Jonathan Franzen page

Jonathan Franzen is the author of “The Twenty-Seventh City” (1988), “Strong Motion” (1992), “The Corrections” (National Book Award, 2001), “How to Be Alone: Essays” (2002), and “The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History”.

The Esquire Conversation - interview with Sven Birkerts

Only Correct - Jonathan Franzen talks to Laura Miller. It's most refreshing to see that Franzen doesn't usually look as imposing as he does in his official author photograph. The camera never lies, but one of these is definitely telling porkies

Jonathan Franzen Uncorrected – Dave Weich talks to Jonathan Franzen

Why experimental fiction threatens to destroy publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and life as we know it – an article by Ben Marcus attacking Jonathan Franzen’s disparaging view of experimental fiction

How Jonathan Franzen Learned to Stop Worrying (Sort of) – This “Time” interview contain’s Jonathan Franzen’s reaction against the above article by Ben Marcus

Having Difficulty with Difficulty – Ben Greenman discusses experimental fiction with Jonathan Franzen

Franzen ‘regrets’ Oprah row – in an interview with the BBC’s Tim Sebastian

An Author’s Story – a Jonathan Franzen interview with Nina Willdorf

Franzen warns political writers – not to comment on politics during the 2004 US presidential election

Correcting the past – Alden Mudge’s interview with Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen: the truth about me – Jonathan Franzen interviewed by “The Independent”

Franzen’s Folly: the novelist vs. High Art’s Dark Other – an article by Charles Paul Freund

The following are essays on Jonathan Franzen’s work:

Annesley, James "Market Corrections: Jonathan Franzen and the "Novel of Globalization""
Journal of Modern Literature - Volume 29, Number 2, Winter 2006, pp. 111-128
Indiana University Press

McLaughlin, Robert L. "Post-Postmodern Discontent: Contemporary Fiction and the Social World"
symploke - Volume 12, Number 1-2, 2004, pp. 53-68
University of Nebraska Press

Hipsky, Martin "Post-Cold War Paranoia in The Corrections and The Sopranos"
Postmodern Culture - Volume 16, Number 2, January 2006,
The Johns Hopkins University Press

The Corrections - read the first chapter in an extract from The Guardian

Amazon.com - has the first 24 pages of the book

Kevin Patrick Mahoney takes a look at the first chapter or so of Jonathan Franzen's third novel, “The Corrections”.

Zoysia - a definition

gerontocratic - p. 3 – is rule by elders

Leis - p. 6 Enid and Alfred have obviously been to Hawaii

Ethan Allen - the homepage

Epcot Center - p.7 is part of Disney World

aqua regia - p.8 - a definition

The Book of Changes - p.9 is the I Ching

Crepuscular - p. 11 a definition. "Despite no longer knowing where he was or at what point he'd entered the woods of this sentence" - if Franzen had written this sentence in High School, his knuckles would have been severely rapped. Thus does Jonathan Franzen liberate himself from all those years of having to write "correct" English. A sentence may not always have a verb and will still make sense, as I always tried to tell my own teachers. Franzen subverts the laws of grammar to create a superb literary effect.

epater les bourgeois - p. 19 means "shock the middle class"

Xanax - p. 20 is used to relieve anxiety