Earlier this month Jennifer Egan, the newly-minted Pulitzer Prize winner, paid a visit to Google to talk about A Visit from the Goon Squad, her experimental novel that won the Pulitzer, among many other awards. That’s the ostensible focus. But the conversation moves quickly into other areas that will interest writers and readers alike — how Egan first develops ideas for her novels, why she writes her first drafts in illegible handwriting on legal pads, why she wrote a chapter of her new novel in PowerPoint (without ever having used the software before), what her novel has in common with The Who’s Quadrophenia (I’m hooked), and how technology might change the novel as we know it.
The Egan video went live yesterday, and runs about 54 minutes. Other videos appearing in the Authors@Google series feature conversations with Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Gilbert, Michael Pollan, Slavoj Zizek and Junot Diaz. H/T @webacion
Jennifer E. comes to St. Paul tonight to appear on Kari Miller’s Talking Volumes at the Fitz. Welcome to MINUTE Jennifer, where every citizen carries –not a gun — but a library card (or ebook).
I love that interview. Jennifer Egan is absolutely amazing.