franzen got a fan letter from David Foster Wallace (that’s after he had written Broom of the System, but before Girl with Curious Hair) praising The Twenty-Seventh City.
Franzen and DFW became friends. To this friendship was added William T. Vollman, and David Means, also Mary Karr (whom DFW dated) and Mark Costello (who co-wrote Signifying Rappers with DFW). Later they would connect with Eugenides, Rick Moody and Donald Antrim.
Hughes postulates that DFW’s suicide brought this group of peers even closer. Karr had already written about him in her memoir Lit (which I have not read). Franzen pushed to finish Freedom after DFW’s suicide, and also published the essay in the New Yorker). And then there’s Eugenides’ Marriage Plot.
Costello and DFW were living together (when they wrote Signifying), but when he grew super depressed, he was sent to McLean Hospital. Mary Karr lived there, and a mutual acquaintance asked if she would look in on him. Karr was also trying to get sober so they went to groups together. She even volunteered at Granada House, where Wallace stayed.
Evidently both Karr and Franzen criticized DFW for being too cerebral in his writing.
Meanwhile, Eugenides had still yet to write anything. But at least he could hang out with Donald Antrim and Rick Moody (who was working at the publishing house that put out The Twenty-Seventh City, which he showed to Eugenides).
Eugnides finally wrote The Virgin Suicides, which DFW loved and was jealous of. Costello says he was brilliantly dismal at this point.
Franzen was also dismal and would soon write the article for Harper’s that I’m writing about tomorrow. But he found solace in DFW, especially after Strong Motion, his second book, met with utter silence (the story in Waterstone’s, a beautiful (ex?) bookstore in Boston is particularly sad).
Franzen nad DFW moved to Syracuse to be near Mary Karr. Karr had just divorced and took up with DFW in a very volatile relationship (Franzen left for the West Coast at the first sign of snow). In that time Karr gave DFW many of the self-help books that Maria Bustillos wrote about (in the article I mentioned yesterday).
Most of the group coalesced in 1996 when Franzen and Means were giving a reading. Eugenides, Antrim and Moody were all there. Franzen was nervous, but he blew everyone away with an excerpt from The Corrections. Interestingly, Franzen was inspired into this fit of brilliance because of what he read in Infinite Jest.
After The Corrections, DFW wrote a six page letter to Franzen which complemented him on the book and also talked about how bummed he was (as Morrissey says, we hate it when our friends become successful).
In 2006, Franzen, DFW and Eugenides travelled to Italy for a small festival. Franzen didn’t enjoy it (Eugenides says it was because it was pleasurable–Elizabeth Wurtzel said of Franzen, even when it’s sunny, it rains on Jonathan). Franzen snuck off for solitude which gave DFW and Eugenides a chance to get to know each other.
The last line of the article is surprisingly devastating.
This was a great article (which I have basically summarized so much of you don’t have to read it–but you should for all the details I left out). And it was wonderful to see a broad picture of all of these authors whom I know and like so much.
Leave a comment