A few weeks ago Kingsly, Alicia, and I were walking The Point in downtown Beaufort, strolling under the gnarly arms of ancient live oaks, past historic sites, and a few former Hollywood movie sets. Haunted by a gothic sense of its storied past, The Point is a place that time forgot. It’s also a neighborhood where passersby never fail to smile and say hello. On curbs, locals put out doggie watering stations—large silver bowls and fresh pitchers. Kingsly has these spots memorized. Old South mansions cast shadows over tiny bungalows, as if the properties were shuffled like a deck of cards. And the city’s cacophony doesn’t quite penetrate the thick, ever-growing walls of Spanish-moss.
On this particular day, I was drawn to a Little Free Library in one of the parks that dot The Point with wooden benches, water views, fountains, and shady meditative spaces that seductively whisper, “Here time doesn’t matter. Slow down. Y’all’re in the south.”
“You never look in Little Free Libraries,” Alicia said, as I pulled out a thick book.
“This is a first-edition hardback,” I said, thumbing through the opening pages of a novel I adored as a younger man. “Too bad it doesn’t have the dust jacket.”
“Are you going to risk a reread?”
“What if I hate it?”
“Then you hate it.”
You probably noticed that I didn’t say the title. I’m not intentionally withholding information to keep you reading. I just don’t want to tell you. Mostly because it’s one of my very favorites. And a dark part of me worries that you’ll judge me for it.
Published folks are always being asked to make lists of books they prize. I suppose maybe there are fans legitimately curious about influences and/or want to read their favorite writers’ reading lists. Which is, of course, fine and even flattering. Yet, the who-are-your-favorite-authors question always feels so loaded—and like there is much more to lose than gain by answering honestly.
The paranoid part of me thinks the implied questions are: Do you like the right sort of authors? Do you like the authors you are supposed to like? Will you say the things you are expected to say? Will your answers conform to the politics of the day?
In the past, I’ve listed my favorite authors as Gao Xingjian, Haruki Murakami, and Ralph Ellison. Kurt Vonnegut sometimes makes the list, even though he was my favorite writer when I was a young man. I still love him, but—to be honest—I don’t really think about his work as much as I used to. Ernest Hemingway is no longer a very good answer to give, from a P.R. standpoint. I remember an angry mother shaming me for teaching Papa in 1999. Mark Twain is equally complicated these days. But they both rank high with me. And it’s hard not to at least admit how much they influenced everyone.
Sometimes when I’m typing up responses to interview questions, I’ll ask Alicia to chime in on the who-is-Matthew-Quick’s-favorite-author question. Recently, she’s been saying Jonathan Franzen, mostly because I devour his gigantic novels with gusto as soon as they are published. I do this with Murakami too, but I don’t talk about Murakami’s novels so much with Alicia, whereas I won’t shut up about Franzen.
I just asked Alicia to comment on this and she says, “When you read Murakami, you kind of go into a silent trance. But you make noises while reading Franzen.”
“Noises?”
“You blurt out sounds like, ‘Ummmmmmm,” and “Ohhhhhh,” and “Haaaaaa,’ Based on your grunting, you seem more intellectually stimulated by Franzen.”
Maybe some of you are rolling your eyes.
Jonathan Franzen? The guy who dissed Oprah? The guy Time put on the cover and proclaimed a “Great American Novelist”? That overhyped guy? Really?
Another writer I’m often reluctant to admit I’ve happily read, the antisocial Charles Bukowski, used to write about the crowd being consistently wrong and how you can make the right choices by observing a crowd’s ill-informed proclivities. The problem with Franzen is that there are legions who love him and legions who hate him. So the crowd seems divided. What to do with that, Charles Bukowski?
Long ago—back before I was a published novelist—I went to hear Franzen speak at a college in New York City. A writing friend was on the faculty and got us in. This was almost twenty years ago. Was it in support of The Discomfort Zone? I have a memory—Is it real?—of awkwardly approaching Franzen, sneaking in a handshake, and telling him how much I loved The Corrections, which is the novel I—here in 2024—recently found in the Little Free Library.
There, I said it!
I had previously read The Corrections in paperback after Alicia—somewhere in the early two thousands—insisted that I had to. Yes, Alicia introduced me to Franzen. It’s her fault! Reading him for the first time made the writer in me feel like a ten-year-old basketball player watching Dominique Wilkins winning a slam dunk contest. There was no doubt in my mind that I was having one of the best reading experiences of my lifetime, right up there with Norwegian Wood and Sula and Slaughter-House Five and The Bell Jar and Soul Mountain and Invisible Man and The Poisonwood Bible and Siddhartha and Native Son and A Little Life and Huck Finn and She’s Come Undone and The Old Man and the Sea and—another one that might earn me some groans—The Catcher In The Rye.
At the college event, I remember Franzen being polite, humble, and gracious. A total class act. I also remember wanting to be him. I definitely wished I could write like him. If I could have psychologically reconstructed myself to be a different sort of novelist, I would have made myself extremely Jonathan Franzen-esque. In fact, I kind of tried to do that during my MFA days. My attempts were disastrous. And thank God for that!
Perhaps role models are a necessary early part of any maturation process, but being a fan in lieu of pursuing one’s own inherent potential is, of course, counterproductive. Our own unique destinies stare us in the face always, waiting for us to surrender.
My first novel was purchased by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which also published The Corrections and is thought of as a more literary house. Since The Silver Linings Playbook was a strange commercial-literary hybrid that initially seemed to make more people in Hollywood jump than publishing folks, I was shocked to land with FSG, at Sarah Crichton’s imprint.
A green, wide-eyed Matthew Quick went to NYC, met with FSG publicists, and had lunch with Sarah. The question of which authors we’d target for blurbs came up. Mostly, I was just trying to keep Sarah from thinking her acquiring my novel was a mistake. Gambling on another writer—whom I didn’t know—saying kind things about my debut seemed a dubious bet. But after modestly listing many smaller fish, Sarah and her colleagues prodded me to dream big, until I got up the courage to blurt out, “Franzen?” Then I gritted my teeth in anticipation of laughter. I was astonished when these publishing professionals took the suggestion seriously. Sarah had Franzen’s email address and forwarded a letter I wrote, saying how much I truly loved his work and humbly asking for an endorsement. When he answered saying he would take a look and get back to us if he was reading happily, I just about fainted.
Looking back now, the idea of Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, blurbing The Silver Lining Playbook seems pretty hilarious. Both books are about family dysfunction, are peppered with Philadelphia-area references, and probe the minds of people whose psychological maturities haven’t yet caught up to their actual ages, but that’s about where the similarities end. Well, I’m pretty sure Franzen and I still have the same film agent, who might very well be reading this post. But President Obama reads Franzen. Oprah reads Franzen. Time magazine puts Franzen’s face on the cover. His books are three to four times as thick as mine are. Like him or hate him, everyone in the literary world knows who he is.
We never heard another word from Franzen.
A sliver of first-time-novelist Matthew Quick was a little salty about the snub. I was tempted to join the Franzen backlash when it began, but then I read Freedom and fell in love all over again. I enjoyed Purity. Crossroads absolutely transported me and is probably my favorite Franzen novel, partly because it centers around a Protestant church in the seventies and I spent much of my youth in a Protestant church, albeit in the eighties and early nineties. I eagerly await the next two parts of the planned trilogy.
I’m rereading The Corrections now. In bed at night, the word, “Wow!” will inadvertently slip out of my mouth. Alicia will yell, “I was sleeping!” Then I will apologize and read way past my bedtime, trying to remember to inaudibly mouth my admirations.
On the sentence level, Franzen dazzles. But I’m not really a sentence-level guy. What I admire most about his work is how psychologically correct his character are. They produce what their psychology bids them to produce and not what the author or the reader needs them to produce. They feel spectacularly true to me.
Do people read Franzen because he is a gifted writer or because the media proclaimed him to be a genius?
Who knows?
As I drift into my fifties, I find myself feeling slightly less paranoid about what others might think of my reading habits. I also find myself skipping anything that doesn’t light me up inside. The ultimate test for me is reading in bed. If I keep turning pages, fighting off end-of-the-day weariness, I know that the book is for me. If I’m nodding off before I get through a page, the book probably isn’t. And not every book is for everyone. This is okay.
Outside of formal educational experiences, I think people should read the books that light them up. Period.
Kingsly and I were recently stopped by a neighbor who said he had read my latest novel. He didn’t say whether he liked it or not. Instead he stated it wasn’t what he usually reads. So I asked him what he enjoys reading and without missing a beat he said he likes to read fantasy novels, which—judging by the delighted look on his face—light him up much more than whatever it is that I write. I enjoyed talking with him about why he likes fantasy novels. That conversation was much easier work than enduring the report on what he doesn’t usually read but did. He came alive when he spoke of what he loved. We both seemed to get oxygen from it.
I’ve been flying through The Corrections. Franzen is definitely one of my favorite authors. Why does some ashamed part of me wish this weren’t so? Maybe because reading his work makes my inner novelist feel like a toddler painting with his toes. Maybe because so many people will roll their eyes at my listing Franzen as a favorite, despite the nods from such revered aforementioned tastemakers. Maybe because there is no political currency in liking Franzen these days.
Why did The Point’s Little Free Library gift me The Corrections here at fifty?
I don’t know, of course. There is no objective answer to such a mystical question.
But it’s a book about living through the demise of an aging patriarch and I’m here in Beaufort watching my father battle Alzheimer’s.
Maybe the universe—or The Self—wants me to remember and admit what lights me up in an effort to help me become the truest version of Matthew Quick, even if my honest preferences are not socially or politically advantageous.
I don’t want Franzen to be my favorite author.
But here I am at fifty, rereading The Corrections late into the night and occasionally waking up my wife with my un-muzzle-able admiration. And maybe that’s just who I am these days, left alone to my own devices, when no one is looking.
Who are you?
PS - Did you read the April 3rd post? The Easter Helicopter (A Very Familiar Need) And the March 27th post? Listening To Upset Stomachs (And Mowing A Mean Old Man’s Lawn)
I recently reread Catcher, and I almost couldn't believe how good it was. Almost perfect (though also stranger than I remembered). I said so much to a friend a few days ago and they looked at me like I had a bug in my teeth. Oh well. Getting oxygen is all I care about....no matter where it comes from.
I recently deleted Goodreads, because I do not think there is a more personal blueprint to how someone thinks than the books they have read. I prefer to keep mine private (besides now of course) because I love that my mind is private.
Thank you for sharing so candidly and authentically about reading. I love reading and it made me feel great to be conscious of someone else’s love for it as well. Have a great day!