Jonathan Safran Foer Meets Jeffrey Eugenides

A conversation between two great American writers, Jonathan Safran Foer and Jeffrey Eugenides, about the difficulty of writing and living, and the necessity of striking the right balance of self hate in order to write.

While the freedom of writing is exhilarating, it is also difficult to be faced with your own inabilities, and the two writers agree that writing is a difficult task. "I have a fair amount of fear when I am writing a book. You need to hate your work, but if you hate it too much it will stop you from writing." Jeffrey Eugenides says. You cannot blame the general imperfections of life, only yourself, Jonathan Safran Foer adds. They also talk about how they began reading, about striking a balance between getting to the heart of the subject and the reader, and about how stories always stem from problems, as for instance Eugenides search for identity.

The internationally acclaimed, Pulitzer Price winning writer Jeffrey Eugenides (b.1960) is best known for his novels 'The Virgin Suicides', 'Middlesex' and 'The Marriage Plot'. Award winning writer and philosophy major Jonathan Safran Foer (b.1977) is known for his novels Everything Is 'Illuminated' and 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'.

The conversation between Jeffrey Eugenides and Jonathan Safran Foer was moderated by journalist Martin Krasnik as part of the Louisiana Literature festival, August 2012.

Edited by Honey Biba Beckerlee.

Produced by Peder Wuth.

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Supported by Nordea-fonden.