Anna Quindlen hates to write.

‘I hate having to do it over and over again, like housework,’ Quindlen said. ‘But I love having written. It’s who I am.’

Quindlen, a Pulitzer-winning author, Newsweek columnist and former New York Times columnist, spoke to nearly 2,100 fans and avid readers Wednesday night at the Mulroy Civic Center. Their eyes and ears were fixed upon her place at the podium.

‘Books are the destination and the journey,’ Quindlen said. ‘To me, they’re just home.’

In her lecture, the premiere of the Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series produced by the Friends of the Central Library, Quindlen described the passion of reading, the bittersweet challenge of writing and the future of books, peppering her main points with personal anecdotes and famed authors’ quotes.

‘I was mesmerized the entire time,’ said Diana Cramer, a Syracuse librarian. ‘She was fabulous.’

In Quindlen’s youth, other children played outside and banged on her door, asking her to join them. But she preferred to sprawl in a chair with her leg thrown over its arm and a book resting in her lap. Lost in the world of books, Quindlen said that characters became real people, more real than those she knew in true life, and fictional places became true places that she visited and inhabited.

‘I read like a maniac,’ Quindlen said.

The attitude that today’s books are of a far worse quality than books of the past is ridiculous, Quindlen said, because society has always complained that the current quality of books had plummeted, yet books continue to thrive. People seem to love the old-fashioned ‘thing’ of the book, and the idea of reading on a laptop computer screen just hasn’t caught on.

‘No one wants to take one to bed with her,’ Quindlen said. ‘No one wants to pass ‘Heidi’ on disk to her daughter on her eighth birthday.’

Adam Brainard, a junior at East Syracuse-Minoa Central High School who won an essay contest sponsored by the Friends of the Central Library, said that the idea of books thriving is encouraging.

‘Reading’s not dying out. On the contrary, it’s really growing,’ Brainard said.

Many believe that children today have become too easily distracted or bored with reading because they live in a world of computers, television and video games, Quindlen said. But the frenzy over each Harry Potter book – any Harry Potter book – illustrates that a love for reading still exists for kids.

‘They all might as well have been called ‘Harry Potter and the Lingerie Sale at Saks’ for all the difference the title makes,’ added Quindlen with a shrug, as the audience erupted in laughter.

After her lecture, before she began the question and answer session, Quindlen asked the audience if anyone knew the score of that night’s Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees game.

‘But you people are in New York!’ she protested when many people cheered at the news of Boston’s win.

Then Quindlen quickly turned serious to respond to the first audience question, explaining that the experience of being a reporter is the best preparation for becoming a novelist.

‘I knew how to write on demand, and I knew how to write when I didn’t feel like writing,’ she said. ‘Eventually you learn to write reasonably competently.’

Reporters learn how real people speak and how they respond, and that knowledge is most important in writing fiction, she added.

Quindlen responded to questions about her more recent novels, ‘Black and Blue’ and ‘Blessings,’ and said that she has been relatively pleased with every film that has been based on one of her works. She also said that although she is working on another book, she cannot reveal details because she is not quite sure of its final themes.

‘Reading made me what I am today,’ Quindlen said. ‘My voice, my books, I need it. And so do all of you.’

Published on October 15, 2003 at 12:00 pm