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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
How do you think that working in the media industry affected your life as a writer and and your writing?
I think it's been great in that I learned that the artistry of writing is sort of intertwined with grinding it out. Learning to work and do it everyday, even when you don't like it and to think of it as a job. I think there's some sort of intangible thing that I can't really place. Like, I was hanging out with a photographer recently who shoots for big magazines, like the New York Times Magazine and also does artistic stuff. We were just talking, and he was like, "I think that, somehow, doing this has helped my other work. I don't know quite know how." And that's kind of how I feel.
But also -- that New York Times article -- I wanted to talk about that. [In the Times story, reporter Linda Lee followed Amsden for a night out, writing at one point, "you've got to hate this guy. He's already been called the voice of his generation," describing him as "darkly handsome in a studied, downtown way," and recounting his party-hopping with his fashionable friends.]
OK.
Well, I just wanted that clarified -- that (laughing) I do not keep a blog of my life. But that was a very odd article. I think it's tough. It was really funny, in a sense, but I certainly don't think it was a full representation of me as an individual.
What else do you think they got wrong?
Some of my friends were like, "What a fucking great article! You look like a badass," and they understand that you take it with ... not a grain of salt, but with a fucking salt lick. Because it's the Style section of the New York Times. And I don't know anyone who looks at that as the be-all, end-all of truth. At the same time, it's everyone's favorite section, and everyone reads it. And it is the New York Times.
There's that one quote "you have to have some faith in people -- or your ability to manipulate them." That was said with such sarcasm -- I mean, such obvious sarcasm -- after a long rambling monologue of mine on things I've been doing to try to promote the book.
If an article like that makes me look like some kid -- like a self-promoting type -- you gotta remember: I'm not getting the treatment of Z.Z. Packer, whose book first book is getting brought in with all the flags waving from the publishing house. They must be spending millions of dollars to promote this book; you see ads for it everywhere. It's everywhere. Every single thing costs money. I don't have all that going for me, and I do want people to read my book.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with handing someone a flyer for it. In a sense, what's so amazing about that to me, is how earnest that is, and how grass-roots it has been. I've really been breaking my back to try to get this book out to the right people. And what is more callous? Taking out a $75,000 ad in the New York Times Book Review? It makes you look more literary, but come on, it's $75,000 -- that's why the ad is in there. It's not in there because you're a genius. It's not in there because you're anyone. It's in there because your publisher bought your book for a shitload, and they're nervous, and they're taking these ads out.
Compare that to seeing someone reading Kundera, and saying, "Hey, here's a bookmark. Can you come to a reading?" And I think it's funny that we live in a time period where that can get really callous coverage and being someone like Z.Z. Packer ... and I've read two of her short stories, and they're really great. They're the real deal. But that huge publicity blitz! Profiled everywhere. Everyone in the media who's covering it understands that that's because an enormous amount of money is being spent. And my whole thing was the process of very little money being spent.
What do you want people to ask you that they don't?
Well, it's tough. To get press on books is so difficult. I don't mind this, because I like personalities, too, but what they really go after is the author's personality. And the problem with personalities is when they're digested into a small form. I've never met Jonathan Safran Foer, but everything I know of him is that he's "little Princeton intellectual guy." I'm sure he's a lot more than that, but that's because become his, you know ... And Franzen is über-serious literary guy with the perpetually furrowed brow. And there's something sort of fun about that. I think of Raymond Carver and I just think of this drunk dude. And I'm sure he was more than a drunk dude; same way I think of Foer as more than a Princeton intellectual arty kid. So, in that sense, what people have asked me a lot about is me, and my age, and that's fine because I think that's kind of interesting. I mean, I don't think it's that interesting about me, but as a reader.
I mean, I don't expect the New York Times to do a "night out with" column and have me deconstructing, at length, modern literature. I think that'd be about the most boring thing ever. That was the one thing I was really fed up with -- reading a lot of really self-conscious things and wanting to get back to raw Raymond Carver-y, not embarrassed of really true straightforward emotion and that's something I haven't really gotten to talk about because I spent time being quizzed on my clothes and my haircut by the New York Times (laughing) ... It's all good. It's all fun. That's what it comes down to, I guess.
