Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, gave a reading on campus this week. What cynical tales of New York City romance and adultery! He was seemingly modest for a writer whose reviews often employ the word "skewer" to talk about his work, and seemingly without the arrogance one might imagine after the amplified Oprah debacle a few years back.
We also had a brief opportunity to speak with Tom Fenton, a long-time foreign correspondent for US TV network CBS, and a champion of good journalism, the decline of which he laments in Bad News : The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All. Fenton spoke of the "black news hole" in this country (ludicrously, you cannot even get CNN International here - the local product is a woeful mix of commentators and puffery), and how television networks no longer have any interest in foreign news, and very little interest in hard news at all. He argued the US is running the world with a free hand, and that the public are giving them carte blanche to do so as they don't get to see it. Therefore the world has a problem. "We need more and better news," Fenton writes in Bad News. "Our lives depend on it."
And finally, we feted one of the KW Fellowship 'family' at a champagne and chocolate supper last night: the gorgeous and very clever Fara, for her magnificent achievement of The Power of the Purse.
It's a blueprint for intelligent marketing to women, written in engaging and exacting prose.
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