too much of a good thing.

Kat says...

I think the fact that Franzen made it into a casual one-liner on Gossip Girl is…A good thing?

I have put a fair amount of thought into this and have settled, somewhat uncomfortably, on the conclusion that we cannot complain that a great writer featured amongst the chocolate covered stick thin girls, digital printed chiffon and grand piano sex. However I refuse to believe that the Franzen-Glasses-Theft was a shameless PR stunt because then we’d find ourselves in very dark alleyway where ghost-writers and scripted spontaneous interviews mugged us every 7 minutes.

Those cheeky Gossip Girl scriptwriters like to reference only the latest, trendiest elements of pop culture. So we should be grateful that we got Franzen at Blair’s get together. The line could’ve been some quip about where Lady Gaga manages to buy wearable, organic meat or in which bar Miley Cyrus’ Mum drinks away her conscience.

I’m more concerned about overexposure. Franzen’s face has been smiling courteously and wisely at me from all manners of media. I have more or less accepted that we all live and breathe ‘cult of personality’ so I’m not too surprised that Franzen’s heart has been publically stitched to his sleeve by a pretty efficient PR machine. (If I believed in illogical extended metaphors, I would have made that ‘PR sewing machine.’ Just as well I prefer brackets).

It’s not enough to simply have a great actor, singer or author anymore. Us technologically advanced vampires need all the life force too. I have always been relatively nonplussed about knowing every stage of Brad Pitt’s facial hair or where he’ll snaffle his next kid from but I was addicted to any kind of interview associated with Franzen. Past tense used as I have recently decided to go cold turkey. It’s not been easy, but I’ve managed to distract myself by taking up such activities as compulsively googling my own name and, well, stalking other authors instead.

I began to realise that my perception of his latest book ‘Freedom’ was becoming utterly impersonal. Every other line was intrinsically linked to some element of his divorce, friendship with David Foster Wallace or turbulent relationship with his Mother. I know I’m making an obvious point but I’d rather know as little as possible about the author. Even gender. I like my subjectivity to be born out of old fashioned objectivity.

So while I’m relieved that a man of substance found himself at Blair’s party, I’m concerned that this overexposure is the only path to success for any great writer. Although perhaps I’ve just been slow to cotton on, and in fact the literary world has always been like an episode of Californication? So Courtney, to sum up I’m basically at a loss too.

I never, ever thought I’d be so baffled by an episode of Gossip Girl.

And the world comes crumbling down

 Courtney says...

No, this has nothing to do with the fact that all of a sudden I have reneged my Blake Lively hatred and now argue that she is in fact a misunderstood, un-natural blonde wunderkind of the Fashion World, even if she did redeem herself slightly on Gossip Girl last night by NOT sleeping with her Economics Professor even though she desperately wanted to. She instead pashed him and waved a moisturized hand goodbye as she exited his apartment in a storm of sexual tension and digital printed chiffon (what is GG's wardrobe department doing to her?!).

No, this also has nothing to do with the fact that Chuck and Blair are back to their love-hate-make-up-sex best with some pretty Rated scenes on top of a grand piano after her 20th Birthday Party, during which Rachel Zoe fell on the ground and had melted chocolate poured all over her stick figure body (hilarious).

No. This has to do with something else that happened on Gossip Girl last night that so profoundly affected my inner core that I had to text you in the middle of the night to exclaim my dismay rather than waiting until this blog post occurred this morning. 

Yes, it has to do with this: Jonathan Franzen was mentioned on Gossip Girl last night. The scene was this: 

Blair Waldorf's 20th Birthday Party.

The Who's Who of the Upper East Side in attendance (the aforementioned Rachel Zoe and Tim Gunn included).

Blair is discussing (read: lecturing) with Serena the pro's and con's of sleeping with her Economics Professor while simultaneously trying to distract Serena from the sexual attractiveness that is apparently unconsciously drawing the two of them together, AT ALL TIMES.

Blair becomes dismissive of Serena's stupidity when Serena notes she can withstand said attractiveness.

Blair, and I quote, says "If I wanted to talk about fiction, I would just go find Jonathan Franzen. Actually..."

Proceeds to walk away. IT IS INSINUATED THAT JONATHAN FRANZEN IS AT BLAIR WALDORF'S PARTY.

I don't know what to do with this information. Part of me is unashamedly proud of Jonathan Franzen (who of course I feel I have a relatively tight bond with after our cocktail evening a few weeks ago).

After all, he did sit in a windowless room with headphones on, typing away on a computer with nothing except a word processing program for nine years to write Freedom. Before that he took three years to develop his main protagonist and before that he went through exactly the same thing for The Corrections, and, as I understand it, a rather messy divorce (do you know anything about this?)

But part of me sees this as a *notes under breath*publicity stunt*. For the same reason Tim Gunn is popping up everywhere on the show from helping Jenny with her fashion project to attending the same party (I wonder if Gunn and Franzen would get along?) because ratings for Project Runway are dropping, I wonder whether Franzen's Freedom is down in sales and whether this is an attempt to reconnect with upwardly mobile tweens and young adults who love ridiculous television programs about vapid New York retards everywhere? (Side note: is this the correct audience for Franzen to be tapping?)

And if this was a publicity stunt, does that meant that all of the entertaining events surrounding Freedom have been a publicity stunt? Did Franzen hire somebody to steal his glasses from his face during a book reading in London recently (Kat, I swear it wasn't me)? Did Franzen 'accidentally' send the wrong edit to the UK publishers so that he would be forced to pulp it, drawing attention to it.

IF THIS IS TRUE MY WORLD JUST STOPPED TURNING.

So where to from here? We could go back to Susan Orlean. She does write a brilliant column. But I think I want something juicier, something more meaningful. After all, I have Gossip Girl for all that other stuff. And, apparently, so does Franzen. CONUNDRUM.

Please help me.