Farther Away

Jonathan Franzen

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780007459520
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Saggi letterari

INTERVIEW WITH NEW YORK STATE

This interview took place in December 2007, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, near the homes of Mayor Mike Bloomberg and then-governor Eliot Spitzer.

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: I am so, so sorry! Everything is late this morning, our former president dropped in unexpectedly, as he often does, and our dear little state can never seem to say no to Bill! But I promise you you’ll get your full half hour with her, even if it means rebooking the entire afternoon. You’re lovely to be so patient with us.

JF: We said an hour, though.

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: Yes. Yes.

JF: Nine o’clock to ten o’clock is what I wrote down here.

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: Yes. And this is for a, uh, travel guide?

JF: Anthology. The fifty states. Which I really don’t think she wants to end up being the shortest chapter of.

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: Right, although, ha ha, she’s also the busiest of the fifty, so there may be a certain logic to keeping things brief. If what you’re telling me now is that she’s just going to be part of some fifty-state cattle call … I didn’t quite realize …

JF: I’m pretty sure I said—

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: And it definitely has to be fifty. There’s no way it could be, like, five? A Top Five States of the Union kind of thing? Or even a Top Ten? I’m just thinking, you know, to clear out some of the small fry. Or maybe, if you absolutely have to have all fifty, then maybe do it as an appendix? Like: Here are the Top Ten Most Important States, and then here, at the back, in the appendix, are some other states that, you know, exist. Is that conceivably an option?

JF: Sadly, no. But maybe we should reschedule for some other day. When she’s not so busy.

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: Frankly, Jon, every day is like this. It just gets worse and worse. And since I am promising you your full half hour with her today, I think you’d be well advised to take it. However, I do see your point about length—assuming you really are determined to include the small fry. And what I would therefore love to do is show you some amazing new pictures that she’s been having taken of herself. It’s a program she set up with one of her foundations. Twenty of the world’s top art photographers are creating some of the most intimate glimpses that anybody has ever had of an American state. Really different, really special. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job. But if I were you? I’d be thinking about twenty-four pages of unique, world-class photography, followed by an intensely personal little interview in which our nation’s greatest state reveals her greatest secret passion. Which is … the arts! I mean, that is New York State. Because, yes, obviously, she’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s powerful, she’s glamorous, she knows everybody, she’s had the most amazing life journey. But in her secret innermost soul? It’s all about the arts.

JF: Wow. Thank you. That would be—thank you! The only problem is I’m not sure the format and the paper of this book are going to be right for photographs.

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: Jon, like I said, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job. But unless you can think of a way to fit the proverbial thousand words on a single page, there’s a lot to be said for pictures.

JF: You’re absolutely right. And I will check with Ecco Press and—

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: Who, what? Echo what?

JF: Ecco Press. They’re publishing the book?

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: Oh dear. Your book is being published by a small press?

JF: No, no, they’re an imprint of HarperCollins. Which is a big press.

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: Oh, so HarperCollins, then.

JF: Yes. Big, big press.

NEW YORK STATE’s PUBLICIST: Because, God, you had me worried for a minute.

JF: No, no, huge press. One of the biggest in the world.

NEW YORK STATE’S PUBLICIST: Then let me just go check and see how things are going. In fact, you might as well have your sitdown with Mr. Van Gander now, if you want to follow me back this way. Just, yes, good, bring your bag. This way … Rick? Do you have a minute to talk to our, uh. Our “literary writer”?

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Sure! Super! Come in, come in, come in! Hello! Rick Van Gander! Hello! Great to meet you! Big fan of your work! How’s life in Brooklyn treating you? You live out in Brooklyn, don’t you?

JF: No, Manhattan. I did live in Queens once, a long time ago.

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Huh! How about that? I thought all you literary types were out in Brooklyn these days. All the really hip ones at any rate. Are you trying to tell me you’re not hip? Actually, now that you mention it, you don’t look very hip. I beg your pardon! I read something in the Times about all the great writers living out in Brooklyn. I just naturally assumed …

JF: It’s a very beautiful old borough.

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Yes, and wonderful for the arts. My wife and I try to get out to the Brooklyn Academy of Music as often as we can. We saw a play performed entirely in Swedish there not long ago. Bit of a surprise for me, I admit, not being a Swedish speaker. But we enjoyed ourselves very much. Not your typical Manhattan evening, that’s for sure! But, now, tell me, what can I do for you today?

JF: I don’t actually know. I didn’t realize I was going to talk to you. I thought I was supposed to have an interview with the State—

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: That’s it! There you go! That’s why you’re talking to me! What I can do for you today is vet your interview questions.

JF: Vet them? Are you kidding?

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Do I look like I’m kidding?

JF: No, it’s just, I’m a little stunned. It used to be so easy to see her. And just, you know, hang out, and talk.

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Sure, sure, I hear you. Everything used to be easy. Used to be easy to buy crack on the corner of Hundredth and Columbus, too! Used to be easy to pave the bottom of the Hudson River with PCBs and heavy metals. Easy to clear-cut the Adirondacks and watch the rivers choke on topsoil. Rip the heart out of the Bronx and ram an expressway through there. Run sweatshops on lower Broadway with slave Asian labor. Get a rent-controlled apartment so cheap you didn’t have to do anything all day except write abusive letters to your landlord. Everything used to be so easy! But eventually a state grows up, starts taking better care of herself, if you know what I mean. Which is what I am here to help her do.

JF: I guess I don’t see how having been open and available and exciting and romantic to a kid from the Midwest is equivalent to having let the Hudson River be polluted.

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: You’re saying you fell in love with her.

JF: Yes! And I had the feeling she loved me, too. Like she was waiting for people like me to come to her. Like she needed us.

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Hmm. When was this?

JF: Late seventies, early eighties.

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Good Lord. Just as I feared. Those were some wild and crazy years, all right. She was not altogether of sound mind. And you would do her a great kindness—do yourself a big favor, too, incidentally—if you would avoid mentioning that entire period to her.

JF: But those are precisely the years I wanted to talk to her about.

NEW YORK STATE’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: And that is why I’m here to vet your questions! Believe me, you will not find her friendly on the subject. Even now, every once in a while, somebody gets it in his head to print some more pictures of her from those decades. Usually it’s malicious—you’re always going to find a couple of disgusting paparazzi outside the rehab clinic, waiting for their shot of somebody infinitely classier than they are, at a single regrettable moment in her otherwise brilliant life. But that’s not the worst of it. What’s unbelievable are the guys who honestly believe she looked better back then, because she was so easy. Think they’re doing her some kind of favor by showing her dirty as hell, spilling out every which way, spaced out of her mind, mega hygiene issues, not a dime in her purse. Crime, garbage, crap architecture, shuttered mill towns, bankrupt railroads, Love Canal, Son of Sam, riots at Attica, hippies in a muddy farm field: I can’t tell you how many deadbeats and failed artists walk in here all smitten and nostalgic and thinking they know the “real” New York State. And then complaining about how she’s not the same anymore. Which—damn right she’s not! And a good thing it is! Just imagine,...