Laurence Léveillé | Staff Writer
Audience members erupted into laughter time and time again as Meg
Wolitzer and Roger Rosenblatt exchanged witty remarks during Wednesday’s
morning lecture.
The humor and wit seeded throughout the conversation demonstrated Wolitzer’s philosophy on its use in novels.
“Humor in a novel has to exist the way humor in a conversation exists,” she said. “It comes out of character.”
Between the jokes and laughter, Rosenblatt and Wolitzer discussed
female authors, decisions writers make and character development in
novels.
Having an established mother as a writer is the greatest thing in the world to Wolitzer.
“Because she never once told me, ‘Maybe you should think about law school,’ ” she said.
Her mother made Wolitzer realize that people only have one life to live and should do something they are passionate about.
Wolitzer recited an anecdote she had written in a piece for The New York Times.
When a man at a dinner party found out Wolitzer was a writer, he asked
her the worst question a writer can be asked: “Would I have heard of
you?”
She began answering it by naming her books and hoping people who
asked would recognize one. After explaining to the man what her books
were about, he told Wolitzer she should meet his wife.
Now, Wolitzer realizes there is only one answer to that question:
“In a more just world,” she said.
Some of the greatest writers are women, and some of the greatest
novels are about women and their lives, Wolitzer said. But female
authors have a smaller audience than male authors. Women are more likely
to read books about and written by men and women, but it’s harder to
get men to read books about and written by women.
“That’s crazy to me,” Wolitzer said. “I feel like saying to the men:
‘Don’t you want to know about the women you live with? Don’t you want to
know what’s going on in their lives?’ ”
Novels can tell a lot about people, and it’s important to learn about others, she said.
“Because if you don’t know about what goes on in the interior lives
of other people, how can you have empathy?” Wolitzer said. “The whole
culture kind of collapses.”
Writing is all about choices. Choices about what a book should be about, how it should be written, characters, tone.
When Wolitzer wrote her most recent book, The Uncoupling, she wanted to write about female desire over time and what happens to it, she said.
One way she could have written the book would have made it seem like a
“cranky women’s magazine called ‘Our Sex Life Has Gotten Kind of
Dim.’ ” But that would not be a novel, she said.
“I only write the novels that I want to find on the shelf, which I think is a great rule of thumb,” Wolitzer said.
In terms of characters, Wolitzer said it is important to answer the
question, “Who are these people?” If readers don’t know why they are
reading a book or who the characters are, they will have no reason to
keep reading.
Wolitzer suggested everyone should have a designated reader who can
provide input on a book’s progress. That is a way to ensure characters
do not all sound the same. It is also important to make sure the
character is someone the writer would want to be around.
“If it’s not somebody you want to talk to at the dinner party, it’s not somebody you want to live with for 300 pages,” she said.
Humor also plays a role in character.
To explain the difference between jokes and humor in novels, Wolitzer
told a joke about a family visiting their grandmother on her 100th
birthday and asking her what she would like to do that she has never
done before. The grandmother wants to go whitewater rafting on the
Colorado River. As promised, the family hires a private nurse, makes her
a special IV line and brings her to the river to go whitewater rafting.
On her 101st birthday, the family asks her the same question. She
says, “All my life, I’ve been wanting to go whitewater rafting on the
Colorado River.”
Wolitzer said she gave the audience the scene of the joke only to take it away.
“In a good novel, if you set someone up to take it away, that’s cheap,” Wolitzer said. “That’s not fair. That’s a bad choice.”
