JENNIFER EGAN’S WORLD WITHOUT PRIVACY
IN 2015, JENNIFER EGAN WAS DEEP INTO revisions of her novel Manhattan Beach when the memory of a friend from her San Francisco childhood flitted across her mind. She conjured images of tetherball games and bloody noses, but there were cloudy gaps, so she searched the woman’s name on Facebook, only to find her profile flooded with condolences. She had died two days earlier in a car accident.
“That had a huge impact on me,” Egan says, gazing at the East River from Brooklyn Bridge Park. “I found myself remembering her childhood as I experienced it, and wanting to see it more clearly. I know it’s all there in my mind—so why can I see some memories and not others?”
Egan wished for a machine that would allow her to revisit both her new novel, which arrived April 5.
