Tom Perrotta is an author who knows what he likes – and what he likes is sex.

‘I feel like such an adolescent sometimes,’ Perrotta said. ‘I’m reading a book and a sex scene comes up and I get excited. Sex scenes are hard to do well, but they can really help a novel.’

Perrotta, author of such books as ‘Joe College’ and ‘Election,’ which was adapted into a major motion picture, spoke last night Gifford Auditorium as part of the author seminar portion of ETS 107: Living Writers. Perrotta discussed a range of topics, from what it takes to make a novel into a movie to how a middle-aged man can write from the perspective of a lesbian teenager.

‘I’ve become really comfortable writing women’s characters,’ Perrotta said. ‘I try to get inside them and think of them as characters and not as alien beings whose thoughts I couldn’t possible fathom.’

Many students were impressed with the thorough attention Perrotta gave to each question. Unlike other authors who’ve visited for the course, Perrotta seemed focused not only on his own opinions, but on what others taught him in the past.

ETS 107 students read Perrotta’s latest novel, ‘Little Children,’ which is made up of dark but funny satires of modern-day parenthood, as two people, unhappy in their marriages and family lives, meet on a playground and go on to have an illicit affair.

‘I always wanted to write a love story on a playground,’ Perrotta said. ‘I thought it would be interesting to set a love story in such an unsexy place.’

Acclaimed by the New York Times as ‘an American Chekhov,’ to which he responded by admitting that his friends call him ‘an American Jack-off,’ Perrotta was influenced by former Syracuse University instructor/authors such as Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff during his time as a graduate student at SU. He said the realization of his desire to be a writer came during high school, after failing as an athlete because he wasn’t growing, and as a guitarist due to lack of musical talent.

Yet it was the university that assured his path into the written word. Perrotta remembers SU as being an interesting, exciting and, oftentimes, a difficult place where he really had to settle down and work, said Perrotta. Still, he enjoyed the experience.

‘This is where I learned how to write something that is interesting to a reader,’ Perrotta said, ‘and not just someone who is in your class.’

Christopher Kennedy, director of the master of fine arts for the creative writing department, went to graduate school with Perrotta, and said he felt the release of Perrotta’s new book made it an appropriate time to bring the author back to SU. After listening to poets and counterculture story tellers for their last three writers, students in the Living Writers class were also glad to finally listen to someone they could make a better connection with.

‘I liked his style, very satirical,’ said Bianca D’Angelo, a freshman accelerated law major. ‘He answered all the questions very politely. Sometimes an author can be snappy about people who ask questions. He was not.’

Perrotta knows what it’s like to be a young writer, and his advice for others in his situation is relatively simple. His main advice for authors who write well is for them to immerse themselves in the art they’re interested in. If they want to write movies, watch lot of movies. If they want to write books, read a lot of books. For a period, writers have to eat, sleep and breathe the art, Perrotta said.

For the last four to five years, Perrotta has been studying to become a screenwriter so he can adapt his own works for Hollywood. Recently, working with Todd Field, director of ‘In The Bedroom,’ Perrotta finished the first draft for the script to ‘Little Children.’ He said he’s having trouble starting the casting process, though, due to the fact that the main character, Sarah, is supposed to be a plainer-looking woman. Students threw out ideas for women Perrotta hadn’t thought of – but was impressed with – such as Renee Zellweger and Minnie Driver.

Perrotta finished the evening by reading an excerpt from his latest novel, in which the two main characters make love for the first time after being forced inside during a rainstorm. And although it was filled with graphic description and vivid imagery, no one appeared to be shocked.

‘People have sex,’ D’Angelo said. ‘It’s just a practical thing of life.’

Published on November 17, 2004 at 12:00 pm