Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist Jennifer Egan On: Panic, Awe, Fetishizing Authenticity, and Our Possible AI Futures
Dan Harris interviews Pulitzer-winning novelist Jennifer Egan, discussing her unique writing process, including handwriting first drafts and her "ruthless discipline" to avoid repetition. They also explore her experiences with panic attacks, the nature of authenticity, the impact of technology like AI, and the power of curiosity.
Deep Dive Analysis
12 Topic Outline
Introduction to Jennifer Egan and Her Work
Panic Attacks and the Essentialness of Writing
The Power of Handwriting in the Writing Process
Exploring Consciousness and Technology in 'The Candy House'
Reflections on AI, ChatGPT, and Technological Impact
Cultural Fetishization of Authenticity
Coping with Insubstantiality and Imposter Syndrome
Discipline of Novelty and Avoiding Repetition in Writing
The Value of Receiving and Giving Feedback
Curiosity as a Source of Joy and Understanding
Impact of Success and Maintaining Creative Focus
Jennifer Egan's Other Novels and Short Stories
6 Key Concepts
Writing as Completion
For Jennifer Egan, writing is an essential component that completes an experience, whether terrifying or joyous. Without writing, the world feels like it's missing an important aspect, allowing for processing and giving meaning to events.
Writing for Clarity and Discovery
Writing, especially by hand, helps Jennifer Egan think more clearly and make discoveries she cannot achieve through conversation alone. It allows her to access deeper, more original thinking by pushing past familiar language and groupthink.
Own Your Unconscious
A fictional technology from 'The Candy House' that allows individuals to externalize all their memories and perceptions from birth onto a physical cube. This enables reviewing one's entire life and optionally sharing it with a collective consciousness for access to others' experiences.
Gray Grabs
Small, anonymous snippets of people's memories that can be accessed from the collective consciousness in 'The Candy House.' These are matched using facial recognition to provide insights into specific individuals' lives without revealing their identities.
Fetishization of Authenticity
A cultural phenomenon where authenticity is highly valued and sought after, often because it feels scarce. This craving for 'realness' can be intensified by mediated experiences and social media, leading to attempts to engineer authenticity, such as through apps like 'Be Real'.
Pleasant vs. Unpleasant Disappearing
The concept that the feeling of insubstantiality or 'disappearing' can be experienced in both terrifying and pleasant ways. While panic attacks can manifest as a frightening vanishing, creative absorption in a fictional world or the Buddhist concept of nirvana can offer a pleasant 'snuffing out of the self'.
8 Questions Answered
Panic attacks helped Jennifer Egan realize the essentialness of writing for her experience of the world, as writing was the only thing that not only completed her experiences but also gave them meaning, even allowing her to write during the attacks themselves.
Jennifer Egan believes writing first drafts by hand in cursive has a meditative, concentrating quality that detaches her from the immediate world, allowing her to access deeper, more original thinking and avoid the 'groupthink' that can occur when writing on a computer screen.
The core idea is to allow individuals to externalize and review all their memories and perceptions from birth, and optionally share them with a collective consciousness to gain access to others' experiences, thereby replacing social media.
Jennifer Egan is a bystander to the AI/ChatGPT 'freak out,' noting the constant amplification and tendency toward hysteria can distort the topic. She questions the lack of a utopian vision leading the conversation, suggesting a cultural wariness of technology now perceives negatives alongside promised positives.
Authenticity is fetishized because it feels scarce, especially in a world where much of our experience is mediated and can feel artificial. This artificiality causes a craving for something more authentic, which mass media then attempts to satisfy.
Jennifer Egan acknowledges her persistent self-doubt but has learned to tolerate the discomfort and proceed with action. She relies on the fact that she always feels this way but has usually been able to accomplish her goals, using self-talk and focusing on the work itself to move forward.
Jennifer Egan actively seeks extensive feedback from a writing group and other readers, despite hating criticism. She finds early intervention helpful for defining new approaches and later feedback useful for refining specific issues, ultimately using the 'problem-solving scurry' that criticism ignites to improve her work.
For Jennifer Egan, curiosity is a 'joy provider' that makes everything interesting, eliminates boredom, and wakes up her surroundings. It grants access to the complications and enormity of the world, filling it with possibilities, treasures, and stories.
31 Actionable Insights
1. Prune Creative Habits
Actively work against what you’ve done before and ‘prune’ your own habits to encourage growth in new ways, seeking novelty and avoiding repetition in creative endeavors.
2. Practice Relentless Writing Discipline
Never allow yourself to do the same thing twice when writing to encourage growth and freshness in your work, and consider handwriting to access deeper thinking.
3. Cultivate Discomfort Tolerance
Develop a high tolerance for discomfort, as actually doing the thing you’re afraid of is often what solves the problem and helps you move forward.
4. Embrace Discomfort for Freshness
Be willing to experience brief discomfort by letting go of old approaches that aren’t working, as this can lead to a sense of relief, possibility, and freshness in your work.
5. Cultivate Curiosity for Joy
Actively cultivate genuine curiosity, as it eliminates boredom, makes everything interesting, provides access to complications, and acts as a joy provider by waking up your surroundings to possibilities and treasures.
6. Write to Enhance Clarity
Engage in writing to think more clearly, make discoveries, and understand your own thinking in ways not possible without it.
7. Handwrite First Drafts
Write your first drafts by hand (in cursive) to achieve a meditative or concentrating quality, detach from the world, and access deeper levels of thinking and originality.
8. Bypass Premature Self-Criticism
Use handwriting to bypass the critical part of your brain that censors and tries to fix things too early, allowing for a more relaxed and forward-moving drafting process.
9. Edit on Hard Copies
Print out your work and edit by hand on hard copies, as this process can lead to significant improvements and new ideas.
10. Practice Seeking Feedback
Develop the habit of regularly asking for feedback in all areas of your life—work, relationships, and personal endeavors—as this willingness is a muscle that can lead to positive growth.
11. Rely on External Feedback
As your own ability to read your work freshly diminishes, become increasingly dependent on the voices of other people to provide objective feedback and help you achieve your vision.
12. Overcome Feedback Aversion
When receiving uncomfortable criticism, allow your brain’s problem-solving mechanisms to kick in, as this focus on solutions can distract from negative emotions and help you benefit from good advice.
13. Perform Due Diligence with Experts
When writing about subjects or experiences outside your direct knowledge, perform due diligence by having at least one person who knows that area better review your work to ensure accuracy and authenticity.
14. Manage Internal Self-Criticism
Recognize and learn to manage your internal ‘abusive boss’ or harsh self-talk, understanding that the best response is often to simply do the work and improve self-management over time.
15. Counter Self-Abuse with Action
When experiencing harsh self-talk or an unsupportive internal working environment, the best answer is to simply focus on doing the work, as action can be the solution to internal conflict.
16. Manage Negative Self-Talk
On days filled with self-critical thoughts, recognize it as a day ’to not listen to myself’ and try to work around it, using tools like exercise to shift your state of mind.
17. Build Faith in Your Ability
Over time, cultivate faith that feelings of inadequacy or self-doubt do not necessarily mean you cannot accomplish a task; these feelings can be present while still moving forward.
18. Write for Control and Steadiness
Engage in writing as an act of control, which can instill a sense of empowerment to respond to the world and create steadiness, especially during anxious moments.
19. Activate Thinking Brain to Cut Panic
When experiencing panic, engage your prefrontal cortex (the thinking brain) through activities like writing to help deactivate the amygdala (fear center) and cut the panic.
20. Read Fiction to Calm Panic
When experiencing panic, try reading fiction, as it can engage a part of the brain that helps to calm and soothe.
21. Seek Novelty for Growth
Approach your work as a thrill seeker, actively avoiding repetition to ensure continuous discovery, growth, and a sense of excitement in your creative process.
22. Focus on External Curiosity
If you find your own experiences less engaging, shift your focus to curiosity about other people’s lives and external subjects, as this can be a source of discovery and creative inspiration.
23. Embrace ‘Nosiness’ for Learning
Allow yourself to be ’nosy’ and delight in hearing people’s stories and learning about anything, as this curiosity helps transcend the limits of individual experience and expands your perception of the world’s enormity.
24. Connect Insignificance to Awe
To truly perceive and appreciate the enormity and mystery of the world, allow yourself to feel the tininess, even vanishing, of your own individual life, as this connection is a pathway to experiencing awe.
25. Maintain Perspective on Success
When experiencing success, remain grateful and aware of the role of luck, understanding that many others are equally deserving, to keep a grounded perspective and avoid false humility.
26. Discard Distractions, Focus
After acknowledging success and good fortune, consciously set aside accolades and personal achievements to prevent them from becoming distractions that detract from the quality of your core work.
27. Be Wary of Amplified Topics
Recognize that highly amplified and constant conversations, especially those tending toward hysteria, can have a distorting effect on the topic itself, and approach such discussions with caution.
28. Beware Language Speaking You
Recognize when language and arguments are ‘speaking you’ by using predictable words, phrases, and arguments you’ve heard, and strive to get beyond this to more original thought.
29. Tailor Feedback Thoughtfully
When giving feedback, carefully observe the signals from the person asking for it and consider their current phase in the process to provide the most helpful and appropriate response.
30. Respect Individual Processes
While seeking feedback, acknowledge and respect that everyone’s creative process is radically different, and avoid presuming to dictate how others should create.
31. Know Your Mind’s Limits
Understand your own brain’s predispositions and sensitivities to altered states, as what might be transcendent for some could lead to feeling lost or unable to return for others.
7 Key Quotes
I feel like I'm able to think more clearly on the page than I can just sitting down and thinking. And I think I'm measurably smarter if I'm writing. I just feel like I make discoveries when writing that I simply cannot make, for example, in conversation.
Jennifer Egan
No matter how close you are to someone, you cannot actually enter into their consciousness. So it's so strange to think that our conclusion from that is that we are somehow insubstantial when we are the only one we know.
Jennifer Egan
Human beings are superhuman.
Jennifer Egan
I think that the very fact that any topic or any conversation is so amplified, so constant, so easily tending toward hysteria, sometimes has a distorting effect on the topic.
Jennifer Egan
I'm tired of walking around pretending to be me.
Dan Harris
If I figured out how to do something, my first goal is to not let myself do it.
Jennifer Egan
If I could pick one tool to bring with me into the world, it would probably be curiosity.
Jennifer Egan
1 Protocols
Jennifer Egan's Writing and Feedback Process
Jennifer Egan- Write first drafts by hand, often in cursive, to access a deeper, more original state of mind.
- Print out hard copies of the writing and edit them by hand, as this relaxes critical tension and allows for new discoveries.
- Seek early feedback from a trusted writing group to define new approaches and identify major issues, even if uncomfortable.
- In later stages, seek more refined feedback from the writing group on specific areas like pacing or chapter effectiveness.
- Obtain additional feedback from other readers outside the core writing group.
- Perform 'due diligence' by having experts review specific content (e.g., academic discussions) to ensure accuracy and authenticity.