Funnily enough, after scheduling this post on 09-09-10, I listened to the Fresh Air interview of Franzen that aired on 09-09-10. Although Terry Gross did not ask Franzen why he hates his characters, she did ask him why his latest novel, Freedom, has several characters plagued with depression.
His response:
People who have a depressive cast of mind are usually the funniest people you meet and... What else? Why did I want depressives in here? You know, most interesting people become somewhat depressed at some point in their life. And I'm not writing books for people whose lives are perfectly great. People whose lives are perfectly great probably don't need to read books like the kind I write. Only if you have some regular connection with some kind of darkness or difficulty or conflict does serious fiction begin to matter. And so it's simply realistic to let people, as the stories of their lives build toward dramatic peaks, to enter these dark woods from time to time. And it's really as simple as that.
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