I will write fiction about premature ejaculation because that’s how interested I am in the plights of others
Some write to make money; some write to communicate; some write because they enjoy it; Jonathan Franzen writes to prove to other writers that he is capable of writing from the perspective of a rape victim.
“When she started fighting, she fought hard, if not well, and only for so long, because she was drunk for one of the first times ever. […] Altogether, there was much to blame herself for.”
It’s too bad that this story reads like a final project for 10th grade health class, because I really admired Franzen’s portrait of a lesbian in The Corrections. Now I’m looking back thinking, wtf Franzen, literature shouldn’t make the reader feel “admiration.” Write something that disturbs me instead.
