It might surprise fans of Jonathan Franzen to know that the esteemed novelist enjoys television as much as he does.
Yes, that Jonathan Franzen: The brainy Time magazine cover boy who wrote “The Corrections” and “Freedom” and who has devoted most of his adult life to the written word. The same guy who penned a famous essay that, in part, lamented how modern literary works too often get lost amid the cultural saturation of electronic media.
Franzen is in his Santa Cruz, Calif., home, speaking passionately over the phone to a reporter about how he and his “spouse equivalent” Kathryn Chetkovich are forever searching for a great show to binge-watch. Currently, they’re deep into the British crime drama “Happy Valley.” He was a “huge fan” of “Friday Night Lights” and devoured all five seasons of “Breaking Bad” – twice.
And don’t even get him started on “The Killing.”
“Oh, I cried at the end, it was so good,” he says.
Franzen has resisted the urge to view it as a “secondary medium that I’m sort of jealous of.” Instead, he regards today’s serial dramas – at least the good ones — as a reincarnation of the 19th-century social novel.
“You look at what Dickens was doing: He was writing the way these shows write – trying to keep ahead of the deadline for the next episode,” he says. “There’s something very satisfying about episodic storytelling like that. And it’s so much different from surfing the Web, because these are actual sustained and carefully crafted narratives that mean something.”
Franzen’s respect for the medium fits in nicely with his tentative plans to “cautiously re-enter” the television world. As he speaks, his latest critically acclaimed novel, “Purity” (2015), is being peddled to Hollywood in the form of a 20-hour limited series. Binge-worthy? We’ll see.
Actor Daniel Craig is already attached to the project, along with director Todd Field (“Little Children,” among other feature films). As of this conversation, a deal had yet to be finalized, but Variety recently reported that “multiple bidders” are interested. If “Purity” gets the green light, Franzen would be involved with some of the story planning and script writing.
“It’s kind of strange. In the past, I’ve actually tried to write novels that resist being adapted for TV or film,” says Franzen, whose 2001 masterpiece, “The Corrections,” was developed as a series at HBO, but did not get picked up. “Nevertheless, it would be kind of fun to see what the series would look like. The great thing about standout actors is that they can often find things in the character or in the lines of dialogue, that the writer can’t perceive.”
Published last September, “Purity” tells the story of Purity Tyler, an aimless college graduate who goes by her Dickensian nickname “Pip.” She was raised under unusual circumstances by a reclusive, cabin-dwelling mother amid the fog and redwoods of Felton, Calif., and winds up in Oakland, squatting in a house full of anarchists. From there, she bounces to Bolivia and Denver in a series of jobs and relationships and meets an array of equally offbeat characters, some of whom are hiding dark secrets.
Franzen became a full-time resident of Santa Cruz just over a year ago, but had been shuttling between the area and New York City since 1998. “Purity” marks the first time he has set any part of a book in Northern California.
“Novels don’t really work for me if I’m not loving something,” he explains. “I have to love the characters, and it helps to really love something about the place. I love the Santa Cruz Mountains. Felton is just 12 minutes from the heart of Santa Cruz, but it’s a whole different world. It’s remarkably rugged and off the grid. If you’re trying to imagine Pip’s mom living under the radar, that’s very doable in the Santa Cruz Mountains.”
As for Oakland, Franzen says it’s the major Bay Area city that is “the most simpatico with me.” A childhood friend lives there and the author visits often.
“Because I imagined Pip living for free in a squatter’s house, it made sense (to use the locale), given that it was, and still is, a center for the Occupy movement,” he says. “Besides that, Pip wouldn’t have ventured too far from her mother. And though it’s never said in so many words, I imagine her having attended UC Berkeley.”
Franzen is certainly no beach guy (“I’ve never been on a surf board”), but he has become fully integrated into Santa Cruz, where, when not writing, he plays tennis with friends and engages in plenty of bird-watching, his most avid hobby (“Birds are a primary source of joy in my life.”). In 2012, he delivered the commencement speech for Cowell College at UC Santa Cruz. Last year, he launched the book tour for “Purity” at Santa Cruz High School.
Ironically, there was a time when Franzen, who was raised in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, couldn’t have imagined himself as a Californian.
“When California — and particularly the Bay Area — came to mind, I had this image of people being smashed on cabernet and lounging in the hot tub,” he recalls with a laugh. “And because I didn’t really know any Californians, I swallowed the stereotype. Of course, I was wrong, and I came to realize that, among a lot of other things, it’s one of the great centers of literacy and learning in the country, if not the world.”
Eventually, Franzen, who maintains an office on the UC Santa Cruz campus, plans to get to work on another novel — when the time feels right.
“Typically, after being locked up in a little room with a book for so long, my first impulse is to try to get back out into the world and do some journalism or nonfiction,” he says. “But then, of course, I start missing the drug of being in a novel. There is simply no better drug for me.”
Until then, there’s always TV – even if it’s only a game show. The author, an “intermittent but longtime watcher” of “Jeopardy!,” was invited to be a contestant during the show’s “Power Players” tournament, taped earlier this month for a mid-May airing.
“I’ve often wondered what it would be like to play,” says Franzen, who isn’t permitted to reveal how he fared. “It turned out to be really fun, once I figured out the timing of the clicker. We only got to do one show, win or lose, but by the end I was wishing we could play all day.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
