Rough Transcript of Franzen, on "The Unreliable Narrator" to Remnick, October 1, 2011.

Remnick: Well, I was, I was fascinated to hear... that there are some people in this world who feel that it's o-- that to have a kind of hyper-postmodern view of non-fiction/fiction questions, that it's all writing, and that questions of fact, facticity and, well, that's kind of square and old-fashioned, and it's okay that Kapuscinski does what Kapuscinski does and kind of makes this up because it's really just a metaphor for uh, Poland itself. Um, and other writers that one could name who have a different view of fact and fiction... You're pretty strict about the dividing line. You see, you think that somebody who's --

Franzen (interjecting): [unintelligible]

Remnick: -- allegedly writing non-fiction and cheats it --

Franzen: Yeah.

Remnick: -- is cheating the reader, is somehow, umm, in a way that should be kind of like, uh, admitting a false --

Franzen: David and I disagreed on that.

Remnick: David?

Franzen: Dave Wallace, yeah.

Remnick: So Wallace felt well --

Franzen: Yeah, cause he --

Remnick: He said it was okay to make up dialogue on a cruise ship?

Franzen: For instance, yeah. Uhhmmm...

Remnick: I'm heartbroken to hear it.

Franzen: I know, I know. No, those things didn't actually happen. Umm, you notice he never published any non-fiction in your magazine.

Remnick: Not for want of trying but that's another matter, but but...

Franzen: He would have had to, maybe he...

Remnick: He would have fell before the fact-checkers.

Franzen: I think the fact-checkers... and to me the uh fact-checkers, we, uh, I'm so afraid of fact checkers.

Remnick: Good. [laughs]

Franzen: But that's, you know, that's kind of like the boundary lines in tennis. That was a great shot, only problem was it was two feet behind the baseline. I will have crushed...

Remnick: But David called it in.

Franzen: Well yeah, I mean... I love that cruise ship piece of Dave's so I'm not, I'm not... it was uh, yeah, two somewhat different approaches.

7 months ago  /  11 notes  /  Source: michelledean