Writer Elif Batuman wrote a 3,195 word essay for the Guardian about her stressful time in New York when she did not win the National Book Critics Circle award, but all anyone wants to talk about is big time novelist Jonathan Franzen's drug stash. That's because two-thirds of the way into her story, she heartlessly narcs out the author. Revealing a conversation that Franzen probably didn't realize was on the record for a major newspaper (because it wasn't at that time!), Batuman describes how she was jonesing for weed at the awards after-party, and turned to Franzen to score:
I told him that I had loved Freedom, which is true and would have been a great ending point for our exchange. So it's difficult to articulate what possessed me, at a later, boozier point in the dinner, to ask Franzen whether he had any weed. In part, I was curious whether he had any. And in part, despite severe fatigue and a mild constitutional dislike of weed, I felt somehow unable not to pursue momentary contact with a half-glimpsed parallel world in which the evening continued in this really different, really mellow way.
"Wheat?" Franzen's agent repeated, frowning. "Why would you need wheat?"
"Not wheat - weed."
She stared at me blankly.
"Weed," my agent repeated.
"There's some in my freezer," Franzen said. "But it's all the way uptown."
Real smooth, Batuman; why not publish his exact address and apartment number while you're at it? Franzen, who lives in California, keeps a pied-à-terre on the Upper East Side, and sensibly freezes his herb to make delicious marijuana smoothies. Well, he can kiss all that goodbye. We imagine the city's narcotics squad is tossing the place right now—depending on the size of the stash, they could throw the book at Franzen, and once the corrections officers at Rikers get their hands on this author, he can kiss his freedom goodbye!
