Literature is sometimes as unfair and arbitrary as life. This alone explains why, especially in Spain, there are writers who are appreciated by critics and followed by readers, while in our country those of equal or superior talent are still unnoticed. I cling to that adverb of time, its most commonly used synonym, still hoping that the name of Jennifer Egan (Chicago, 1962) will soon be as important here as those of Paul Auster, Jonathan Safran Foer, or Jonathan Franzen. She, who I had the chance to talk to recently at her home in Brooklyn, New York, fits all of these. It’s time to prove it. In 2011, he won the Pulitzer Prize for El tiempo es un canalla, a fantasy narrative about the music industry, newly collected by the Salamandra publishing house in Spain, because the American author had written a sequel that did not actually exist: La casa de caramel Egan’s play with past, present and future tenses is a masterful novel that tells an addictive story about the drifts and consequences of the digital world, technology and networks.
Let’s look back to the 90s when she worked for the Countess of Romanones. How has your personal and literary life changed since then?
I don’t have much confidence in myself, I’m quite insecure. I always hear a very negative voice in my head. If I have a mantra it’s this: I probably can’t do it, but I’ll try. I think it’s easier to have that belief now, because I’ve written a few books, but if I think back to those years when I hadn’t published my book yet, I wonder what I thought I was doing. If it were one of my kids, I would say: What will you do if it doesn’t work?
What were your beginnings like?
I started very badly. While I was studying on a scholarship in England, I wrote a terrible novel. I came back, settled in New York and thought people would like my novel and then everything would flow. But the novel was really bad and people didn’t like it. I wonder what keeps me going…
So what do you think happened?
I don’t know…. It’s clear there is no trust. I didn’t know how low my chances of success were, and I think the reason I felt like I was making progress was because I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it.
What is the relationship between literature and journalism in your work?
In my opinion, these are very intertwined. Just a month ago I published an article in The New Yorker that I had been working on for the past year. It’s a long piece. He takes care of the homeless in New York. My world changed while I was working on that article. I’ve spent the last few months with people who have serious mental illnesses, addictions… As I listened to all these incredible stories, what happened to these people, I really had the feeling that I was breathing some kind of pure oxygen that woke up every cell in my body. body. It was such an interesting and interesting experience, so far from my world and yet connected to it… Because we are all more connected than we think. This past year this work has become such a big part of my life that there have been times when I thought this, not fiction, was what I really wanted to do.
Has this really been taken into account?
Yes but I miss it. I’m sure I’ll write fiction until I can no longer do it at the level I want.
So do you think there is something inherent in your voice, regardless of gender?
I’m not the one to say this. I have to find a different voice for each book because my books are so different from each other. And this is a big challenge. If you have no voice, you have nothing. But once I have it, it’s not hard for me to do it.
What is your writing process like? Is it different in each book?
No, it’s the same for everyone. I write first drafts by hand. And I have no idea what will happen; Actually I don’t need to know. I normally write five to seven pages a day. I read just to come back the next day, I move forward and don’t look back, so I forget the characters, the names… Then there is a period of agony, I write it down, I see what the story is telling me, I create a revision draft…And a very helpful one I have a writing group. Of course, I also write on the computer on non-fiction topics such as journalism.
Do you think about the reader?
I am very concerned about knowing how to reach the reader and entertain them.
Isn’t entertainment the keyword of literature?
Yes, fun is everything. The only thing that matters to me is having fun. It was supposed to be fun. If reading a book becomes a chore, we’re done. A book should be addictive.
Speaking of addictive books, his latest novel, Sugar House, brings up the disappearance of privacy in a way. I wonder how we got there…
I have a private life and I think everyone else does too. No matter how much people show it, they still have a private life. We are special creatures by nature. I am not very active on social networks and I never show anything special on these networks, I have no interest. I agree that’s what Candy House is about, but I don’t understand the desire to explain everything that way, it’s a bit crazy. My generation sees this as a huge waste of time. I understand people get rewarded because no one else would do that except for the addiction factor, which is very real.
And scary.
This is very sneaky and really not good. It creates a false sense of desire and satisfaction that destroys you. But if we go back to the issue of private life, it has also disappeared in a sense, and that too in terms of data. There are beings who know everything about us and process this information. And with all this data, it’s surprising how little we can protect ourselves against. If we know everything, why are we, as a culture, constantly caught unprepared? Trump’s election: No one thought this would happen, not even him. The epidemic seemed to appear out of nowhere. September 11: If the information was there, but could not be interpreted in time to take action, then it is irrelevant. All this information is just ones and zeros floating around in the ether.
Technology is very present in the novel. One wonders how the utopian vision to which innovation almost always responds is lost once it reaches consumers.
I agree, there is a utopian vision. Of course Bix [protagonista del libro, creador de un dispositivo tecnológico que permite acceder a nuestros recuerdos y compartirlos] I had it when it started.
But in the end he somehow realizes that he was wrong…
Yeah, he really doesn’t like the reality he created. But the same thing is happening in Silicon Valley. Those who create these addictive products do not allow their children to use them. It’s like a cigarette manufacturer not letting his children smoke. Very sarcastic. There is a belief that there is something in that utopian vision that will improve people’s lives, that will connect people… ChatGPT is the first innovation where fear and warnings come before the utopian vision, and this is a very interesting thing. I can’t understand why this exists because we all think it’s a terrible idea. It’s fascinating, and I think it’s a shift: We’ve reached such a level of caution about technology that, for the first time, caution has trumped everything else.
Now let’s talk about memory, which in my opinion is an invisible character in the book. What do you think about literature as a tool and its place in our lives? How do you think it works?
This is an interesting question. All we have is memory. I’m interested in memory because I’m interested in consciousness, and consciousness is what filters the raw experience and data that surrounds us. Consciousness is like a storytelling device, it transforms data into a narrative. When we look at memory, we actually see the human urge to tell stories. Stories are useful because they give meaning to raw events. What I’m definitely not interested in is nostalgia. Nostalgia is a powerful force, a form of propaganda that we all engage in on a personal level, but it is very limiting for the writer to allow themselves to be carried away by nostalgia.
The tool Bix invented allows you to write by looking at both the past and the future. This leads me to ask you about your literary relationship over time.
It’s interesting to think about time. I would say that every work of fiction is about time. The flow of time is essential, even if it is a day or a second, it is something unique to fiction that enables it to form, what distinguishes it from other art disciplines. And space is also very important; During the pandemic, I realized how important this is in our relationship with the world around us.
Because there are stories in it.
Yes, I get my stories from physical places that inspire me, and I have a very good spatial memory. I can draw a map of every place I’ve lived. I actually do that and write a lot of memoirs.
But you never write autobiographically, do you?
Not yet. When I can’t do other things anymore, I feel like there’s a project I need to keep. In fact, I have hundreds of pages of memories because I want to write them down whenever I get the chance. Bearing witness to your own life is a great service to all those who come after you, because if you have a good memory, you are saving a memory that will be forgotten, eventually disappearing from living memory.
I remember a very touching conversation with Anne Tyler in which she said that her biggest fear was losing her memory because her mother had died of Alzheimer’s.
I have cases of dementia on both sides of my family and it worries me a lot. That’s one of the reasons I’m trying to do hard things right now, because I don’t take for granted that I’ll be able to do them in ten or fifteen years. Memory is a very important tool and it is scary to think of losing it.