Franzen: s/d

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.