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Maynard, who wears dapper, vintage duds and films clandestine reels of less-fashionable lemmings on the subway, is counterbalanced by Jennica, the embodiment of that twentysomething optimism of finding the perfect apartment, the perfect job and, of course, the perfect mate.
Delson begs off identifying too strongly with either side — "If there were a short answer to that, then I wouldn't need to write the book" — but his own path toward "Maynard & Jennica" suggests equal parts of both (with a hearty dash of eccentricity).
Born and raised in San Jose, Calif., the son of a German potter-sculptor mother and physicist father, he studied math and linguistics at Stanford University, worked for a year and a half as a paralegal in San Francisco and then moved to Berlin. To help pay his way there, he sold $200 subscriptions (25 in total) to a year's worth of his personal letters: every other week Delson would draft a letter to his best friend and then send out photocopies. He attended the NYU School of Law while writing a novel about "a criminal conspiracy in the agricultural chemicals industry and the government lawyer who's going to bust it up," with the hopes of having it published before graduation to avoid actually becoming a lawyer.
"At 25, I was really deluded," admits Delson.
In 2005, he quit his law job and wrote "Maynard & Jennica," the film rights to which have been optioned by producer Scott Rudin.
If the Greek chorus of characters at times proves unwieldy to unsuspecting readers, hopefully Delson's deft ear for evoking their believable voices will spare him the critical fate of first-time authors whose novels jump with such speed to the silver screen.
"Occasionally when you're reading book reviews, there's this particular thing that is leveled at people of 'Oh, this book was really just a first draft of a screenplay,'" says Delson, who firmly believes novels and films are not mutually exclusive art forms. "If someone were to ask, 'Who are your major influences?' and I weren't to name Woody Allen among them, that would be misrepresenting myself in some way." Or, for that matter, Stephen King.
Delson begs off identifying too strongly with either side — "If there were a short answer to that, then I wouldn't need to write the book" — but his own path toward "Maynard & Jennica" suggests equal parts of both (with a hearty dash of eccentricity).
Born and raised in San Jose, Calif., the son of a German potter-sculptor mother and physicist father, he studied math and linguistics at Stanford University, worked for a year and a half as a paralegal in San Francisco and then moved to Berlin. To help pay his way there, he sold $200 subscriptions (25 in total) to a year's worth of his personal letters: every other week Delson would draft a letter to his best friend and then send out photocopies. He attended the NYU School of Law while writing a novel about "a criminal conspiracy in the agricultural chemicals industry and the government lawyer who's going to bust it up," with the hopes of having it published before graduation to avoid actually becoming a lawyer.
"At 25, I was really deluded," admits Delson.
In 2005, he quit his law job and wrote "Maynard & Jennica," the film rights to which have been optioned by producer Scott Rudin.
If the Greek chorus of characters at times proves unwieldy to unsuspecting readers, hopefully Delson's deft ear for evoking their believable voices will spare him the critical fate of first-time authors whose novels jump with such speed to the silver screen.
"Occasionally when you're reading book reviews, there's this particular thing that is leveled at people of 'Oh, this book was really just a first draft of a screenplay,'" says Delson, who firmly believes novels and films are not mutually exclusive art forms. "If someone were to ask, 'Who are your major influences?' and I weren't to name Woody Allen among them, that would be misrepresenting myself in some way." Or, for that matter, Stephen King.
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