Author Talk: Francine Prose

1974, from bestselling author Francine Prose, is about how she had a close but troubled interlude with a man who had helped leak the secret Pentagon Papers in 1971. It is also about our country in the midst of radical social change, and what it was like to be a young woman in San Francisco then, an aspiring writer and Joni Mitchell fan with strong emotions and political convictions.

In 1974, Prose was a 26-year-old who had divorced, dropped out of graduate school at Harvard, and fled to the West Coast. She had already published her first novel when she met economist and engineer Tony Russo, who was a hero to many for his Pentagon Papers role and his jail time for refusing to testify about it. The papers proved, in Prose’s words, “…what the antiwar movement had never been able to prove. Our presence in Vietnam was unwanted.  We’d committed war crimes.” Prose saw Russo as a counterculture and free-speech hero, and as “antiwar royalty.” But the ensuing relationship between them, which was never quite an affair, proved difficult.

By the time Prose met him, Russo was paranoid and unemployed. “An aura of unease surrounded him, the faint distressing buzz of an electrical panel with a burnt fuse and some wires pulled loose.” She organizes her narrative around nights spent with Russo, driving manically around San Francisco, listening to his stories, which she describes as having confusing chronologies and being often not possible to follow.  His paranoia often involved the FBI. Prose and Russo eventually had a disturbing and dramatic parting.

This memoir is at once heartfelt and ironic, funny and sad, personal and political, and an insightful look at how Prose became a writer during a time when the country, too, was reshaping its identity.Here’s what the critics are saying:

“…The era Prose profiles [in] 1974 produced crucial social advances, and did collateral damage to those…driven mad by the effort required…the best book yet by the wildly prolific, astonishingly talented Francine Prose.” — Los Angeles Times

“Captivating…. With its fraught, late-night conversations about secrets and regret—most of which take place in a big American car hurtling down San Francisco’s rain-slicked streets—[1974] often reads like a heady film noir set amid the ashes of ’60s idealism.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Deeply felt and devastatingly confessional…” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Prose is now a distinguished, award-winning American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic, the author of twenty novels and much nonfiction. A review of 1974 justly calls Prose “one of the great overachievers of her era.” She is a visiting professor at Bard College, a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and formerly president of PEN American Center. She has received Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NYPL Cullman Center. Her novel Blue Angel (2000) was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2010, she received the Washington University International Humanities Medal. She has even had a novel adapted as a Broadway musical.

The eminent Roxana Robinson, who will introduce and be in conversation with Prose, is the author of seven novels, three collections of short stories, and the definitive biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Four of these were chosen as New York Times Notable Books, three as New York Times Editors’ Choices. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and many other magazines and has been widely anthologized and broadcast on NPR.

Attend in-person only (no Zoom), with registration required. Book copies will be available for sale and signing.