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(Louisiana channel)

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(Jonathan Safran Foer
novels have a lot to learn from poetry)

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Well, people often talk
about the death of literature.

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I think people have been speaking
about it since shortly

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after the first work of literature
was ever made

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but there's more and more talk about it

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and it's been propelled
by diminishing readership,

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by what feels like an increasing apathy,

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or even anxiety
or even mistrust of literature

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and the movement towards screens,
everything being

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on a screen and
what would that mean for books

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which aren't very well served on a screen.

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It's not that you can't read a book
on a screen perfectly well

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but you can't read a book on a screen

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that also has email
and your calendar and texting.

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Books can't compete
with those kinds of media.

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So we wonder will people read books?

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And I think that there are still things
and there will always be things

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that only literature can do,
only literature can communicate.

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I don't think that literature
is necessarily any better,

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whatever than means,
than film or dance or music.

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In fact, I'm often drawn personally more

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to film and dance than I am to literature

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but I know that
there are moments in my life

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when I feel a need for literature
and only for literature.

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So for example,
the mother of my oldest friend

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passed away about week ago.

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And I went down to visit her
in Washington DC - I live in New York.

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And I was quite worried
about what to say and how to fill

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what I thought might be very awkward,
or even painful silences.

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And I brought poems, about 20 poems.

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And I read them to her
and we talked about them.

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And in that moment when we, together,

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mostly just her, of course,
but together, were confronting

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this, the biggest moment of life
which is death,

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we relied on poetry.

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And I think that poems
and stories and novels are very helpful

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exactly when we most need language
in the most, sort of dire,

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or urgent or existential moments of life.

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Novels are meant to be read
over the course of many hours or many days

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and even a story
takes half an hour to read.

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And I just wasn't sure, in this case,
what her energy level would be,

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so I wanted them to be quite small.

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But even though that's the case,
it's also true

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that poetry is
the most condensed form of literature

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and in certain ways,
it's its most pure form.

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I don't think that novels are
any less good than poetry

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but I think that novels
have a lot to learn from poetry

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in terms of what's possible,
how direct one can be,

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how concentrated language can be,

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and how evocative and resonant.

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You know, sometimes I think
novels make the mistake

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of being too much
like their own description.

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You know, somebody says,
''What is this book about?''

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My dream is to write a novel
where somebody would have to say:

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"I could tell you, I suppose,
but that would really miss the point.

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You just have to read it."

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That, to my mind, is a good novel.

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A novel that is its own synopsis,

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just an expanded version of its synopsis,

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comes awfully close
to television actually.

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I think that novels can still do
something that poetry does

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in terms of being
kind of ineffable or mysterious

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or not quite graspeable,
just on a much larger scale.

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All of my life, I have been more drawn
to the visual arts than to literature.

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And even still, when I'm feeling

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like I can't remember
why I wanted to be a writer,

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I don't go to books, I actually go
to paintings or sculpture.

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To me, the distinctions
have been drawn too sharply,

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you know, the difference between
a musician, a writer, an artist, a dancer.

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We've categorized them, segregated them,

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so that there's very, very little overlap.

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But in fact they're all just people
who want to make things

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that you could say have no use.

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You know, everything in life has a use.

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The person who made the camera
that this is being shot with,

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made it so that it could record
something like this.

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And a television or a computer
that someone's watching it on

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was made with specific functions in mind.

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A bridge is made so that people can get
from one land mass to another.

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But novels and paintings
and songs really...

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They might have effects in the world,

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they might be political,
they might be entertaining,

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they might be objects of commerce,

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but they're not really,
really made for any of those reasons,

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they're just made for their own sake.

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And I think that anyone
who makes something for its own sake,

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whether you try to have it published

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or whether you're just, you know,
rearranging twigs on the ground

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because it pleases you,

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people who do that are artists.

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And, you know, because we live in a world
in which you have to have a job

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and in which it's expected
that you will grow within your job,

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and because we like
to have an answer to the question

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'What is it that you do?'

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You know, you meet someone
at a party, or...

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they say ''What do you do?''

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It makes us uncomfortable
not to have an answer.

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But the truth is, you know,
the different art forms

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are much, much more similar
than they are different.

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When I'm not working on a book,

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I am somebody who just
kind of moves through the world

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and sees nice things and tries
to remember them, but usually doesn't,

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and hears jokes and tries to remember them
but usually doesn't

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and so on and has ideas that disappear.

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But when I'm writing, I save those things

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so that I can use them,
you know, rearrange them.

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Nothing comes from nothing.

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I think that there's an impression
that books or art,

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making art is a much more romantically
creative act than it is,

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as if inspiration strikes and suddenly
something appears

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but that's not really
-- that hasn't been my experience at all.

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It's much more about being attentive
to what's around

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and starting to get to know
what you like and what you find useful

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and then collecting those things
instead of everything,

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collecting those things
and then figuring out

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what the most pleasing arrangement
of them is for you.

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There's nothing objective about it.

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It's not the case that, you know,
someone else will necessarily like it,

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but it really does feel like
making collage just with, you know,

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the whole world as
your cupboard of things to arrange.

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Certainly in art, I think,
the most important things

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happen on a subconscious level.

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When I approach a writing project,
I don't think about it like that.

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In fact, and I say this not
as a joke or to sort of disparage myself,

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but I really don't think
about much at all.

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It's very -- I'm just very open, you know,
to what do I feel like working on,

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what's interesting to me right now,
what am I curious about?

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But I never think about what
the potential use of something would be.

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Like I was saying before,
there's a quality of art

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that is useless in the very,
very best way.

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I mean, that is like the very highest
compliment I could pay.

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And if I started thinking about
what I would achieve

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for myself psychologically
or in search of meaning or catharsis,

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that's just another kind of use,

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just in almost the same way that

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trying to make something
you could sell for money is a kind of use.

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It's not to say
that those two thing might, you know,

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wouldn't be good in your life,

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but I don't think that
they make a good work of art.

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They're not a good starting point.

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Don DeLillo once said:

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"Nobody writes his first book.
It just happens."

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At a certain point,
you find the printer is, you know,

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all these pages are coming out.

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You think: "Oh my God,
I can't believe I did this!"

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I believe that.

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I mean, maybe it's a little different
if you start late in life,

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and you've been, you know,
sort of incubating an idea for a long time

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but most people when
they write their first book,

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at a certain point, they realize
they have a book on their hands.

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And the second book is different
because then,

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you have something
that you're responding to,

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you have your own expectations.

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If you published your first book,
you have the world' expectations.

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So I found the second book
somewhat more difficult because of that,

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but I'd started the second book
before my first book was published.

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So in a way, I was able
to escape some of those traps.

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But then, after I have written two novels,

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I wrote a work of non-fiction
about eating animals,

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about animal farming.

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And I think it's not a coincidence that
I decided to move in a different direction

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because I was starting to feel
the weight of momentum.

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You know, I didn't want
to do a third thing

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because I've done two previous things.

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I didn't want to make a choice
about tomorrow

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just because of what I did yesterday.

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So maybe even to a fault, I resisted that

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and decided to move off
and try something else.

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I think there are a lot of ways
of talking about choices in art.

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And it's a mistake to think that

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the way we talk about it
retrospectively as critics,

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which is very useful and interesting,

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but it's a mistake that
that's the same language of creation.

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Somebody once said,
I can't remember who

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- maybe it was Oscar Wilde, 
I can't remember -

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said: "There are only two kinds
of objects in the world:

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those that charm us
and those that don't charm us."

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And, you know, something can be charming
in the most completely simple way

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and for whatever reason, it speaks to us.

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We like it. It is for us.

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If something isn't charming, 
it's mundane and it's not that we hate it,

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it's just that it has
no great effect on us.

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And each person, of course, has his own
or her own sense of what is charming.

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And, you know, in a way,

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writing just boils down to asking
that question again and again,

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like, this is charming or not.

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Something charming can mean
that it's very painful.

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It doesn't mean
that it's happy and beautiful.

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It can mean it's very ugly,
it can mean that it is funny,

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it can mean that it is serious,
it can be tragic, it can be comic.

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I think charming really just means,
in a certain way,

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that it's authentic
and exceptional to you.

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I mean, people often ask me
why do I write about family so often.

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I find that such a weird question.

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I don't even know how to answer

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because the answer feels so obvious to me.

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You know, nobody asks J.K. Rowling
why she writes about wizards so much.

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That, to me, is weird.

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That's a weird choice she made
that requires some explanation

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because nobody knows wizards,
nobody interacts with wizards,

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nobody can't fall asleep at night
because of their relationship to wizards,

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but everyone has a family.

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Even people whose families are absent.

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Maybe even, especially people
whose families are absent.

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You know, these are
the main themes of life

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and they've been the main themes
of literature since Genesis.

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So I assume I'll always write
about family.

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Families is also
especially important to me

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but you know, whether it will take
the form of fathers and sons-in-laws,

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or whether it will take the form
of a married couple in a comedy,

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that I don't know.

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(Louisiana Channel)

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(Supported by Nordea Fonden)

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(louisiana.dk/channel)