Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • >> Greg Sanders: Thanks for coming out. My name is Greg Sanders. I'm a tech writer here

  • at Google and I'm also a fiction writer. And it's my privilege to introduce Jennifer Egan.

  • She is the author of "The Invisible Circus," which was released as a feature film by Fine

  • Line in 2001 and is now in my queue, by the way. "Emerald City and Other Stories," "Look

  • at Me," which was nominated for the National Book Award in 2001, and the bestselling "The

  • Keep."

  • Her new book, which we'll be discussing today, is "A Visit From the Goon Squad." It's a national

  • bestseller; won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and the Pulitzer

  • Prize. Also a journalist, she writes frequently in the New York Times magazine. Thank you.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Thank you.

  • >>Greg Sanders: For coming out. Do you wanna briefly describe "Goon Squad" if you haven't

  • had to do it a hundred times already?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Actually, I've gotten slightly better at it because of that. It's actually

  • a very hard book to describe, which is one thing that I really worried about as I was

  • working on it. It always helps if something is just easily characterizable in a sentence

  • or two.

  • But this, in fact, consists of 13 chapters that are very different from each other in

  • mood and tone and feel. And in fact, each one has a different protagonist and yet, they

  • all combine into one story. And some of the issues braided through it are time and the

  • music industry.

  • Basically follows two main characters, a music producer named Bennie Salazar and his one-time

  • assistant named Sasha. And it goes backward and forward through their lives and actually

  • also visiting peripheral character's lives over a span of about 50 years.

  • I feel like the thing that I can say that seems to bring it most into focus for people

  • is that structurally, my model really was like the '70s concept album, something like

  • Tommy or Quadrophenia, where each piece sounds different and the fun of it having all of

  • these different sounding pieces collide together into one story. That's what I was going for.

  • >>Greg Sanders: I think it works really well. And there are stylistic differences also.

  • I mean, there's one chapter where there are no quotation marks, if I remember correctly.

  • There are these little tweaks. But one thing I notice is that you use--. There are two

  • very solid anchors.

  • You anchor each chapter either with music and/or technology and time. And I think, I'm

  • just wondering if you came upon this method organically or if you thought like--. I mean,

  • even the future sections, you're not quite sure where you are and then you're like, "OK,

  • this is definitely not now, but it sounds like a continuation of Twitter, of Facebook,

  • of whatnot."

  • And then the past sections, there's this, there's even--. One of the characters says,

  • "Just wait until the future. We'll be able to find all of our lost friends." I found

  • it really interesting. I'm just wondering if you consciously did that.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: its yes and no. My writing process is extremely organic. I write by hand

  • on yellow legal pads. I have handwriting that cannot be read often even by me, much less

  • anyone else, which results in my basically not knowing what I'm writing as I write it.

  • And I like that. As a journalist, I write on a computer and I'm looking at what I'm

  • writing and revising it as I go. But as a fiction writer, I'm looking for the unconscious

  • to do what I'm not able to do,

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: not smart enough to do.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: So, I basically, I follow the story and wait for it to unfold in this

  • handwritten way. And then when I have a draft, I type it up and then I'm very systematic

  • and analytical in trying to figure out what needs to be done with it, what it seems like

  • it could be and how to make it be more of that.

  • And so in that phase, yes. I do a lot of thinking about thematic threads and how they're moving

  • through and locating people in time and space. But the basic impulse is really a gut impulse.

  • >>Greg Sanders: So, that's the second editorial layer is putting the rivets in a sense.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: It's a counterpoint because then, when I execute those changes, I'm again

  • doing it by hand on hard copies. So, I write in my changes, which often involves lots of

  • strange arabesques and symbols and arrows leading on to other pages.

  • And then I have type all that in. So at that point, I've again veered very much back into

  • impulse and instinct. But then ultimately, when I have another big draft, I read it through

  • and make another very systematic outline. So it seems like a very left brain/right brain--.

  • >>Greg Sanders: That might be good, that battle. That battle between the two is probably what

  • brings it [inaudible].

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I don't see it as a battle. Sometimes, it is a battle.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Conversational. Conversational.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Like, why can't you get that done? But yes. It is more of--. It feels like

  • two sides of a process that both must be done well for it to work.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right. And the handwritten early drafts, does that slow down process

  • help you creatively?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Well, it definitely slows me down. I keep thinking, "Isn't there a way

  • to speed this up?" I think it does help me. I think it helps me in a number of ways. One

  • is, as I said, I'm trying to access the unconscious and I can't seem to do that when I'm looking

  • at what I write in a typeface.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Now, people have pointed out that I could always cover the screen of

  • the computer and write by hand, but I actually can't--. I have to admit I haven't tried that.

  • But I don't really think it would work. I think there is something about the actual

  • physical connection to the language that helps me and leads to surprises that I can't consciously

  • think of and I'm trying to enable that process. I also have wrestled with the fact that I

  • feel like it takes me too long to write books.

  • And I've often thought, "But if I could do it on a computer it would be faster>" But

  • I've actually started to feel that I think I want time to pass as I'm writing a book.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah. I think it's a good thing, actually. I mean, for example, I use

  • a manual typewriter. I type a lot of these up and I find that there's a more forceful

  • relationship with the language on the page when you're physically doing it as opposed

  • to--.

  • I mean, you can type really quickly, obviously, on a computer, but I wonder rhetorically how

  • does it change my relationship with the content that I'm writing?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: It's interesting, though. Gabriel Garcia Marquez got on a word processer

  • and never looked back.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: So, it's interesting how it works differently for each writer. And

  • so much of the challenge for me, and I think really for everyone, is just finding out what

  • works for you. And you do that by trial and error.

  • I do occasionally edit on a screen if I'm really stuck and I feel like I don't know

  • what I'm trying to do and I wanna move it forward a step. And I don't want to sit there

  • not knowing what to do and doing it slowly.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I figure if I don't know what I'm doing and I'm just gonna flail, let's

  • do it faster. That's the only time. But generally, I find as I'm typing in changes, I'm thinking

  • of this right now 'cause I'm doing it today. I have a manuscript. I've made a bunch of

  • edits. I'm bringing it to my writing group tonight and so, I have to type in all these

  • edits.

  • And as I'm doing it, I find myself thinking, "Wait a minute. Wouldn't it be better this

  • way?" I'm wanting to edit on the screen. But I really try to resist that temptation because

  • generally, those changes are wrong. And once I see it on the page again, I have to change

  • them back.

  • And I think, "Why did I do that?" But as we move into a world of reading more on screens,

  • it leads to the question of how much it matters how it looks on the page. So I don't know.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Well, I was actually gonna ask that. That was one of my questions is,

  • how do you think is, we've become so enmeshed in our relationship with our devices and technology

  • and paperless books. How do you think that affects, that's going to affect narrative

  • forms like the novel?

  • And should it affect the way a writer thinks about his or her readers?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: The answer is I truly don't know. I mean, it's clearly affected me to

  • some degree. I mean, I've written a chapter in a form that's really meant to be viewed

  • digitally. So obviously, I've been impacted by the notion of digital reading.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right. We'll get to that.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: But I've never used an e-reader. And in fact, I only have had a smartphone

  • for two days. So I'm pretty behind.

  • >>Greg Sanders: We won't ask what kind.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Don't ask how well I'm texting on it. That's what's really sad, speaking

  • of taking a long time. So, I don't know. I mean, I have a complicated relationship to

  • technology as I think we all do. I'm afraid of it. I mean, in a simple way, like, "Oh

  • my God. Maybe I won't know how to use it."

  • Afraid of the implications of it in a bigger way. I think there's always the fear that

  • it will somehow make the world worse. And if you look at early reactions to the telephone,

  • it was exactly the same. And you guys probably know more about all this than I do. But I

  • think we still feel it.

  • It's the sense of hurdling forward. Where will that lead us? Things change so fast.

  • I had this sense, I taught at NYU the spring before this last spring and I taught undergrads.

  • And one reason I wanted to do it was I thought I wanna know what "young people" are doing

  • and thinking about right now. Often, my journalism keeps me up to date with that, but I felt

  • a little confused about it in terms of technology.

  • But the thing that was so funny was these 20- and 21-year olds felt old because they

  • felt like, oh, teenagers now have really grown up with Facebook, but we didn't. So, we're

  • the dinosaurs. And I thought, "Wow. I wonder if technology is moving so fast that everyone

  • feels old."

  • >>Greg Sanders: You can't keep up.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I find myself commiserating with 21-year olds about how 14-year olds were

  • way ahead of all of us. And I thought maybe the 14-year olds are looking at the two-year

  • olds thinking, "Well, they know how to use iPhones. They've grown up with them and I

  • didn't have that experience." So, who knows?

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah. I mean, speaking about two-year olds and technology, there's the

  • latter part of your novel projects us forward, I don't know, ten, fifteen years later. I'm

  • not sure.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah, something like that.

  • >>Greg Sanders: And there is a foreboding relationship with technology. I mean, there's

  • two threads, or two elements. One is there's this kind of, people act as ads. I mean, they're

  • paid to do the equivalent of tweet and update their posts or whatnot to create excitement

  • an event that's going to happen.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Right.

  • >>Greg Sanders: And I found that really, really interesting. So, you're saying you have a

  • troubled relationship, but you also seem to use that.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: But I'm fascinated.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah. And then there's also a section where there's this young couple

  • that we meet earlier, much earlier in the novel. And then we see them in the future

  • and they have a two-year old daughter. Maybe she's a little younger. And there's this sort

  • of--. Everyone's got this--.

  • There's this ubiquitous communications texting device that everyone has and they're like,

  • they don't want her to touch it.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Right. There's also been one invented for kids.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right, exactly.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Called a Starfish. But when I imagined that, it was pre-iPhone. And in

  • a way, I feel like that fantasy's already obsolete because the iPhone is kind of what

  • I imagined.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Something bright and candy-like that would be really easy. It would have a

  • touch screen and would be really fun and easy for kids to use and buy stuff on. I mean,

  • I am a two-day smartphone user and my children have already bought apps on it.

  • I mean, they're not two, but--. In a way I feel like that's already been superseded.

  • So, yeah, I think in that chapter one feels some anxiety about technology. At the same

  • time, creatively it is so exciting to me.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I mean it's just thrilling to think about new forms and genres that become

  • possible through technology. And to me, the novel, while many people feel that it's imperiled

  • by all of this, I don't actually feel that way because to me the novel has always been

  • a very flexible, elastic, open form. If you look at the earliest fiction, Cervantes and

  • Laurence Sterne, that stuff is out there. It's meta--

  • >>Greg Sanders: I'm reading Don Quixote now. Unbelievable.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Tristram Shandy has crazy graphics in there. I mean, if PowerPoint existed

  • he would've been using it. So, I feel like they're all kinds of things that are possible.

  • And that is really exciting to me, even as I, myself, am clearly not an early adapter.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Well, I think in some ways you are. I mean, you're pushing the envelope.

  • I mean, especially--. Can we talk about one of the chapters that I really love?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Sure.

  • >>Greg Sanders: For those of you that have the book. Well, it starts on 230-something.

  • But it's basically, I guess, also a projection of the future and if this--. It's an entire

  • chapter. The entire narrative is done, you said with PowerPoint?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah, I did it with PowerPoint.

  • >>Greg Sanders: And--.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: It could've been any slide.

  • >>Greg Sanders: It could've been, right, exactly. And narrated basically by a young woman.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: A twelve-year old.

  • >>Greg Sanders: A twelve-year old and she's writing about her autistic brother, or--?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: He's an Asperger. He clearly has trouble with socialization. He has Asperger’s

  • obsession with the pauses in rock and roll songs.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Pauses in rock and roll. It's called "Great Rock and Roll Pauses." And I

  • thought it was really great. And the thing is there's a narrative momentum in it. And

  • it's not standard, obviously words on page. I was just wondering. I actually saw an interview

  • with you on PBS and you mention that you handed this chapter and after, to the publisher,

  • and after the initial manuscript?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah, the book was sold and this chapter wasn't in it. I had been obsessed

  • with working in PowerPoint. And in a way, that obsession I think epitomizes my odd relationship

  • to technology because I really wanted to write a chapter in PowerPoint, but I had never used

  • PowerPoint.

  • I wasn't even totally sure what it was. And I didn't have it. I said to some friends in

  • the corporate world, "I wanna learn more about what you do. Send me a few PowerPoints." And

  • I discovered I couldn't open them because I actually didn't own PowerPoint.

  • [laughter]

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: And then, when I looked into it further, I determined that I actually didn't

  • have enough memory in my laptop to hold it. And it was expensive. So, I thought, "You

  • know what? To hell with it. I write by hand, so I'm gonna do PowerPoint by hand."

  • So I sat down and drew rectangles on my yellow legal pad and thought, "All right. Let's get

  • some PowerPoint happening here." Of course, it went nowhere. I mean, if you're gonna work

  • in a genre, you have to be in the genre. So ultimately, I bit the bullet and bought the

  • program and did all this.

  • But even when I had done that and I was struggling to figure out not so much how to use it because

  • it's easy, but what it meant to work in it. Because initially I thought, "OK. It's just

  • bullet points." But in fact, that's not a very sophisticated use of PowerPoint at all.

  • But my biggest problem, and the biggest hindrance, and the reason I hadn't gotten far with it

  • and sold the book without it was that I didn't like the corporate feeling of it. There was

  • just this corporate smell to it

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah, the feeling.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: that seemed really unappealing and antithetical to the feeling I look for

  • in fiction. And so, I couldn't figure out a way around

  • that so I thought, "OK. You know what? I can't make this work." So, I sold the book and then

  • after that, there were a couple of things that were really nagging at me. The main one

  • was that Sasha, one of the major characters, I was not able to find a way to visit her

  • in her future life, whereas Bennie, the other one, appears in the chapter we were just talking

  • about.

  • And that seemed really asymmetrical and wrong. And so, that was nagging at me. And then there

  • was the fact that I hadn't found a way to use the PowerPoint. And a third obsession

  • that I hadn't found a way to work in, which was an obsession with the pauses in rock and

  • roll songs.

  • And then all of a sudden, I had this brain wave that if a kid was the PowerPoint narrator,

  • it would undermine the corporate feeling. It just couldn't be there really in a kid's

  • voice, and that if it was one of Sasha's kids, I would've found a way to visit her in her

  • future. And then as it turned out, I even managed to get the rock and roll pauses in

  • there.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Because she's writing mostly about the tension in her family life resulting

  • from her brother's obsession with these pauses and her father's absolute, not rage, but deep

  • frustration at being lectured at about pauses in rock and roll songs endlessly by his son,

  • thus being reminded of his son's trouble and difficulty socializing with other kids.

  • And so there's all this--. I mean, it's a loving family, but a family with issues and

  • struggles like every family. And this twelve-year old is its chronicler. And she uses PowerPoint.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah. She's taking a course in making slides and I think she quotes something

  • from the class, "Add a graphic, get more traffic." Right? I mean, that sounds like something

  • you'd hear here.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Word wall is a long haul.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah, exactly. Word wall is a long haul.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I should've gone into advertising. It's clear that she's learned this at school.

  • >>Greg Sanders: So these kids are gonna be basically in this version of the future. These

  • kids are just completely conversant in graphical representations of information. That was really

  • interesting.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Well, I think that's somewhat true already. In fact, it was funny 'cause

  • I thought, "This is a crazy idea that a twelve-year old is using PowerPoint." People are gonna

  • just die at the thought of that.

  • And so I mentioned it to a friend of mine and she said, "Jenny, my twelve-year old just

  • did a presentation in school in PowerPoint last week." I mean, this has already happened.

  • And I said "Oh, OK. I won't get credit for futurism on that one." But yes. She keeps

  • her journal in slides and this makes her mother very uncomfortable so Sasha, my main character,

  • because she keeps saying, "Why aren't you writing? What's all that white space? Where

  • does the writing come in?"

  • So, it becomes an object of mother/daughter tension, too.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah, there's a lot going on in that chapter. I thought it was really

  • great. And I understand, tying into that, I've also heard you say you don't write about

  • your own life, but it sounds like you write about maybe little overlaps. You allow characters

  • to carry around your interests or obsessions.

  • I mean, the rock and roll pauses, you said, was actually yours. That's actually something

  • that's been on your mind. Is that right?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah. I think I do that a lot, actually. I think I have ideas that are

  • interesting, but not all that interesting. Not interesting enough to do much with on

  • their own. And instead of pursuing them myself, thank God, I just give them to characters.

  • >>Greg Sanders: That makes sense.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I hope that becomes slightly more interesting. There's another one that

  • sneaked in there. There's an art historian who wants to write a book about representations

  • of sound in Cezanne's paintings, whether his brushstrokes of his outdoor, green and orange

  • landscapes are actually trying to suggest the sound of locusts at that time of year.

  • I had this thought myself and I thought, "That's an amazing idea. Maybe I should pursue it."

  • And then I thought, I don't know, it immediately translated into "wouldn't it be interesting

  • if someone else was interested in that?"

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right. It provides that character with a quirky richness.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: So thank God I didn't take a two-year detour trying to somehow turn this

  • into an art historical thesis.

  • >>Greg Sanders: It's not too late, though.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I think it's too late. But yes. I do that all the time. I have ideas

  • that I--. I flirt with ideas that I think are interesting and then I give them to characters.

  • I think that's the right home for most of them.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah. I think it works. And one other one I noticed that also was a segue

  • into one of the other threads is the technology that's the anchor, and then there's the music

  • anchor of mostly punk. I mean, Bennie Salazar is an ex-punk rocker and we meet some of his

  • friends along the timeline, past and the future.

  • And he's got this great internal monologue. I think he's driving down the West Side Highway

  • listening to the Dead Kennedy's. And he's basically saying like, "I know why punk died.

  • I know why music dies, 'cause it's digital music production." There's no longer hiss.

  • There's no longer imperfections or pops. And I was wondering if that was something, if

  • that was--. I mean, I think there's something about digital processing that removes the

  • edges.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: That actually was not my idea. I read a piece by Neil Young in Harpers

  • years ago. It had to have been--. It was actually just as CDs were becoming ubiquitous. And

  • he decrying this digital sound and saying that he thought it would basically kill music.

  • And his point was, we'll somehow recover from this, but it's gonna be really hard. And that

  • always really struck me because I thought it was fantastic. Everyone was so excited

  • about the clarity of the sound.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: And that was exactly the thing that he abhorred and thought was, in

  • a way, unmusical and inhuman. And so, that idea stayed with me and I think I gave that

  • idea to Bennie.

  • >>Greg Sanders: You gave that to Bennie. Yeah.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Do you think that there is a punk sensibility to the novel? I mean, it's

  • nonlinear. It's slightly disruptive as far as a narrative form goes. And I interpreted

  • that, it might just be me, but I interpreted that. I was like, "It's just a punk, punk-ish--."

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I didn't think so. I mean, I certainly thought of it as an album, as

  • I said. And it's been pointed out to me since that my PowerPoint chapter, which is the second

  • to last, basically functions as a kind of musical pause in the book because it happens

  • right at that point that I think pauses are best used when you're close to the end of

  • the song.

  • The pause makes you think the song will end and then it doesn't. So, there's this rush

  • of relief followed by sadness because then the song does end. It heightens awareness

  • of the song passing, or of time passing. So, I think there was a musical idea behind the

  • construction.

  • Punk rock sensibility, I don't know. I mean, I think one thing that I didn't understand

  • actually, was how permeated the book is by music. In a way, I was interested in it and

  • certainly did research on it and I knew that my characters were in that industry. But for

  • example, when the book first came out, we didn't really reach out to the music world

  • at all in terms of publicity, which I think was odd in retrospect.

  • Eventually, that world found it on its own, but months later. So I think I didn't think

  • of it as a "rock and roll" novel. And I think that helped me because in a way, there are

  • a lot of interesting books in that genre, and High Fidelity and others.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: And I think I might have been intimidated just as I didn't think in

  • the last chapter, or the two last chapters, leaping into the future, I am writing science

  • fiction, another genre I'm not that familiar with and would be in a way tentative about

  • venturing into. So, I didn't focus on that too much. I guess the answer is I don't know.

  • I don't know.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah. I also thinks it's maybe not a completely fair question because readers

  • are gonna bring their own nostalgia into it.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: That's it.

  • >>Greg Sanders: And I was, I saw The Ramones in '81 at The Palladium. I saw them a couple

  • of times and it was exciting. It was terrifying and I was--. I can identify even though your

  • early punk scenes, I guess late '70s, early '80s, took place in San Francisco and I was

  • in New York, I was like, there. But of course, I was bringing all of my own material into

  • it. So then I was like, "Oh, yeah. It's kind of a punk novel."

  • >>Jennifer Egan: You know what I think? I think there's a desire out there for a punk

  • novel.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: And I think people have been willing to consider this, that, for me to

  • fulfill that desire. And I feel lucky to have somehow tapped into a collective musical wish.

  • I didn't think it myself, but I was very excited to write about that moment in the late '70s,

  • that punk rock moment which I witnessed very much on the sidelines.

  • >>Greg Sanders: I was gonna ask, were you there? Oh, from the sidelines. But you still

  • witnessed it.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah. I was definitely there, but I didn't have green hair.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I looked like me, but I think I just felt the strangeness and the newness

  • of it. And I think it was especially vivid because this was all happening in San Francisco

  • where I and all of my friends had grown up in the '70s, basically feeling like we had

  • the worst timing in the world to have missed the '60s.

  • Like, how lame to have had all of that happen and be too young to have any part in it? And

  • my parents weren't hippies at all. I mean, we got there in '69 and they were very straight-laced.

  • And I feel like I saw hippies out the window of the car. So, there was such a sense of

  • nostalgia.

  • We were all trying to recreate that moment. I mean, I would walk around barefoot all day

  • in a city. Like, it seems crazy now.

  • >>Greg Sanders: I thought that's what you're supposed to do in San Francisco.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: They haven't been doing that for a while. I mean, my mother didn't love

  • that. But it wasn't like, I mean, she didn't threaten to institutionalize me. It felt OK

  • to be doing that. And then punk rock was such an overt repudiation of all of what, of everything

  • about the '60s counter-culture.

  • It's music. It's mood. It's optimism. It's sense of coherence. Basically, it was just

  • a big fuck you to all that, which in one way you would think maybe that could've been disappointing

  • or shocking. But I felt that it was exciting. I still love the '60s stuff, but I love the

  • idea that something new is on its way in.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah, I think it was a very exciting time. I was happy to see the mention

  • of The Dead Kennedys and Jello Biafra. And I was like, "Oh." My brother used to come

  • home with the vinyl and I would look at it.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: He's a legendary San Francisco figure.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: He ran for mayor while I was living there. And he's still out and about.

  • In fact, there's someone writing a book about him. He was an interesting character.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Yeah.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: In a way, he was a host figure. He would welcome bands from other cities and

  • these scenes were so local. He was really an eminence, ultimately, of the scene there.

  • >>Greg Sanders: That's interesting. You mentioned a little bit your internal process, or I guess

  • your external process of working with a manuscript. What about, and this is an abstract question,

  • but is there a way of describing the process of your imagination, like how you come up

  • with ideas?

  • How you manage that and how you get them out on paper.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah. Basically, in a way, it's fairly simple because it is so unconscious

  • and intuitive, but what I really begin with is a time and a place. Ideally, I don't have

  • too much more than that. I just need to know when and where. So, for "Goon Squad" it was

  • very specific.

  • I was actually trying to work on a different book, a historical novel that I'm really hoping

  • to start very soon. But I was having trouble getting back into the research that I had

  • done. And I was in a hotel bathroom. I look down. I saw a wallet under the sink 'cause

  • I was washing my hands and I thought, "Oh, my God. How could someone leave her bag with

  • a wallet right there?"

  • I immediately, I mean, I guess this is about as close as I get to my own experience. It

  • connected instantly with experiences in own of being robbed, which I have been a ridiculous

  • number of times and ways, not including physical violence.

  • But there was one particular time that was really tough when my wallet was stolen and

  • then I got a call from a Citibank employee who was very lovely and professional and said,

  • "We have this service that will help you get your new cards set up and pull yourself out

  • of this."

  • And I was very upset. This was probably 18 years ago and I cried on the phone and I said,

  • "I'm going out of town and don't have an ID. What am I gonna do?" I poured my story out

  • to her and she said, "It'll all be fine. It happens all the time." Then it came time to

  • choose a new pin number for my cash card and somehow in the course of doing that, I somehow

  • mentioned my old pin number.

  • And the conversation ended rather quickly at that point because she was the thief. So,

  • she rushed to the nearest cash machine and overdrew my checking account and I was just--.

  • I mean, I was just flipping out before that. You can imagine the state I was in after.

  • I was in orbit of misery. And I kept thinking, "I talked to her. I talked to her on the phone."

  • But what I was left with when everything calmed down and of course the bank reimbursed me

  • 'cause they're insured for that. I kept thinking, "What was it like from her side?"

  • Like, who was she? I became fascinated. I wish that I could find her. And so I think

  • in this moment of looking at the wallet, I thought, "Someone's gonna take that." And

  • then I thought, "Well, I'm the only one here." And then my mind leapt into the--. I guess

  • somehow touched on that old experience and my curiosity about the point of view opposing

  • mine.

  • I know my own point of view. I know what it's like to have a wallet stolen. There's nothing

  • interesting about that to me. But stealing it, that's interesting. So I thought, "OK.

  • I'm gonna just for a break tomorrow, I'm gonna start there. A woman sees a wallet and she

  • takes it."

  • And that's really all I knew. I didn't know who she was. I didn't know why she would take

  • it, what the context was. I just started there and started writing. And in the course of

  • doing it, I learned that she was actually, she was taking the wallet, but also she was

  • in her shrink's office later describing the experience of taking the wallet and what happened.

  • I learned that she was on a date. All of these things happened in the writing itself. But

  • the doorway in was a time and a place. And that's pretty typical for me.

  • >>Greg Sanders: That's interesting. And you just managed to, in your mind, you just managed

  • those threads. I mean, you had some, I think all this stuff had been--. You had some existing

  • narratives out there, right? There was a piece in the New Yorker.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Some. Four of the pieces were older. Well, the New Yorker, they were

  • all published as free-standing stories as I worked. But, yeah.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Oh, I see. OK. That was gonna be my question. Basically, they weren't published

  • ahead of time and then you--. Did you have the novel in mind? The entire arc of the novel

  • when you published them?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: No. In fact, I never even really thought of it as a novel, honestly.

  • I had four chapters that were older that had been published in the '90s. And then I had

  • this new stuff that seemed exciting. I didn't really know how it would fit together.

  • I think the other element that's important is there's a time and a place and then often

  • there is some abstract questions floating around in my mind. Like, with my novel "Look

  • At Me," I had been thinking for a while how is mass media and image culture changing our

  • inner lives, our sense of who we are to ourselves, or has it?

  • So, that's pretty abstract. You wouldn't necessarily think that would lead to any kind of fun fiction,

  • but that coupled with some times and places evolved into a book. With "The Keep," I was

  • interested in--. I was basically interested in if or how our ubiquitous disembodied communication

  • because we're now in constant disembodied communication with each other, might mimic

  • the gothic experience in which people are remote places and there's this possibility

  • of the supernatural all the time.

  • Is there something supernatural about remote communication? I guess that was my question,

  • but then the time and the place, where a guy arrives at a castle in an unspecified European

  • country, in roughly the present day.

  • >>Greg Sanders: It might be the Czech Republic. It might be Germany.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah. They're not even sure.

  • >>Greg Sanders: They're not sure.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: So, with this one, I would say the abstract questions were, really it

  • was just one, which is what would a contemporary novel about time look like? And the reason

  • I was asking that question was that I had finally read all of Proust's novels. It took

  • me a while. I mean, I had read a couple of volumes in my early 20s.

  • Loved all the obsessive love stuff. Very bored by the time and the nostalgia.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: 'Cause in a way, in the early 20s, who cares? But revisited it with a book

  • group around my late 30s when it all read a little differently. And so, we read the

  • novel over about five years, 'cause we were all doing other things. And actually, I think

  • we had five children among us in those years.

  • So, we had unfold in real time our lives passed as the book unfolded. And I thought, I mean,

  • it's a book that's explicitly about time, mimics the effect of time passing. It's just

  • exquisite in its execution. And yet, of course it's thousands of pages. And I thought how

  • could you do that and capture the feeling of time passing now in a more economical fashion,

  • which feels more contemporary.

  • That was the abstract question. The other thing is music plays a huge part in Proust's

  • novel, both as a plot element and as an organizational principle. I had wanted to write about the

  • music industries with journalists and begged and pleaded for an assignment for years because

  • I just wanted to learn about the industry.

  • The closest I got was an assignment to write about a pair of identical twin rappers, female,

  • called Dyme. D-Y-M-E. In the late '90s. And their album was just about to some out, supposedly.

  • So, this led to my most embarrassing journalistic moment when at a party for a Biggie album

  • release, I actually asked someone where Biggie was.

  • Thus leading to the reply, "He's dead." Which was a low point for me, journalistically.

  • But anyway, I love these, these were lovely women and very talented, but what I began

  • to realize as I was following them was their album actually wasn't going to be released.

  • I could just feel that it wasn't happening.

  • And of course, the industry was in trouble by then and I think they were a casualty of

  • that. As soon as I told my editor I don't think the album is gonna be released, of course

  • he said, "Well, you're off the story, so stop following them." And that was it. But a little

  • of their DNA I think did end up in "Goon Squad" because I have a sister group called Stop/Go.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Exactly.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: These women had an orange--. They lived with their parents and they had

  • an orange shag carpeted recording studio.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Basement studio, right?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I guess I finally wanted--. They were actually very talented, unlike the

  • Stop /Go sisters. But anyway, so time and music as abstract interests converged with

  • this time and place, which was the present day. I think that one--. At the beginning

  • I did not think I was writing a book, I should say that. I just thought I was writing some

  • stories to kill time, or not really that, amuse myself while I waited begin this other

  • book. And what kept happening was that I wrote the first one. And in the course of that,

  • there's a brief mention of Sasha's boss, a record producer who sprinkles gold flakes

  • in his coffee and sprays pesticide to his armpits.

  • And I thought at the time, "Decadent music producer. They have such crazy habits." But

  • then after I finished it I thought, "Yeah, but why does he do that stuff?" That's just

  • a stereotype, but there's always a logic to it.

  • >>Greg Sanders: You find out he has his reasons.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah. So I thought, "I think I might write a chapter about him and just

  • find out why he does that stuff." So, I wrote what became chapter two. And what was fun

  • about it was that Sasha, the thief; it takes place earlier in time. She's still his assistant

  • and she's this opaque, secondary character.

  • And so, I thought I liked that movement from she had been so central and now she's peripheral.

  • It's at an earlier moment. And then, there was a brief mention in that chapter of Bennie's

  • ex-wife who's now an avid doubles player at a country club. And I thought, "Yeah, but

  • what is she like?"

  • I mean, she marries this music producer and then ends up a doubles player. What's that

  • about? So I thought, "OK, one more and that is it." So, I wrote a chapter about her, which

  • comes later in the book. And in a way, once I had written that one, I realized I was hooked.

  • But in terms of having an overall vision, I didn't except to say, and this was the analytical

  • side of me, what is interesting or fun about this for me? And it seemed to me that there

  • were three things that I wanted to keep doing as I moved through the material.

  • One was that each chapter would be about a different person. Two was that each would

  • be technically different from all of the others, so that they would not feel like one book.

  • The voice, if you will, of each would be different, which is another way of saying that technically

  • they would need to be different.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: And then three was that each would stand on its own. And so, those were

  • my criteria. And I didn't meet them every time. I mean, there was stuff I couldn't use.

  • >>Greg Sanders: The third one is the toughest I think. It's almost like a program. I mean

  • to have each entity stand on its own. I mean, I think it works, but that seems--

  • >>Jennifer Egan: It was hard.

  • >>Greg Sanders: very, very difficult.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: But you know what I found? I didn't have any close calls. The material

  • either fit all of them or wildly missed on every count. So when they were bad, they were

  • really, really bad. It wasn't like two out of three, one out of three. It was always

  • zero out of three or three out of three.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: With a lot of work. But there were some things that I really slogged away

  • on hoping that I could make work and could not. And I never knew why. But it seemed like

  • it just had to do with not being able to find a fresh angle or approach.

  • Not being able to find an interesting enough story about these people that would require

  • telling in a different way. And so, it had to go.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Did you have to re-tool any of the previously published stuff, or what

  • that pretty much--

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Very little in fact, because it wasn't just a matter of trying to work

  • that stuff in. That stuff led the way with various plot elements--

  • >>Greg Sanders: OK. That makes sense.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: in the book. So, once I realized that those four, which had no connection to

  • each other at all, were all gonna be part of this, it helped me form the landscape.

  • So, yeah, that was an odd, organic hole that seemed to have been existing in pieces without

  • my knowing it.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Very interesting. I wanted to--. We should probably do Q&A in a couple

  • of minutes. I just have one last question. 'Cause you're talking about Proust and you

  • have two chunks as the epigraph and one of them is, to quote Proust, "The unknown element

  • in the lives of other people is like that of nature, which each fresh scientific discovery

  • merely reduces, but not abolish."

  • And I thought that was and this is my interpretation we're now talking about technology, no matter

  • how connected we might seem to be, there's still that mystery of trying to understand

  • how people work, how to get inside their minds. Am I way off?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: It's so interesting. Well, no, of course not because it's out of my hands

  • if that's what you saw there. I wasn't thinking of that consciously, although I am very interested

  • in that.

  • For example, with "Look At Me," as I said before, I was interested in whether our inner

  • lives, whether the kind of disappearance of privacy or the will towards self-revelation

  • had changed the way we are in our deepest parts. And the very fact that I was asking

  • the question I think gives away the fact that I believe the answer was yes.

  • Like, we're not the same anymore. We're different humans than we used to be. But what I felt

  • in the course of writing the book, I actually came to exactly the opposite conclusion. There's

  • just something in us that cannot be revealed.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: What's clear is there's, on the part of many people as a broader sensibility,

  • a desire to reveal more. And maybe even a desire to reveal everything. But it can't

  • be done, I ended up feeling.

  • There's just something about us that can't be known. In that, what I was thinking of

  • more, was what I hoped would be a fun aspect of the book, which was there are these people

  • that you see from a distance and then suddenly, you're inside their own minds.

  • Having a different protagonist in each chapter, I was hoping I think, to mimic that experience

  • of seeing someone out of the corner of your eye walking down the street and thinking,

  • "Huh, where are they going? Who are they?" Of course, you rarely find out. But I love

  • the idea of having that payoff 13 times.

  • >>Greg Sanders: That's exactly right. As the writer, of course, you can go in there and

  • create those. That was interesting. I guess we should do Q&A. If there are questions out

  • there you should come up to the microphones. Are there any? Yes.

  • >>FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: Hi. I was wondering, since the process is so organic and took place

  • over so much time, how do you know when it's done?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: That's a good question. I mean, in a certain sense it never is. There's

  • a chapter I read aloud a lot where I have made a few improvements, I will confess. The

  • text has deviated from the one that's printed. So, there's a way in which it's never done.

  • I think that I'm always trying to reach various milestones that allow me to move on in various

  • ways. So, there's the point where I'm just writing it on my own. And then I have this

  • writing group, which is a very important part of my process. I often will just bring things

  • in to them and say, "Is it alive? Is there even a pulse?"

  • Which is an important thing to find out. I spent my very first attempt at writing a novel,

  • I was in a vacuum for two years and I wrote just a completely dead object, which without

  • a glimmer of interest or tension or anything. And I would prefer not to make that mistake

  • again.

  • So, I try to get a sense of whether anything's happening at all. And then as I work more

  • on it, I'll show the whole thing to various readers, and each time revising. So, with

  • every one of those iterations, I'm moving through a process. Then there's the point

  • where the book is sold.

  • And then you do revisions. And then there are two or three sets of page proofs and each

  • time I'm making changes. Ideally, the changes are getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

  • But there does come that last point where I know I'm basically signing off.

  • And often, I'll have a weird vertiginous sense of, "Wait, that's all wrong. It should all

  • be changed." But I can't. So, I guess one moves closer and closer to a point when it's

  • not possible to change it. And yet, it actually is still possible because then you have further

  • editions and there are mistakes to be corrected.

  • So, the way I sometimes think of it is, it's two points that get closer and closer together.

  • And of course, the space between them can be subdivided infinitely, but they get close

  • enough that they're practically touching. And then you have to stop.

  • >>FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: Thank you.

  • >>Greg Sanders: I think that's an asymptote. You have a line approaching one and getting

  • closer.

  • >>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: So, at first I think there's an interesting observation that

  • you made about writing, which applies to a lot of software engineers here which is you're

  • either getting it completely wrong or completely right. And there's no in-between. You can't

  • really do it.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: That's interesting.

  • >>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: And also, a lot of people here write the--. They use paper

  • and white boards to do ideas. You're at a computer all day and that's how you actually

  • push it out, but most of the thinking actually happens on notepads and stuff like that.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Is that right?

  • >>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: Well, some people. But I think that's a big observation.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: That's fascinating. So maybe that's the organic connection.

  • >>Greg Sanders: You see white boards covered with all kinds of things.

  • >>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: Look around.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Huh, interesting.

  • >>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: The question I have is, so this book has 50 characters or

  • something like that. So, when you're writing, do you have some sort of notepad where you

  • keep track of all that you've said about them and what their relationships are and when

  • they were introduced, that kind of thing?

  • Or, are you familiar enough with them all that they're all in your head like real people?

  • I mean, how do you keep track of your characters?

  • >>Jennifer Egan: It's a good question. I mean, I didn't, I had less backup than you would

  • think for this. I didn't find it that hard to keep track of them. And I had much more

  • trouble with my novel "Look At Me," which believe it or not is actually more complicated,

  • or somehow felt bigger, harder to hold in my brain than this one did.

  • The only thing that was challenging that I really needed to hammer out were--. In other

  • words, I knew all the things, but what I had to keep track of was when the reader knew

  • them. And so, and especially, well, the ages of people was very tricky because I don't

  • really nail down years overtly in the book, but I actually, there is a specific year when

  • all of this stuff is happening.

  • I just, especially with the technological element, I didn't want to get too hyper-detailed

  • about what was invented and used at what time. It can get a little fussy. But just what age’s

  • people were in relationship to each other, and in relationship to the reader at various

  • points.

  • The order of the chapters was something I struggled with enormously, which I think it's

  • worth mentioning here, because in terms of when readers know things, the order of the

  • chapters is paramount. When I was working on it, I thought that the book would just

  • go backwards.

  • Because as I was writing the chapters, that's how they were emerging and it seemed really

  • fun. And I thought, "OK." It's not like no one has done this before. But I thought, "Yeah,

  • it's a reverse chronology." Rather soon, I had problems with that because I knew I was

  • going into the future.

  • So then I thought, "Well, I can't start with that." So, I thought, "OK, it goes backwards

  • and then it leaps forward." And I liked the shape of that. But one of the biggest disappointments

  • actually, happened when I read the book in that order, expecting a combustion that I

  • had hoped would take place all the way through.

  • And it was very flat. It just wasn't there. And that was really disappointing. And I thought,

  • "OK, so maybe this is just not gonna work in the way I hoped." I mean, writing books

  • is always like a chemistry experiment. In the end, people tell you whether anything's

  • happening or not.

  • And you can feel it, too. So maybe it just won't. But then I also thought, "You know?

  • This backwards chronology is really costing me a lot of opportunities for surprise, and

  • payoff for the reader." As one clear example, you mentioned that Bennie is in the car in

  • chapter two, reminiscing about his punk rock past.

  • It's just a paragraph, but it raises a question of what was that like? Well, in my backwards

  • chronology, we of course, don't get to 1979 until eight chapters later, because I'm going

  • backwards. So, by that time, when we hit the punk rock scene in San Francisco, the reader

  • has forgotten about that moment of Bennie reminiscing.

  • So, there's no immediacy to the payoff. And I realized that that was totally wrong and

  • that I needed to structure it much more intuitively. And in a way, a backwards chronology is just

  • as much of a strait jacket as a forward chronology. So, that was when I understood that I was

  • gonna be moving around and that my only criteria, really, were gonna be things like, what would

  • be the most fun to encounter now?

  • At that point, I started to be pretty systematic about what we already knew about people and

  • what the ages they were when we last saw them, because I didn't have that ramrod of a chronology

  • to orient me. But even then, it was like a two-page document with a list of chapters

  • and a few notes about each person.

  • It wasn't like a spreadsheet or anything, probably 'cause I don't know how to use spreadsheets.

  • Maybe that would've helped actually.

  • >>Greg Sanders: That's next.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Actually, that was the one thing in PowerPoint I had to get my sister,

  • who's a consultant, to do the charts because I actually could not figure out how to use

  • them.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Well, I was gonna ask you. Some of them require some data. There's some

  • actual graphs in there.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: I provided the data and I said, "Make it beautiful."

  • >>Greg Sanders: Right.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: But I could not--. That was just--. The learning curve appeared to be

  • too steep on that one.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Any other--?

  • >>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #3: So, you said that you wonder how a thief feels like and then

  • you also said that how does, why does a music producer do all the weird things. And then

  • what fascinates me is what you said after that. You said that "so I decided to write

  • about them" or "write a story on them."

  • So, what is the process that goes on within your mind? Like, when you're trying to understand

  • people who you're not connected to. Like, it's very hard to understand people outside

  • my domain. Like, I can't understand people who are in a different place or a different

  • profession. It's very hard.

  • So, what is the process? Is it just an unconscious process that happens when you write? Or do

  • you go through a systematic process like of reading about them and trying to understand

  • them? Or, what is the process that you have in your mind or in your habits? Like, how

  • do you do that? It's very hard to do it.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Yeah. For me, the hard thing is exactly the opposite. What I am worst at

  • as a writer is writing about myself. I hate it. I find it dull and also I freeze up. I

  • don't want to give anything away. And that's no good as a fiction writer. So for me, it's

  • totally intuitive.

  • I just let it roll and see what happens. I guess I just make it up. Although, that sounds,

  • I don't know. Somehow that sounds presumptuous, but I guess in a way, writing fiction is pretty

  • presumptuous. I find it easiest with people who are farthest from my own life. So for

  • example, I love, I find it comfortable I should say to write about men because there's an

  • easy way to separate myself from them.

  • Now, it's not that I'm some great expert on men. I mean, I really am not. Like, I didn't

  • grow up in a family with a lot of brothers. I have no particular insight into men, but

  • I just--. I don't know. It's funny. It's hard for me to come up with an articulate answer

  • except to say I start writing and I see what happens.

  • And if it feels interesting, then I roll with it. And maybe that means we're just all more

  • alike than we think, but I don't even know. I'm not sure. One important component of feeling

  • that a character is working is a sense that I can hear them. Like, just having a sense

  • of how people talk which again, I experience rather passively.

  • I feel as if I'm taking dictation. Now, obviously on some level I'm also inventing it, but my

  • experience of it is one of being entertained by a conversation that seems to be just falling

  • out organically. It's not that I--. I mean, I've had characters that I really struggled

  • with.

  • One in "Goon Squad" that I probably struggled with the most, two of them. There's a guy

  • named Lou who does a lot of really bad things. And I didn't feel like I was struggling with

  • him, but I struggled to find, I had to work to make the logic of his inner life available

  • to readers so they weren't just horrified by him.

  • Although, some still are. But there was a character named Rob in a chapter called "Out

  • of Body" and he's telling his story in second person. He was someone I really struggled

  • with. I was just finding it hard to feel the totality of this guy: his voice, the way he

  • looked, his experience.

  • It wasn't coming together. And yet, I really felt convinced that it could and had to. This

  • was, I think, the last chapter I wrote. Very hard. I had so many options that weren't open

  • to me anymore having written 12, 11 other chapters. The PowerPoint I wrote after this.

  • But anyway, a crucial moment in the crystallization of Rob in my mind, happened on the subway.

  • When I was sitting there on a crowded subway and I heard this guy talking. I think he was

  • talking about going skiing. And just his voice reminded me a lot of guys I'd grown up with

  • in San Francisco in the '70s. He just, I don't know, in a deep voice. And I stood up to look

  • at him and see what he looked like. And he had a reddish stubble.

  • He was a big, strong guy. And my Rob had been very slender and feminine. But the minute

  • I saw this guy I thought, "That's him," the face, the voice, the stubble. I was done.

  • I knew that I had him. And so, at that point, after that, I started writing with that image

  • in mind of Rob and in fact, his physicality is really an important part of who he is.

  • It turns out he's a former football player. His bigness is a part of him in every moment

  • of that chapter. And without that bigness, I couldn't make him work. But again, the closest

  • I could seem to come to actually using anyone from my life is literally grabbing images

  • of strangers on the subway.

  • So, it's an odd process. Where I have the most trouble, it won't surprise you to hear

  • after all that I've said is writing about someone who really reminds me of someone that

  • I know. Which I did in "Look At Me." A very problematic character because there's a connection

  • to someone I know and love.

  • And the result was that I gave this person way too much air time and people were just

  • numb with boredom because they thought like, "He never shuts up. Are you not seeing or

  • hearing how dull this is?" And I was not. I felt he was fascinating.

  • So that's an example of how my judgment seems to really be impaired by actual connections

  • to my real life.

  • >>Greg Sanders: The distance helps.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: It really helps. And clear boundaries seem to really help me. That being

  • said, actually the narrator of the PowerPoint I think is a lot like me, the twelve-year

  • old.

  • I missed it because I was under so much pressure to write that chapter quickly and I was so

  • thrilled to have found a way to do it at all, but I think I sneaked in there without even

  • realizing it. But the peace-making, pre-teen who's a storyteller and a witness, I think

  • there's a connection there, but I didn't know it.

  • And that was what was important. I need to not know it until it's already done.

  • >>Greg Sanders: Great. Thank you. I think we're probably out of time. So, thank you

  • very much.

  • >>Jennifer Egan: Thanks so much. Happy to sign books.

  • [applause]

>> Greg Sanders: Thanks for coming out. My name is Greg Sanders. I'm a tech writer here

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it