Mr. Tapper – who just signed a book deal himself — notes that President Obama received an early copy of the author's Freedom this summer at a Hamptons bookstore — a preview that caused a bit of a stir in the publishing community.

The meeting wasn't on the president's pool schedule, but it looks like Mr. Franzen was squeezed in between an 11 a.m. meeting with Secretary of State Clinton and a 2:30 p.m. flight to Rhode Island for fundraising.

Perhaps the two discussed the upcoming midterm elections, as Mr. Franzen does in this video released by The Guardian today. In it, he says that as he was finishing Freedom he thought the country might be in for some kind of political change but isn't hopeful for the elections because "now people left of the middle feel puzzled and sort of anguished because we don't have an object for our anger but the right is still as angry as ever."