The China piece [in the New Yorker] came out of a question that Dave [Foster Wallace] and I talked about constantly: How can we keep sitting in our rooms and struggling with fiction when there is so much wrong with the world? During the summer after I signed the book contract, my sense of duty became utterly oppressive. So much bad stuff was happening in the country — and happening to wild birds around the world! — that I felt I couldn’t just keep wasting months. I had to go out and do something, get my hands dirty with some problem. Only after the China piece failed to find a discernible audience or have any discernible impact did I get it through my head that I might actually have more effect on the world by retreating to my room and doing what I was put on earth to do.

Jonathan Franzen, The Art of Fiction in The Paris Review #195