"I don't really know how I come up with it . . . things just come to me, and I have fun with it."
Author Jennifer Egan, having just won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, clearly comes up with a lot of interesting ideas.
Egan visited DePauw Wednesday as a guest of the Kelly Writers Series, a fund which brings notable writers to campus. She also conducted a craft talk before reading a chapter of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "A Visit from the Goon Squad," in Meharry Hall.
Despite the storms outside, the pews in Meharry held a few hundred attendees, and dozens made the trek to the off-campus reception.
"I thought it was an incredible turnout," said Emily Doak, chair of the Kelly Writers Series and host for the post-reading reception. "It was really exciting that all these huge things happened to the writer as we were getting ready to host [her]."
Egan, who has published four novels and a collection of short stories, also won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for "A Visit from the Goon Squad."
Time Magazine also named her one of the Time 100 — a list of the most influential people in the world — in its April 21 edition.
She read the first chapter, which follows one of the novel's central characters, Sasha, through a therapy session while she details her struggles as a kleptomaniac. Each following chapter focuses on a different character who, by some degrees of separation, are all related.
"I love writing a story that no one else can tell," Egan said at the reception. Though Egan is also a journalist, having been published in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's and others, she said she came to writing through fiction.
Earlier Wednesday, Egan described her writing process during a craft talk to a standing-room-only crowd in a classroom.
"This book actually didn't begin with a grand scheme," Egan said. The Pulitzer-Prize winning book was conceived 12 years ago, when she noticed an abandoned wallet in a bathroom. A victim of theft and credit card fraud herself, Egan wondered what type of person would take the wallet and what the thief would do with it.
"I like, in a way, to know as little as possible," Egan said. "All I really need to know is when and where… I'm just waiting to see, as the reader would, what's going to happen."
After writing the first chapter, Egan said that she thought it would stand alone as a short story, but Bennie, a peripheral character, caught her eye and she wrote a second chapter.
She decided that she would write a book like a music album, with "tracks" that create a big idea and unified feeling. Each chapter intentionally about a different person, was written in a different style, and each chapter is written to be able to stand completely on its own as a story.
Students and faculty, most of whom had read "A Visit From the Goon Squad" in the past week, then were able to ask Egan questions about the book and her experience as a writer.
"I think getting a writer a week after they won the Pulitzer in fiction is probably the biggest coup we've had for the series," Doak said, who has been at DePauw since 2006. "I think it's been a highlight of my life as a writer … to be able to meet her. I was giddy — I still am."