State by State / Jonathan Franzen Reading

When asked to contribute an entry on New York that combined reportage and memoir to State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, Jonathan Franzen went the slightly untraditional route and wrote a play about a literary writer named Jonathan Franzen trying to interview New York State. During a performance Friday night at the New School, he played himself, plaintive nasality and all, Parker Posey played a hyper publicist, Sarah Vowell played a historian, writer Ellery Washington played a geologist, and acclaimed actress Maria Tucci played the great state herself. It was big fun.

In the play, New York State is shielded in a maze of cubicles, her time protected by various people publicizing, photographing, documenting, and studying her. When Franzen finally arrives in her office, simultaneously shell-shocked by a long discourse about the Revolutionary War and fired up about Manhattan schist, he discovers a wise, stately woman who cuts through the BS and refuses to reminisce about the good old days. Of course he came here as a young man looking for fame and romance, she acknowledges, and of course on his first visit to the city he met the man he wanted to become. And yet. “Money,” she reminds him. “It was always about money.”

Photo: thanks