Jonathan Franzen tries to give his buddy Daniel Kehlmann a helping hand, now that Kehlmann's new novel, F is out (without, so far, having made much of an impression, it would seem) by engaging in a Q & A with him ("an edited transcript of a conversation he and I had by phone last month") at Salon.
It's of some interest -- first in what Franzen reveals, like that he thinks his books are funny (or at least means them to be):
The first thing I put in every email to my German editor about my own fiction is "try to remember that this is supposed to be funny."And that Franzen is a fan of ... Thomas Brussig (Heroes like Us; Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee) and that:
If I had an extra five hours in my day, I'd be translating some of Thomas Brussig's novels into English. He's hilarious and I think it's a tough sell on both sides of the water.Meanwhile, Kehlmann reports:
I'm "world famous" only in Germany. But when it comes to the U.S., it is still extremely difficult to be a novelist not writing in English. I'll never forget the radio host who asked me on my American book tour with genuine incredulity: "So is it true that this book was actually not written in English ?"Well, it's a nice anecdote, and depressingly has a ring of plausibility.
He certainly has a point in noting a basic American problem:
Any young writer from Brooklyn who writes about the Holocaust gets a lot of attention, whereas a true genius like Imre Kertész, who even got a Nobel Prize and arguably wrote the best Holocaust novel in the history of literature, doesn't get much attention in the U.S.Add a Comment