About a year ago, literary novelist Jonathan Franzen shared his “10 rules for novelists”. Number 8 was:
“It’s doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”
Jonathan Franzen
I’m not sure I would be this absolutist about the matter. But as someone old enough to have reached adulthood before the Internet was “a thing”, I can appreciate just how distracting cyberspace can be.
It was bad enough in the beginning. But then came social media (I’ll spare you my usual rant), and those damned smartphones.
As for Jonathan Franzen: The guy gets a bad rap, and I’m not sure why. Yes, he is quirky and eccentric. Yes, he is fashionably progressive and eye-rollingly politically correct in his politics. But no more so than many other people in the arts.
I’ve read two of his novels: The Corrections (2001) and Freedom (2010). I thought both books were pretty good.
