Franzen: s/d

The Twenty-Seventh City is on deck for me, so your comments are a little disheartening. What, exactly, don't you like about it? I'll probably give it a chance anyway.

I kept thinking 'what a freak.'

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/content/articles/050523fi_fiction

Anyways, then I read his more "literary" (for lack of a better word) stuff and found it kinda ponderous in comparison.

I think people who come from The Corrections, or his very elegant stories, expect more from The Twenty-Seventh City than they're going to find. Don't compare it to The Corrections; compare it to the average thriller--Hunt for Red October, say, or Ludlum.

My largest thought about the book is how US-specific it seems to be. I feel that many of his claims must have been (or remain) plausible for the USA, while feeling off-beam for the UK. Does anyone agree with that? I suppose I am mainly thinking of his sense of living amid cultural 'totalitarianism' (an ill-advised word anyway, no doubt) and a philistinism that threatens to crush the spirit. He says what he's getting at is the difficulty of retaining 'individuality and complexity in a noisy and distracting mass culture'. But is this a genuine problem? I think it's a bogus one. I don't think I can think of anyone I know who has lost their individuality to the mass culture around them.

He is better and more original on the decline of the 'public'.

i like his story in this weeks new yorker a lot. i think the distanced, reportorial tone gives it some emotional heft & he mostly avoids the exaggerated meanspiritedness of the corrections although some of the "professional democrat" stuff comes close

Yeah, that's really good, I enjoyed it a lot. The posts upthread about his strength being character are otm.

http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/67497/

enthusiasm about the new one

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100823,00.html

If they could talk, the otters would tell Franzen to man up, chill out and have a sea urchin. But I'm not sure that's possible for him, or even a good idea. Franzen's self-consciousness is part of what makes his writing so good, because he is painfully conscious not only of his own self but of your self too. It's his instrument, in the musical and also the scientific sense: a delicate, finely calibrated recording device. The otters may not be worried. But Franzen is worried enough for all of us.

*barf*

I love that NYmag review, a joy to read such simple good vibes - am anticipating bigtime now.

All that stuff about Franzen the crank and curmudgeon I dislike in principle in an individual - but what's so great is that with him I don't particularly care and that's fine, whereas some other authors feel like all front, as if the books are just a means of them selling you their personality.

Sam Anderson is pretty great I think - also looking forward to this now.

Jonathan Franzen's glasses held to ransom: Launch party for acclaimed novel Freedom marred by theft of spectacles from author's face

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/05/jonathan-franzen-glasses-held-to-ransom

Been reading Freedom. I find myself swinging between feeling involved with the story and feeling like there is some overtly obvious manipulation going on where it's like watching a tv melodrama.

totally

kinda feel like tv melodramas are more artfully structured

lol i think the LRB review compared it to a tv melodrama as well

why is the emotional manipulation like that of a tv melodrama and not like that of a victorian novel?

because he speaks to our times, dude.

and shows us who we are.

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/books/201012/jonathan-franzen-profile-chuck-klosterman-freedom

Could Walter's using the example of the Dave Matthews Band as the epitome of bad music be a sub-textual reference to ILX?

I find it difficult to believe Franzen has never stumbled briefly into ilx, while searching the net, due to its roots in Pitchfork. That he would stay and tourist around in it seems only very remote and unlikely to me. He'd never escape and his output would fall to zero.

on the other hand, i think a lot of people just dislike the dave matthews band

also he took like ten years to write freedom, right? that's like nine and a half days per page. p much zero

In Freedom, the portrayal of Patty is intriguing because her awakening is never proclaimed, is muffled and almost denied (I haven't read her postscript yet), and in her section -- "written by her" -- she is defenseless and naive. So overall, Franzen keeps her distance and seems to be saying that some things can't be known and are the domain of fiction.

The kitchen sink quality is odd because my guess is that Franzen is reticent, but in a weird way, it seems he aspires to be frantic and popular, but in Freedom it plays out in a more controlled, 4th album way (than in the Corrections). This is not a judgment upon him or his writing.

I'm about 1/3 of the way into Strong Motion. Enjoying it, possibly more than the later two

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Maybe I need to read this new essay again but I was really searching for the point.

Jonathan Franzen is the author, most recently, of “Freedom.” This essay is adapted from a commencement speech he delivered on May 21 at Kenyon College.

Hey, that's my alma mater. My year, though, instead of Franzen or Wallace, we had a certain Republican presidential candidate as commencement speaker whose son was supposed to graduate with us but did not :-(.

should I bother reading Freedom? I don't care for Updike.

I love Updike and I loved Freedom, so...no.

Freedom made me feel gross. Franzen is a good writer in terms of his language but every character was just awful, even the ones with which you're supposed to sympathize.

yeah he can't wipe this sheen of disdain from the characters, and I HATE his narrative voice: this pseudo-cute smart informality.

That combined with his awful sex scenes made it a queasy reading experience.

i actually kinda liked the corrections as i was reading it, even if the flaws were plentiful and obvious, like here is a dude who came out of one tradition and is now pushing himself hard in the opposite direction, even if the ball is bouncing off the backboard 50 percent of the time. but freedom was just junk. whoever said "tv melodramas" up thread was otm, but it's more like someone turned one of those not-even-melodramatic-enough-to-be-oscar-bait indie flicks into an hbo miniseries. except instead of coddling and putting a halo around the gently fucked-up middle-class characters the way most of those filmmakers do, you get, as alfred said, a constant and not always subliminal disdain. i don't mind unlikable protagonists or even author-contempt for same but the style's gotta be a LOT better than franzen's and the stakes have gotta be higher. or it's at least got to be funny.

franzen the person, at least as expressed through his writing-about-himself since it's not like i know the dude, strikes me as one of the more deeply unpleasant literary personas of "our" generation.

that new yorker article he wrote recently (robinson crusoe/dfw/etc) mostly made me feel bad for him. so bitter.

i love 'the corrections' fwiw.

"etc" there = "jonathan fucking franzen" and it was as usual the primary subject of the essay iirc

yeah that essay was the first that actually made me want to put sugar in his gas tank or something. and it's not like there's been a shortage of irritating j. franzen essays over the last 15 years.

One of my favorite horrors: "The kitchen area was a nauseating, never-cleaned sty that smelled like a mental illness."

HOW DOES ANYTHING SMELL LIKE A MENTAL ILLNESS?

jars of pee iirc

freedom is what happens when a meanspirited and successful novelist who lives in brooklyn decides that he can write authoritatively about all sorts of things and people that have very little to do with the daily lives of meanspirited, successful novelists who live in brooklyn.

like his disdain and his lack of curiosity make it impossible for him to accurately or convincingly portray how someone like joey would see or feel about the world so he ends up being this ridiculous, hateful figure. & w/ the exception of the bird stuff most of the 'detail' in the novel came across like half-remembered takes on old new yorker and atlantic articles with a bit of the sunday style section thrown in.

difficult listening hour helpfully provided several examples of sparkling prose from the Crusoe article:

To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.
Even when I didn’t have anybody to call or text or e-mail, I wanted to keep fondling my new Bold and experiencing the marvelous clarity of its screen, the silky action of its track pad, the shocking speed of its responses, the beguiling elegance of its graphics.

It’s a long story, but basically I fell in love with birds. I did this not without significant resistance, because it’s very uncool to be a birdwatcher, because anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool.

the stuff about dfw was so weirdly full of unexamined or apparently unconscious rage.

i get where he's coming from (as a close colleague of dfw's reading the avalanche of posthumous press), but the part where he's imagining/projecting dfw's thoughts about how famous and loved he'll be after killing himself is so jaw-droppingly self-centered.

anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool.

this guy is an asshole. NOBODY thinks this way except maybe Ethan Hawke's character in Reality Bites.

Don't read the book.

No worries. I put it down at pg. 12, which I haven't done with a book in years. It didn't even deserve throwing it across the room.

i feel weird criticizing someone's reminiscence of their dead friend but the part in that article where he says something about how DFW's problem was that he couldn't appreciate the wonders of things like BIRD-WATCHING was maybe the most cringe-inducing franzen moment ever.

you know, one thing i will give freedom, is that all this time after reading it, i still get irked when i think of it. which is not something i can say for many contemporary novels ive read and disliked (even intensely at the time) over the last few years.

i know some people on ilb had problems with it (i couldnt bear to read the thread through when i saw p.f. doing his "robot trying to understand the humans" thing), but goon squad taking the pulitzer over this gave me the same schafenfreude-y high that bigelow spanking cameron on oscar night a few years ago did.

ooooh i hate this guy.

can't stand him either. thought my dislike when I read is essay on Gaddis in the NYer. . . nope, he tops it years later with that weird/gross DFW island essay

thought my dislike had reached it's peak that is

i knd of admire his complete shamelessness about intellectually showing his ass in public. (see: the gaddis essay.) admire in a very abstract way, mind you.

the dfw/island essay is something i hope he'll feel a certain shame for later in his life. given who we're talking about, i wouldnt put money on it, though.

(my secret shame is my gross addiction to the naturalist middle-class family/social novel. it's like the lit equivalent of really digging that bon iver album or something. so in a weird way i *want* to like franzen, or wanted *to* like him. but it's like he's hellbent on doing everything, as a writer and a person, to make me loathe him. and i figure if i'm gonna waste time on this sort of b.s. there are stil a raft of philip roth novels i've yet to read.)

i avoided it for a long time, until after i read the pale king--not because the essay and the book had much to do with one another, but because i knew the essay would be tough to read. (either cringeworthy or well-put together and sad). i thought maybe it would be touching, but instead i just felt embarrassed for the guy. i kind of want to read it again, someday, if that makes sense, because it creeped me out so much.

i don't think it should be shameful to read middle-class family/social novels, at all. i want to like the guy too. i'm still on his team. but i haven't read freedom and i doubt i will. the corrections was enough. you know who i really hate along with franzen is rick moody. that guy is terrible. hadn't thought about that guy in ages, but i was at a bankrupt borders sale today and there were tons of moody's last book (ha, along with lots of pale kings and freedoms.)

heh rick moody makes me equally angry for both similar and completely different reasons as j-franz.

i think there's a lot about both of them that they think is subtly self-deprecating but actually comes off as a blanket contempt for anyone of a similar class/education/social background as them who just doesn't happen to *be* them.

(not that this is exclusive to them as feted white upper-middle-class chroniclers of the angst of their millieu, of course.)

no you're right they just have this chip on their shoulders (especially franzy pants). i have a soft spot for moody because he's a musician. i haven't heard any of the music, but i dunno, it brings the guy down to earth somehow and makes me forget about his horrible prose. franzy just seems like an A+ prick, totally contemptuous of all human life, etc

ill kinda rep for franzen's essay collection 'how to be alone', at the very least over his fiction. i think part of it is that in my worst moments i can empathize with franzen's pungent disgust for almost all aspects of contemporary life but i also felt like the essays were less terrible in their certainty, like franzen could at some points gain access to what the world outside his head looked like and realized that a lot of the time the problem is him. like he could see his 'legitimate' rage at the world's base selfishness and unkindness curdle into this self-regarding myopia? idk i thought it was interesting but maybe it was just too 'there but for the grace of god go i' for me to hate outright...

good post -- makes me feel more inclined to check out his essays at some point. the last franzen i read was the corrections, back in 2006. i want to read his essay on dfw but it's behind the nyer paywall and i don't have a sub at the moment so that'll have to wait

I felt so dirty reading Freedom -- as if someone had poured ooze over me -- that I stopped reading it after seventy pages, which I NEVER do.

I fucking hate the kind of all-pervasive jocular flippancy in Franzen's tone, you see it in so many modern American writers now, post-Corrections. It's okay when he's doing obvious comedy, less so when he's talking about one of his key characters being raped as a schoolgirl.

gonna try real hard to remember all the things i thought about freedom, & that ny-er article (most recent dfw one), & mount a defence at some point - i think i more think that he's sometimes good, usually not terrible & just generally a lot better than one might assume from this thread, but i realise i am gonna have to have the stats to back this.

i think he's VERY good as a stylist, fiction-wise. on freedom he seemed to finally achieve the more-or-less transparent, slick-as-grease, lyrical-but-not-really thing he was going for on the corrections. it's just that, as mentioned above, i couldn't get with the content or the tone.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/festival/assets_c/2011/10/AuthorJon_Neils_127752799_600-thumb-465x310-109844.jpeg

this picture is kind of unnerving

i liked Freedom quite a bit (and still LOVE, even on a second reading, The Corrections) but Freedom does have problems. I couldn't reconcile the four or five different Pattys into one Patty at four different stages of her life, she wasn't a believable whole even although for the most part i liked, or could sympathise with her, at those different points. Joey's character arc wasn't convincing because the main thrust of his business dealings in south america/iraq was totally, ridiculously, unbelievable and garbled and rushed. In spite of this i was still entertained and ultimately moved by the book. Plus I think I just like Franzen a whole lot in spite of his persona. i met him at a reading and talked to him for a bit and found him very attractive.

^kinda agree w/ this except for liking franzen as a person. idk, maybe i do a little. at least think hes interesting. i couldnt even read that nonfic 'how to be alone' thing tho. i think the Patty character arc was probably the best of any of them, though to some degree i found all the characters compelling. updike is an ok comparison, though franzens sentences are not nearly as evocative & are too clunkily infused w/ pop/political culture here

Just reread patches of The Corrections and it is still fabulous. Comic dialogue is one of its greatest strengths.

We mentioned Franzen's New Yorker article on Edith Wharton. A response in The Daily Beast.

every once in a while i pick up the corrections and every time i look at the first paragraph it stops me dead in my tracks. and stops me from ever reading the book.

"The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat."

this paragraph drives me a little crazy and the whole northern religion of things comes to an end. firstly, i REALLY want to know how apples ripening in a bag add to the "madness" and "disorder" of an autumn prairie cold front. secondly, i ALWAYS imagine that the storm windows are actually IN the bedrooms. Like, they are all on the bed shuddering. Though, that at least does imply some sort of madness. Thirdly, is the "gust after gust of disorder"...wind? Do empty rooms and yards free of children somehow add to the "madness" of a cold front? if there are leaves and acorns and ripening apples it can't be THAT cold yet. Are leaf blowers and clothes dryers ominous symbols of mother nature's fury? And are the trees smoking a lot of cigarettes and pacing a lot? What exactly makes them "restless"?

so many questions...

and even when i browse at random i find things like:

"It's the fate of most Ping-Pong tables in home basements eventually to serve the ends of other, more desperate games."

It's like one of those wise and pithy Tolstoy quotes...except....really? IS that the fate of most Ping-Pong tables in home basements? Maybe I hang out in the wrong prairie towns.

is he talking abt man hunting man??

i have no idea.

local apples

the whole northern spie religion of things coming to an end.

wait, northern spy/spie wouldn't be local to a prairie. nevermind.

i read that paragraph and it makes me think the person who wrote it has only read about going outside. or only seen pictures of outside.

I don't know, I feel the problem may be obscurely connected with wanting to do this:

The madness of the trees ripening in the mortgage of a minor light. You could feel it: gust after gust of disorder. The cold front restless in the sky: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low on the autumn prairie, termperatures falling, storm windows shuddering in empty bedrooms. No red oaks in the yard here. The children rained acorns on houses with no gasoline. The nasal contention of a clothes dryer, the drone of a leaf blower, paper apples in a local bag, the autumn prairie coming to an end. A cold front lengthened on yellowing zoysia. The smell of the whole northern religion of things with which Alfred Lambert had made morning love to the wicker seat after a paintbrush. HIccuping.

dude, that is friggin' brilliant. would read your book any day.

Maybe I shd go get myself a copy of the corrections. I cd do something like Averroes' The Incoherence of The Incoherence. The Corrections of The Corrections

do it!

"Body warmth was hanging in the air, faint smells of Enid's White Shoulders perfume, and something bathroomy, something old-persony."

That is a much, much better paragraph, Fizzles.

would read a 500-page Cheever-inspired novel about a man in suburbia who has a torrid threesome with a chaise and a paint brush.

I also would read.

Thank you, Scott. I'm totally with you on this. The farthest I've gotten is about ten pages in, and that was a painful ten pages. All those images that have some kind of profound meaning that can be sensed but never truly KNOWN.

the beginning is the worst part iirc

Never read Franzen--everything I've read about him, and his various holy pronouncements, make him seem incredibly humourless, which is one of my main turn-offs. Can anyone who knows his work confirm my prejudice?

"the nasal contention of a leaf blower" WTF

hey how come nobody has posted franzen's rulez fur ritin' on here?

In February 2010, Franzen (along with writers including Richard Ford, Zadie Smith and Anne Enright) was asked by The Guardian to contribute what he believed were ten serious rules to abide by for aspiring writers. Franzen's rules ran as follows:

1. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
2. Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
3. Never use the word "then" as a ­conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
4. Write in the third person unless a ­really distinctive first-person voice ­offers itself irresistibly.
5. When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
6. The most purely autobiographical ­fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than "The Metamorphosis".
7. You see more sitting still than chasing after.
8. It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction [the TIME magazine cover story detailed how Franzen physically disables the Net portal on his writing laptop].
9. Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10. You have to love before you can be relentless.

3, 4, and 6 are actually shrewd comments. otoh wtf is "an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown"?

i believe that refers to having no internet connection.

4 is sorta ridiculous--i can't think of a single first person voice that isn't "distinctive"

1. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.

i actually want anyone reading my stuff to be an adversarial spectator. i have enough friends.

I think he's warning MFA students stuck for material

xpost

so tired of this fucking guy

i found three copies of the corrections in my sisters house

burn them

i have made the proper 'corrections' *crazy eyes*

http://s21.theawl.com/awl/up/2012/02/Screen-shot-2012-02-20-at-7.08.06-PM.jpg

someone should interview him and half way through his schtick abt why contemporary writing and the internet is bad just slide that photo across the table

^^^^

why denim shirts are bad by jonathan franzen

what the film kicking and screaming took from us by jonathan franzen

"When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You'll Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You Know That You're Right", the new novel from Jonathan Franzen

Never read Franzen--everything I've read about him, and his various holy pronouncements, make him seem incredibly humourless, which is one of my main turn-offs. Can anyone who knows his work confirm my prejudice?

The man himself seems like that, but The Corrections is pretty funny in parts

This summer, from Pixar studios: Jonathan Franzen's Talking Poop

Jonathan Franzen presents: American Gladiators

The man himself seems like that, but The Corrections is... throws internet out window by jonathan franzen

THE MASTER(BATER) by Jonathan Franzen

http://i.imgur.com/r1sRk.png

can't even give them away...

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/552843_10152207500432137_1179324956_n.jpg

i saw this was revived and i was coming here to post 'should i throw out my copies of freedom and the corrections'

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction

one of the snottiest and most obnoxious things he's ever said, and that's saying something

I kind of agree a little bit! and I never agree with that guy.

yeah what about Tao Lin?

I just know that for me personally the less wired I am the more i actually think. and get creative. i'm better off in all kinds of ways when i'm off the internet.

i read it as him dismissing the idea that anyone could just write fiction in their spare time at work (like george saunders did), but now that i think about it he probably did just mean that internet time saps your creativity, which i unfortunately know for a fact is otm.

maria bustillos thinks franzen is one of the world’s most most talented writers http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/09/jonathan-franzen-come-join-us.html

i wouldn't mind franzen's anti-everything diatribes so much if he were at least cranky in an entertaining, over-the-top way -- his rants always come off as passive-aggressive and kind of unpleasant to me, with way more contempt than outrage. it's quite possible to hate facebook and twitter or whatever and still not sound like an asshole about it.

I enjoyed the Corrections as much as anyone but he probably holds the title of most overrated author in the world right now.

‏@colsonwhitehead
What do you call it when someone has a horrible public persona, and but when you meet them in person, they are actually horrible?

ha everyone is asking if this is about franzen

the quotes in the bustillos article do not seem particularly OTM to me

yeah theyre vague, banal, dont really add up to any sort of cohesive portrait of the times

i wonder if she was over doing the praise just to invite him to come to the nets and talk, she seems usually much smarter

'the corrections' has moments of persuasive clarity, i still sometimes think abt his description of brooklyn in 2002 as 'just like philadelphia but with manahattan right next door' i think he does a good job of illustrating the way some kinds of people see the world as working, 'freedomland' is so much worse because his way of seeing the world in 2010 was a lot less clear and less insightful, hes way too turned inwards at this point i think, dreaming about 1910 and mistaking advertising for peoples dream lives or w/e

hes a p repulsive person tho

was just going to say how no one mentions the Corrections being v funny, checked, pinefox got there first.

its ok funny. its as funny as a medium to good terry pratchett

i thought this thread revive wd be for THE KRAUS PROJECT, BY JONATHAN FRANZEN

Want to read some Kraus. A Penguin Classic of his writings keeps being pushed back (currently scheduled for Feb 2015, aaargh). Would rather wait for this than one with Franzen blather all over it, plus him taking all the cover credit.

Compare http://cache1.bdcdn.net/assets/images/book/large/9780/1411/9780141180960.jpg
with http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/B00CCUB9N8.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

If he wrote persuasively about his forebears and loves I might take him seriously as a crank.

xpost otm, i've been wanting to check out kraus, but i think i'll wait for the penguin book.

what would be good is if the franzen version flopped and they decided there was no market for kraus

what's going to be in the penguin? by the looks of it the contents will be pretty different.

and neither seems to have anything that's been available in english (though i haven't cracked the one collection in a while, the one that's got 'last days' and 'in these great times' and who knows what else in it).

the franzen translations are banking pretty hard on franzen's name - a book in english with essays about heine and nestroy (!!!) is the exact opposite of a winning financial proposition

Really crying out for a decent Karl Kraus paperback. Not quite the same thing (or time) but he sounds like he could as fun as Hazlitt.

Really hilarious piece by Franzen on Kraus in The Guardian - a paper that can't stop covering Apple and Twitter and Facebook bullshit all day long. Just invalidated the whole piece, making it even more incoherent than it was.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/oct/24/karl-kraus-torch-song-vienna/?pagination=false

Excellent piece. Do trust Hofmann's judgement, by and large (he likes what I like). Not that I should be trusting anybody..

Me too, although I don't agree with his almost rage-like hatred of Stefan Zweig

“Just when you’re thinking you’re intellectually alone in the world, something like n+1 falls into your hands.”

— Jonathan Franzen

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByfW-6CIYAAFbne.png

uh didn't he already write a book that did that

sure, but now someone else is writing another one

met a nice avian at a party tonite who demurred at pynchon but enthusiastically boosted this chap and his corrections

lol I mean, no

reasonable effort but i challenge u to create the most condescending post

o fuck off

that do

fwiw we bonded over dickens, and I'm wasted, and go fuck yourself, what the fuck happened, u used to be chill but for the last year or so str8 up asshole

wait was that not a joke? i honestly thought it was! but good lord

met a nice avian at a party tonite who demurred at pynchon but enthusiastically boosted this chap and his corrections

lol I mean, no

ffs

ur collectively gonna have to do more than that to win me over to team franzen

only posted here coz someone recommended him to me & by some coincidence the thread was bumped. ignore me, I know nothing and am shitfaced. just seemed to me a weird preference but I've only seen Franzen in extract form so w/e he might be great. don't saddle me with c
condescending tho ffs, it is simply preferences in isolation

lol fair enough as i am also hammered

Kathy Acker got there first:

"Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, described “Purity” as a multigenerational American epic that spans decades and continents. The story centers on a young woman named Purity Tyler, or Pip, who doesn’t know who her father is and sets out to uncover his identity. The narrative stretches from contemporary America to South America to East Germany before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and hinges on the mystery of Pip’s family history and her relationship with a charismatic hacker and whistleblower."

TIME Magazine cover to come

http://bookriot.com/2015/02/14/jonathan-franzen-parody/

JF: Really. Well, I don’t spend time on those media, and you can see why. Why would I want to go there? To some extent I feel it means I’m doing my job, which is to try to tell the truth. You know, no prophet is welcome in his homeland. If I am indeed a polarizing figure here, it is certainly true that I am not a polarizing figure in Europe.

http://booth.butler.edu/2015/02/13/a-conversation-with-jonathan-franzen/

dude's a prophet.

Bad answer, but the question was kind of crappy to begin with. I don't know what a gracious answer to this would be:

SL: You do seem to be, amongst writers, a polarizing figure. I don’t mean to be offensive, but it seems to be that you are the writer other writers love to hate. Why do you think this is?

Best thing probably would have been to not answer.

Jonathan Franzen, arguably the best living American novelist

What's to argue?

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/mislaid-an-interview-with-nell-zink/

in case like me you are liable to see franzen blurbs and become suspicious

3:AM: It’s well known than Jonathan Franzen wanted to promote your book, but were there challenges in that?

NZ: There’s the challenge that I’d get lost in the shuffle, but then I was coming from having absolutely no reputation at all, good, bad, or otherwise.

It was certainly very helpful to have this connection with him because he’s sort of click bait. When people write about me they’ll find a way to mention him so they can tag their post with his name.

The net effect has been very positive. I mean it’s not like I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Franzen fan. People who are sceptical about his work might think, “Oh, she sounds so interesting, but if Franzen likes her she must secretly be really square.” I can understand that, I really can.

I think of stuff like Freedom as deeply reactionary work. But I’ve been hammering on his head for a while and I think [Franzen’s next novel] Purity is different. Probably Purity will be a flop or something. But I think in Purity he stretches out a little bit and you see that he does have occasional critical thoughts about how the world works, and he’s not just trying to get families back together. Because family’s much more important than anything in the whole wide world… There’s a little more to him than that.

Pretty suspicious of Nell Zinc, tbh.

The Wallcreeper was really good

really? ok. i might take a look. she comes across like a grumpy teenager in interviews.

his new yorker piece about bird preservation and climate change was very nearly the worst thing I remember reading in that magazine

I liked his short story in the summer fiction issue

Yeah, her interviews would put me off, too, as would the Franzen connection, but fortunately I read The Wallcreeper before I knew about any of that stuff

my hero:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/21/jonathan-franzen-considered-adopting-iraqi-orphan-young-people

didn't think my hatred for this middlebrow bas' could grow any further.

Franzen getting sonned on twitter is not exactly a rare occurrence but I still love this:

But he insisted: “I’m not a sexist. I am not somebody who goes around saying men are superior, or that male writers are superior. In fact, I really go out of my way to champion women’s work that I think is not getting enough attention. None of that is ever enough. Because a villain is needed. It’s like there’s no way to make myself not male.”

Speaking about a character in his forthcoming novel, Purity – a fanatical feminist who, among other things, forces her husband to urinate sitting down on the toilet to atone for his maleness – Franzen predicted that she would enrage his critics; in fact, she already has. “After all these years we finally get to read a man’s take on feminism,” tweeted the Canadian writer Anne Thériault. “Bless you and the hard work you do, Mr Franzen.”

i urinate sitting down on the toilet at night so as not to make too much noise because of an ilx post by roxymuzak

that known man-hater, roxymuzak.

i don't think he was meaning that, although i may be wrong.

oh no, i'm very keen on roxy, it was not a slight on her or flopson, i was just being silly.

apologies.

michiko likes it - http://nyti.ms/1KI5cww

Just glanced at Grantland takedown somebody posted on FB that seems pretty otm

I liked his short story in the summer fiction issue

― johnny crunch, Wednesday, July 1, 2015 3:15 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

didnt realize this was an excerpt, it worked stand alone 4 me

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/the-franzen-of-it-all-purity-and-the-great-american-novelist/

i have broken my vow to never learn the plot of jonathan franzen's 'purity', i guess

cant you read ferrante instead i miss talking to you about books

i saw someone at the bistro i had lunch at with this book on her table, she didnt pick it up once during her meal, preferring the company of her phone

tbf i'm not actually gonna read this

tbf she was probably making the right choice

anyway i am reading nell zink and that's already too close to franzen

http://i.minus.com/jbzHff8gxenJou.jpg

i saw someone at the bistro i had lunch at with this book on her table, she didnt pick it up once during her meal, preferring the company of her phone

― dead (Lamp), Saturday, September 5, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

#winningAtLife

Now imagining Franzen sitting right behind her and fuming.

I loved that Grantland piece.

yeah, it's kinda beautiful!

I'm on vacation in Sanibel this weekend, and visiting the local bookstore I saw a copy of Purity. I held it up and said to the cashier, "You're gonna sell a lot of these."

She nodded. "Unfortunately."

ha!

my grandparents used to have a house there. on that island. in the olden days. it was nice.

guys, im hearing you all want to do a purity read-along

purity laugh-along more like

Purity of essence

a copy of 'purity' a new novel by johnny franzen was sitting on my dining room table when i got home last night. i'm still not sure how it got there...

I'm 40 pages in, enjoying the writing more than the story

you should leave it on a table at your local starbucks coffee franchise or one of its independent competitors

what a hateful thing to say

"“Maybe being male is like being born a predator, and maybe the only right thing for the predator to do, if it sympathizes with smaller animals and won’t accept that it was born to kill them, is to betray its nature and starve to death”

“I have often wondered what the prey is feeling when it is captured. Often it seems to become completely still in the predator’s jaws, as if it feels no pain. As if nature, at the very end, shows mercy for it.”

oh franzenpaws

“I have often wondered what the prey is feeling when it is captured. Often it seems to become completely still in the predator’s jaws, as if it feels no pain. As if nature, at the very end, shows mercy for it.”

there are a couple-few articles on the internet presenting being pro-franzen as a contrarian position and they make me sad and disheartened

beautiful http://review.gawker.com/jonathan-franzens-purity-is-an-irrelevant-piece-of-shit-1729287392

judging by this thread, being pro-franzen probably is a contrarian position at this point

there are abt 8thousand more worthy targets for all the shit he gets but whatever

its essentially become a meme for ppl who mostly have never read anything hes written except perhaps excerpts im guessing

thats true up to a point (certainly the more worthy targets part)

i have read the corrections, i recall thinking it was ok at the time (this was like 2009 iirc, i was still in college), i tried freedom and was like "nahdawg" within a chapter or so, then i started noticing the things he was saying out loud

"Often it seems to become completely still in the predator’s jaws, as if it feels no pain. As if nature, at the very end, shows mercy for it.”

Franzen seems utterly captivated by his own ignorant musings. Predators are attracted by motion and many prey animals remain motionless when afraid. What he is describing is commonly called "petrified by fear".

halfway through this, feel compelled to read one of his novels so i can credibly criticize him. the scene where pip throws herself to her knees before Stephen and takes her sweater and bra off and practically begs him to fuck her was so appalling & hilarious. just got to the section with the evil feminist caricature. can't wait to be done

I really don't get the vitriol

xp you're allowed to stop reading

I have not read the book but to me it sounds like Calvinism or Buddhism, to give it an -ism.

its essentially become a meme for ppl who mostly have never read anything hes written except perhaps excerpts im guessing

this is fairly accurate for me, i have to admit. i haven't read any of his books, but i have read several non-fiction pieces by him, and they were witless and dour and unfunny, which is what put me off

and in interviews he seems to be a dickhead too

its essentially become a meme for ppl who mostly have never read anything hes written except perhaps excerpts im guessing

― johnny crunch,

Name them.

I can mutter a mild "yes" when acknowledging that social media can turn against someone too quickly these days, but for a best seller whose novels get automatic Important Novel status he deserves backlash for the facile shit he got away with too easily. Also, I can say, "Franzen is essentially a favorite of people who mostly never read any contemporary fiction."

yea i mean hes not a fav of mine, some backlash is fine, hes clumsy abt plenty of things, but hes a p good fiction writer and ill continue to read him

name who? i just mean the vitrolic vibe. its v much piling on

i think ive said before that his non-fic is terrible imo, & i have ignored it since that how to be alone compilation

what james said. about essays and interviews and dickheadism. and the bits of the novels i have read are always terrible and accidently hilarious. so, the accidental hilarity is a good thing, i guess!

he definitely brings the vitriol out in me. kinda like phish.

Also, I can say, "Franzen is essentially a favorite of people who mostly never read any contemporary fiction."

https://twitter.com/kathrynschulz/status/631557508650242048

agreed that he is a dickhead but disagree that he's a favorite of people who never read contemporary fiction

I don't believe that point either: I was expressing the stereotypical view of Franzen. From working at an indie bookstore at the height of The Corrections mania, I know that everyone bought it, including Iggy Pop.

he's the moby dick of american lit.

so who read Purity and can report?

i've never read anything by him but i find the aggressively negative reactions on twitter pretty annoying

my mom loved The Corrections, reads contemp lit but prob not the hip stuff that person on twitter has in mind when they say contemp lit

Also, I can say, "Radiohead is essentially a favorite of people who mostly never listen to any contemporary music."

i felt like the shittiest shit of a son years ago when i scoffed at my mom for reading and liking the bridges of madison county. it was like kicking a puppy. sorry, mom! i never ever made fun of anything that anyone ever read again. at the most i will just say: yeaaaaaaaah, i don't really think that's my kind of thing...

“Even at the height of her preoccupation with Stephen, she hadn’t wanted to be his object; hadn’t fantasized about submitting and obeying. But these were the terms of the susceptibility that Andreas, his fame and confidence, had revealed in her.”

Pull out his eyes
Apologize

Sorry, wrong Stephen

i thought it was... idk, enjoyable, probably? 'freedom' felt actively awful, like the parts that were stupid or upsetting or ugly were there on purpose, so franzen cld shove yr face in what celebrated author jonny franzen knows about life. it was confrontational in its badness. 'purity' was mostly fun if sort of bad as like, a book with ideas in it. its strange to read the grantland piece because i think hes become a complete failure as a writer of characters, no one in 'purity' thinks or acts or seems like a person that would exist irl. theyre totems of various 21st century ills and manners, franzen seems of late to have lost interest in people and gained a tremendous passion for Issues, and most of his characters now seem to be vehicles for working through or commenting on the issues that matter. all these needlessly beautiful young women who represent something but mean nothing.

but i also think hes bad at the details of character. pips massive student loans are the genesis for much of the plot but they make no sense to me. the number (so often repeated) of $130K was just so incongruous to me that i spent twenty minutes googling tuition, financial aid, and loan relief info for uc berkeley (average student debt load on graduation $16K). even assuming that pip received zero financial aid the $130K number is about 30K too high but given what we know about pip, about her mothers income, it makes no sense that she wouldnt have applied for financial aid. that she wouldve rejected work/study positions and summer jobs or failed to apply for any busaries or done anything to mitigate the cost of college. especially because her college debt is what drives her to search for her father! as with so much else it feels like franzen learns about the world by half-reading articles in the times, there are so many characters that feel like the vague acquaintances in trend pieces about daycares for child pyschics

all this aside it was pretty fun, the plot was exciting and interesting, i wanted to find out what was happening and why.

im halfway thru, plot was losing me but then did just get good i think

I'm sure he is not as bad as those of us who haven't really read him assume he is, but his varied and sundry statements about how he is going to turn the ship of literature around and point it in the right direction are irritating, the number of red flags raised and buttons that are pushed approach Pomplamoose levels.

this is a good piece about hating writers you've never actually read:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/08/31/on-the-pleasures-of-not-reading/

^ A nice jeu d'esprit. I liked it until the final paragraph, where the author strove to end with a flourish and instead it's just rather awkward.

all this aside it was pretty fun, the plot was exciting and interesting, i wanted to find out what was happening and why.

― dead (Lamp), Sunday, September 13, 2015 7:32 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel the same way. very entertaining read, but i didn't get anything out of it other than a good story. is it asking too much to want more from THE BEST AMERICAN NOVELISTTTTT? no
and good god he can't write about sex at all. "There's no other way to put it - she played with the dick."

hating essays about hating writers you've never actually read that you've never actually read

had to google that quote, hilarious stuff

http://i.imgur.com/0nTBGsl.png

can't remember anything from freedom apart from enjoying it, corrections was good imo

taking sex scene lessons from john updick. i mean updike.

writing about sex is like dancing about Frank Zappa

Who is narrating that passage?

Not "Leonard," right?

leonard is obv the dick

Tom Aberrant, pip's dad

i was a big fan of Great Expectations by Kathy Acker.

and i think that book also said a lot of things about...modern things. and Prince.

hated the Prince talk in Motherless Brooklyn. what's with these guys? why does my tone meter go all kerflooey with these guys?

why does my tone meter go all kerflooey with these guys?

right??

"A few days later, I stole more magazines. I liked Oui because the girls in it seemed realer—also more European, hence more cultured, intelligent, and soulful—than the ones in Playboy . I imagined deep conversations with them, I imagined them attracted to how compassionately I listened to them, but there was no denying that my interest in them died at the instant of orgasm."

"she kept alienating people with her moral absolutism and her sense of superiority, which is so often the secret heart of shyness."

i can't tell if these are being excerpted because they're meant to demonstrate some facility of franzen's or just for the lols ... ?

Just for fun...

Maybe these excerpts are meant to depict the mind of a self-absorbed, kind of silly person? Like, maybe Franzen is being ironic?

and did you keep taking literature classes once you changed your major?

wtf is that supposed to mean

do you think those passages are clearly ironic? do you think Franzen in general is good with irony?

no, i think his continual striving for the slightly-clever phrase undercuts his attempts to do this sort of thing at a micro level, as his just obviously heinous high concept plotting undercuts it at a macro level -- like i remember arguing about connie's "little clitoris of intellect, responding with firmness to a male touch" (or w/e) in 'freedom': a friend saying, ah, but this is Free Indirect Discourse! it's not like franzen actually thinks this way -- but if you don't see him high-fiving himself when he came up with that one, his little porcine eyes wet with glee, then ... well, okay, then maybe you're more generous in spirit than i am

Well, I was attempting a generous reading. I agree Franzen doesn't really come across as very playful/ironic but something like "...also more European, hence more cultured..." almost has to be parody to make sense.

anyway, I actually have a masters degree in literature - not that it gives me any special authority, but I guess I took your post as an insult

how will the male touch even be able to find the clitoris of intellect, did he take that into account

purity was fun to read. dude writes beach books, not great american novels. i want to read freedom and the corrections now. SIGH

But what is amazing is the way Fiorina's critics have suddenly become Jesuitical nitpickers. The clear goal is to conceal the fact that late-term abortions offend the conscience when discussed or displayed with anything like journalistic accuracy. That's probably why we get so little of it. Many of the media outlets that even bother to cover the videos have referred to the transferring of "fetal tissue," not "organs" — the correct term for livers, hearts and brains. ("Tissue" is less suggestive of a human being than, say, "heart.")

"Imbecile" is less suggestive than, say, "fuckface."

lol is franzen pro-life?

"And the same was true of the afternoons he spent jerking off at his powerful computer. He condemned what he was doing by the principles he wanted to believe in, but he could never hate it in the moment. Instead he resented Annagret, resented his own moral considerations, resented his other responsibilities, for standing in the way of his compulsion. And yet it was complicated, because when his watchful self stepped back from the computer over which he was hunched with his pants around his ankles, he hated what he saw. He wasn’t constituted to hate himself subjectively, but he did hate the object he was in the world. The shameful, loathsome object with which something was very wrong."

"Before he was even home again, he could see his future. He would never again make the mistake of trying to live with a woman. For whatever reason (probably his childhood), he wasn’t suited for it, and the strong thing to do was to accept this. His computer had made a weakling of him. He also had a vague, shameful memory of climbing onto Annagret’s lap and trying to be her baby. Weak! Weak!"

Oh, good lord! This crap is supposed to be deathless literature?

"jerking off at his powerful computer": shades of kinbote's powerful kramler

well fuck it that's just terrible writing

gonna start appending (probably my childhood) every time i use "for whatever reason"

fair's fair tho, no idea if i'm "constituted to hate myself subjectively" but i do get hating the object-self.

For whatever reason (probably his poor diet and lack of exercise)

For whatever reason (probably his feud with Oprah)

Franzen auto corrects to Frankenstein

Just finished it , enjoyed. Last paragraph really comes through

...comes through in a way that redeems some of the shitty filler writing excerpted above.

his powerful computer

his powerful computer

his powerful computer

like is he using a cray to visit pornhub or something

Pornography had torn him open. His balls had fallen out.

Just read this http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/h/hothouse/9781451691894_custom-5501b860e04b087a58bd3c783af0df3ae2be438b-s300-c85.jpg, and Franzen comes off like a complete cynical prick. He didn''t actually pull out of Oprah, he just dithered and dithered until she basically fired him, and then when he published his next book he wrote to her saying "Let's do a show where we make up, it'll be great TV!" and whored himself like a maniac

Hehe I remember reading abt him handling that terribly - but not that she fired him etc. Are there excerpts somewhere?

See if these links work to the relevant pages: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Vtp2R6f18xEC&pg=PA302&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&ots=g6lA33ysXd&sig=ACfU3U015ta29qtFn2n7N_M7MKTJHTKnVQ&w=685
and https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Vtp2R6f18xEC&pg=PA339&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U3iNkNrvFV2nZeJQSmkPE0Y3fleSw&w=685

had no idea he'd suggested his own time cover. can't stop the hustle.

those work great, thanks!

had no idea he'd suggested his own time cover. can't stop the hustle.

― playlists of pensive swift (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, September 30, 2015 3:35 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was kinda softened to that bc his dead dad's favorite pub was Time, and see it as a childhood dream fulfilled/making your parents proud thing...

bought Freedom yesterday and already totally sucked in

by a powerful computer

purity was fun to read. dude writes beach books, not great american novels. i want to read freedom and the corrections now. SIGH

yea otm

worked for me as a pip coming of age/maturing story also

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/06/stop-sending-jonathan-franzen-novels/

the "powerful computer" bit must be based on his own experience. You can't make that kind of stuff up.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/t-magazine/jonathan-franzen-rachel-kushner-interview.html

Kushner attempts to frame F as a comic writer, which doesn't negate the uninspired writing in Purity...

(I don't understand the appeal of Kushner...Flamethrowers seemed like a graduate school effort...)

between that and the nell zink piece 'acclaimed female writers sort of tiptoe around the question of whether they think jonathan franzen is all that good' is getting to be a genre

? Kushner pretty much says she loves him in that article

idk maybe i'm reading too much into this

the book, which is filled with great comedy. (For the record, I would consider Jon principally a comic writer.)

flamethrowers sucked

the backlash against franzen seems over the top to me even though he seems totally worthless. somewhat interested in the corrections but there is so much i am more interested in

flamethrowers sucked

― Treeship,

hallelujah

you guys are so wrong

itt waterface complains about treeship's lack of positivity

i liked this!

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/carbon-capture

see, i can say nice things...

for all his problems, i was really moved by Freedom, and i'm still thinking about it a month after finishing it. poor Walter. it helped that I visualized him as Walter Becker from Steely Dan

O rily

I thought "Flamethrowers" was fantastic but couldn't finish "Freedom," the first and last Franzen I will ever try to read

for all his problems, i was really moved by Freedom, and i'm still thinking about it a month after finishing it. poor Walter. it helped that I visualized him as Walter Becker from Steely Dan

― flappy bird, Thursday, October 29, 2015 6:17 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i did this too. it wasn't enough.

The last book that made you cry?

Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom.” That ending really got me. He would be one of the writers mentioned under the title favorite novelist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/books/review/nathan-lane-by-the-book.html?hpw&rref=books&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

He would be one of the writers mentioned under the title favorite novelist

let's just stare at this sentence for a bit

iirc the ending of freedom:

the wife humiliates herself and risks her life to earn the forgiveness of the husband because she was fucking his friend who was just a less abhorrent human being

the husband was fucking the only non-white character of note in the book, whose whole role in the book was to want to fuck this just totally abhorrent and physically repulsive man, and to conveniently die such that abhorrent man can move on with his life

the husband does not need to humiliate himself or risk his life to earn the wifes forgiveness for any of this because hey thats franzentown

also the reason pace franzen that she wanted to fuck the other dude was that husband was too gentle and respectful of her status as rape survivor to fuck her properly

yeah the tears are fucking flowing right here

now im reliving the enraging experience of having read 'freedom' by acclaimed novelist jonny franzen

the other day i was thinking about how weird how much he seems to care about where his characters did their undergraduate degrees. like how important and 'telling' that is in his construction

/He would be one of the writers mentioned under the title favorite novelist/

let's just stare at this sentence for a bit

LOL Franzen 2016:

Have you ever considered writing a book about race?

I have thought about it, but—this is an embarrassing confession—I don’t have very many black friends. I have never been in love with a black woman. I feel like if I had, I might dare.

[I adjust the microphone, which he stares at for a moment.] Good, good, good. The mic. Got the mic pointed toward me. I am doing all the talking here. [Pauses.]

You were saying you have never been in love with a black woman.

Right. Didn’t marry into a black family. I write about characters, and I have to love the character to write about the character. If you have not had direct firsthand experience of loving a category of person—a person of a different race, a profoundly religious person, things that are real stark differences between people—I think it is very hard to dare, or necessarily even want, to write fully from the inside of a person.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/interrogation/2016/07/a_conversation_with_novelist_jonathan_franzen.html

"I feel it’s really dangerous, if you are a liberal white American, to presume that your good intentions are enough to embark on a work of imagination about black America."

Franzen pretty otm here in my opinion

well, yeah, if the reason you are writing something is because you have good intentions, than definitely try not to do that. unless you are an amazing writer. than it probably wouldn't be that dangerous. it just might not be great. and i am thankful that franzen is not writing about race. his next novel should really be about a white novelist who writes a lot of e-mails and then goes bird-watching.

- Do stupid comments on social media get to you? What about a long and thoughtful review? Do you engage with that sort of thing?

- No. I don’t even read positive reviews unless they are absolutely certified by eight different people to not contain one thing that could upset me.

- Really?

- Yes.

as much as franzen has said a lot of dumb stuff - and his comments are worded really badly, i can kind of sympathise with the tendency for a white writer to avoid trying to write about other races or other experiences besides his/her own. isn't it kind of arrogant for a white male writer to assume he can talk freely from the mouth of a character from any background you choose?

i mean, the onus is more on society to promote and talk about writers from different backgrounds than it is for existing successful white male writers to lead the way by writing about characters they so far haven't written about. i don't know why we would expect them to do that or even want them to.

also, writing fiction is really really difficult - creating things is really really difficult. if a writer hasn't done xyz thing it's probably because they can't.

well he says he doesn't do much research on stuff he's not that interested in. and i think it shows. every time i read him i just picture a guy at home writing.

a great writer can make me forget about the guy at home writing. and a good writer can and should write about whatever they want. or write in any voice that they want. which is hard work to get right.

i've never read his books, but i agree with all of that, i'm just not sure that writing about other identities is a prerequisite for achieving those things. the written word is p powerful in many directions with many possibilities.

a good writer can and should write about whatever they want. or write in any voice that they want. which is hard work to get right

again, i agree. but whatever they want is not the same as what others feel they should.

Anyone who can avoid being written about by Franzen should feel grateful.

amen.

most white american writers don't even bother. cuz they know they would suck at writing about anyone not like them or from their tiny world. journalists who write fiction (like crime fiction) don't seem to think its a big deal. probably because they have met more than 4 people in their work as journalists.

mostly people just take a tip from t.v. and have everyone talk and act the same no matter who they are. which is the safest bet if you don't know how to create living breathing fictional characters who differ from each other in substantial ways.

p sure many, many of the authors i've read you mention on the reading threads don't write about people who aren't the same race as them, and that doesn't make them bad writers. you can write about what you don't know without it being another race.

i wanna be really clear. there isn't anything that anyone HAS to write about. but i also don't think that anything should be "dangerous" to write about. even if its a misguided polemic on race written by an outsider. it will live and die on its own merits. i also think that there are a LOT of current white american fiction writers who write what they know and it often turns out that they don't know that much. or know much about people. most of the (white) writers i love know a lot about people. inside and out. if people is their thing. and not the process of terraforming distant planets. sometimes that is their thing. and knowing something inside and out is one way a minor writer can become a major one.

can we talk about his choice of jeans

i wanna be really clear. there isn't anything that anyone HAS to write about. but i also don't think that anything should be "dangerous" to write about. even if its a misguided polemic on race written by an outsider. it will live and die on its own merits. i also think that there are a LOT of current white american fiction writers who write what they know and it often turns out that they don't know that much. or know much about people. most of the (white) writers i love know a lot about people. inside and out. if people is their thing. and not the process of terraforming distant planets. sometimes that is their thing. and knowing something inside and out is one way a minor writer can become a major one.

fair enough. i guess i think even within an ostensibly narrow frame a writer can achieve a lot. even when writing about people they might feel they know, they discover things they don't know. a lot of writing seems to be based on this idea. like if you took a synopsis it would be easy to dismiss but the discoveries within are more than the subject might suggest. there are interesting things in every life.

i feel like "write what you don't know" is as valuable or maybe moreso than "write what you know" - i'm not sure fiction writing is ever done from a position of knowledge and comfort and confidence, but i don't know.

you can totally be narrow and achieve a lot but you have to be really talented and compelling and interesting and you should know that narrow space you live in like the back of your hand.

write what you don't know is definitely valuable. that's why i like sci-fi. i wish all the normal nerds of lit fic would read more sci-fi.

i just like being in good hands. reading those ferrante books was so cool because i was in such good hands. she totally owns her world. no hesitancy. no fraidy-cat self-consciousness. it's law. not a tentative stab at some vaguely interesting insight about some vaguely interesting subject that someone read about in the new yorker or the new york times.

i might even go so far as to say that i don't trust a writer who says there is something dangerous to write about. but i am glad that he's not planning to go all tom wolfe on the race issue...

i wish all the normal nerds of lit fic would read more sci-fi.

this seems like a weird thing to say, i feel like all the major lit fic people now have read a lot of SF and have that as part of their world, while this is less true of last century's big white novelists like Roth/Bellow/Updike

maybe they didn't read the right sci-fi books...

i don't think people should be looking at the U.S. for fiction now anyway. ain't no ferrantes around these parts as far as i can see. i'm not really the best judge though. since i'm usually hanging out with the out of print moldy figs.

I think it is telling, though, that franzen basically isn't interested in black people or their experiences. He doesnt need to write about them, and im sure hed do a shoddy job if he did, but it seems as though he gives not 1 shit.

It's a pretty shocking revelation, a bombshell even.

Indeed. Though the idea that you can only write about what you have loved explains why franzen can write so much about himself and people just like him.

blink·ered
ˈbliNGkərd
adjective
(of a horse) wearing blinders.
having or showing a limited outlook.
"a small-minded, blinkered approach"
synonyms: narrow-minded, inward-looking, parochial, provincial, insular, small-minded, close-minded, shortsighted; hidebound, illiberal, inflexible, entrenched, prejudiced

which is different than being in a narrow space. zane grey and the ventures were really cool. so were p.g. wodehouse and j.j. cale.

how did this thread get so far w/o anyone making the 'he cant write effectively about white ppl either' joke?>?

I really do not understand the mindset which suggests that a contemporary writer has a duty to cover all major social issues. Should he be taken to task for failing to address creation science being taught in schools next?

Are the characters in his books explicitly described as white? Are the experiences they have not available to people of other races?

franzen basically isn't interested in black people or their experiences.

I guess I don't see this. I presume he's plenty interested in black people and their experiences -- how can you live in the United States and not be? But he doesn't feel qualified to write about them.

jfc

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsEjOJHXQAAjW3o.jpg

He would get along just fine with Springsteen

the only thing worse than a temporarily embarrassed millionaire is a permanently embarrassed millionaire

there are ways to become truly poor, you know

This is from Jonathan Franzen's flap copy. "The" doing a whole, whole, whole lot of work there... pic.twitter.com/lGfUJ7dijw

— Rebecca Makkai (@rebeccamakkai) April 26, 2021

Reviews are praising the new novel (no surprise there) but, as oppose to his other books, it seems the public will love it too. If Goodreads reviewers is a good representative sample.

A writer friend of mine said it's actually really good.

("actually" intended)

Just like him to write a good book after everyone has already decided he's over.

Lots of the public have liked several of his other books. Aren't they bestsellers?

They're good books.

This sounds dreadful.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/04/the-church-of-jonathan-franzen

Crossroads is so good

enjoyed it

not sure why it had to be so long

it contains this hilarious sentence:

He lingered to push his tongue as far into her as it would reach, to taste what his penis couldn’t

but also this decency

The dream of a novel was more resilient than other kinds of dreaming. It could be interrupted in mid-sentence and snapped back into later.

I really don't understand why the guy is so popular, kinda like Elon Musk it seems more like he won the lottery than went out and achieved

but much more fun than Purity that's for sure

If you mean Crossroads, it's too long and kinda fizzles at the end, I thought -- the other novels have had stronger endings.

I actually enjoy his celebration of awkwardness in free indirect speech (like the penis line - it's funny! and deliberately so, I think). I like that he's unembarrassed to explore the more doltish aspects of our inner monologues without getting all inane and Nick Hornbyesque about it.

(This is probably an overcharitable reading, but I'm a fan, so yeah)

hehe indeed, good defense

I'm not that critical, mostly find it funny, similar to rap music's memorable banalities

and yes, was referring to Crossroads

Really liked The Corrections and Freedom, everything I read about Purity put me off so I never looked at it, will read Crossroads at some point

It's weird how in many corners of the internet it's taken as a given that "everybody hates Jonathan Franzen" when in fact he is widely praised by critics and his books sell hundreds of thousands of copies

sorry ive been overcome by a vision of an alternate universe where penises can taste

I think his non-fiction is insufferable in a way his fiction largely isn't, but not really sure Actual Franzen that closely resembles Internet's Approximation of Franzen.

He is certainly capable of bad, thoughtless writing when he wanders out of his "male sadsack" safe space, but I'm a fan and large uncritical. They're all fun to read, even Purity and Strong Motion. The new one is maybe his best until it sags for the final fifth.

What the Penis Can't Taste: Essays

It did strike me while reading Crossroads what kind of massive confidence it must take to write those standard issue Franzen sex scenes, go through the whole revision and editing process, know that thousands of people are going to read them, and still feel comfortable leaving them in as is.

Was thinking something similar when I read the book, for sure

Maybe he finds nothing embarrassing about them, maybe he thinks the prose is stellar

Again -- possibly being overcharitable -- but I think he's comfortable having his characters indulge in embarrassing or inappropriate or pretentious modes of thinking, and he doesn't overuse irony or stylistic excess to keep an authorial distance from that.

Yeah, I agree and actually don't think that's overcharitable, just the level of charitability we should extend to any author/artwork

I'm about 3/4 of the way through Crossroads and I fucking love this novel. I read the Corrections probably 20 years ago, it was a chore for me at the time; took over a year to finish, I just could not make myself care about most of those people and the ending seemed extremely anticlimactic. I would probably feel differently about it now, and should revisit it. But I feel much more empathy for the characters in Crossroads; each of them, fallible and stupid in their own ways.

Those are the best quarters of the novel, lol. But yeah I still think it's one of his best.

yeah, I found the ending a bit disappointing (finished this morning); a bit on the nose ('all these people are at a CROSSROADS in their life do you see'), and it kind of left Perry dangling there although maybe there wasn't much that could be convincingly conveyed from his POV. Though I did like the retreat from Russ and Marion's POVs ... we spent a lot of time in their heads and seeing how that resolved from the outside was a nice change. Anyway, yeah, good book so now I'm reading Freedom.

The whole desert trip chapter, especially the farcical sequence where Russ is trying to find somewhere to fuck, is an incredible/nerve-jangling bit of writing — but yeah, everything that comes after was a bit of a disappointment. On the whole an amazing book though.

Now I'm going back and reading Freedom which also sat on my shelf for years unread. 1/4 of the way through it now, it's also great.

Perry was the most fun character, and his punishment was excessive in a "this is your brain on drugs" way that felt moralistic, Franzen did him dirty from what I remember.

ok, well, just about done with Freedom which I mostly loved but it was depressing as fuck so I need to read something affirming now.

ok now I'm finished with it and was actually taken by surprise at the denouement.