Week 9 (a bit late)- How to avoid drooling on the shoes of someone who admire

This is the post you were promised on Sunday but ultimately I was too busy and thought that it might be best to wait until after an event I was at earlier tonight. What event you may ask? Well back in the day (or at least when I was a child) the Opera House was the place for the things like opera, ballet and symphony concerts and little else. Nowadays as good as that all is (except the opera which barring La Boheme isn't my idea of fun) it is much better. In recent years it has played host to Bjork, Massive Attack and the Cure (I was at the 2nd of these but I'm forever kicking myself for missing the other two). It has a yearly festival devoted to graphic art and combo-ing it with music (last year I saw a live reading by Neil Gaiman which was accompanied by the brilliant Fourplay and Kevin Smith talking about his work as a director for literally five hours of geeky brilliance, and this year I saw an animated Gotye concert), another devoted to crazy ideas (I've missed this every year but will finally be going for the first time this year to see Jonathan Safran Foer) and random talks/in conversations from brilliant people. The brilliant people recruited by the Opera House in the last couple of years also happen to be people I somewhat worship- Stephen Fry and Joss Whedon (one of the biggest regrets I have in my life (how little I regret) is missing it) last year, and this year (last week in fact) the profoundly brilliant Alan Ball and finally getting to tonight, my current big time literary crush Jonathan Franzen. I even had the opportunity to getting him to sign my newly brought copy of Freedom but was so scared of a) forgetting my name, b) forgetting how to talk and c) possibly drooling on his shoes, that I ran away. Where is Clare going with this? To the book I read last week which was Franzen's memoir The Discomfort Zone.

Those who have read The Corrections and/or Freedom will likely think that Jonathan Franzen grew up in a crazy house with a odd family (discovered tonight he would call the families in his novels "interesting" not "dysfunctional" so I will honour his stance on this). The Discomfort Zone which was written in the almost ten years between these novels shows that this was not really the case. Franzen's memoir is short tales of segments of his life across many years. He opens with the death of his mother, then moves onto his development of a love of reading through the works of Charles Schulz and his early school years as the youngest by many years of the three sons in his family, then to his involvement with a very odd Christian youth group in his early teens, then to he and his school friends pulling school pranks in the later years of high school, then to studying German at college and desperately questing to get shagged, and finally to bird watching and divorce.

I know all one of you who regularly reads this blog is probably screaming ENOUGH already as I have already read and blogged about The Twenty-Seventh City during this Novel Challenge vibe and since I read it back in January I've made numerous illusions to The Corrections (I mentioned it in the last post even). Sadly for you, there cannot be enough in my opinion. The Discomfort Zone did have its weak points, to my mind particularly the final chapter, but like Franzen's fiction it is honest and funny and astounding. If I didn't already love his talent, I would have simply adored the fact that he loves Peanuts comics (I may read "serious" graphic novels for "adults" but Charlie Brown and co have always been my favourite comics), that he studied German at college (I kept challenging myself to read the quotes from German literature without cross referencing the footnoted translations but in all but one case my high school German failed on me) and that when pulling prank that involved relocating chairs in his final year of high school that he marked the tables with their original location. There is great combination of lightness and soul barring honesty in the way he looks back at his teen years and childhood through the lens of adult experience. I'm not a big memoir reader (though oddly am reading another one right now) as I often feel that they tend to be at least mildly bitter and/or maudlin but this is thankfully miles from being either. I'd recommend it more than The Twenty-Seventh City but less than The Corrections (as I continue on my quest to brow beat everyone I meet to read The Corrections- I cannot believe how few people have read it and if you are one for them seriously READ IT or I may have to beat you round the head with my copy of it when/if I see you and it ain't a small book). That is grading on a Franzen scale though. On a regular scale it is still better than pretty much everything.

With all that gushing praise, you can hardly be shocked that I thought there was too strong a chance of my making a fool of myself if I met him even for the brief moment it takes to sign a book. I have to add this isn't all as I watched him tonight contend with an interviewer who was a) verbose and b) clearly nervous/overawed (the interviewer was so nervous that he accidentally called Franzen, James at one point and this guy writes literary reviews for The Australian so probably meets great writers on occasion...seriously what chance did I have of avoiding foolishness had I shouted down my fears and lined up for a signature). He showed a great for language in the spoken form as well as on the page as he came out with statements like "Twitter is like cigarettes. (mocking Tweeters) I'm too anxious to read a novel so I'll tweet instead" and when he was asked a particularly complex question just as the period for audience questions was due to begin "the red light for audience questions is on so I feel the urge to leave that question unblemished by an answer". He also spoke in favour of ignored writers in particular female ones and against the canon (I know he has done this in the past but the neglect of female authors in recent years cannot be highlighted enough in my opinion and there are large sections of the canon I dread and so am more than happy for people to tear it to shreds). I cannot praise him enough and I'm happy to do so in slightly ambiguous internet land...but as people have said you should never meet your idols and though they were talking of being disappointed in my case it is more about feeling unworthy, talking like a crazy person and/or not being able to talk at all. I will leave my gushing praise with a likely to be broken promise to my blog reader out there that I will try and hold off on reading Freedom until the Novel Challenge is over so I don't feel inclined to blog on it but it is already starring me down so I don't know how long I'll hold out.

Next, I'm reading two books at once, both by Australians in fact, and I blame another idol of mine, Marieke Hardy, for the two books at once vibe as she just had to release her memoir the other week and I just couldn't wait any longer to get me a copy. So the next post will either be in The Book Thief or Marieke Hardy's You'll be Sorry When I'm Dead- likely the second one as even though I started The Book Thief several days ago and You'll be Sorry When I'm Dead today, I'm quite powering through it.