Jonathan Franzen

[Anonymous No.17950963]

Thoughts on Jonathan Franzen? Just started The Corrections so no spoilers please, but really enjoying it so far and he is filling that void of 21st century authors. How do his other works hold up?

[Anonymous No.17951004]

>>17950963
Really really based anon, probably the saviour of 21st century literature, cynical and on point, acute observer of the selfish and jadedly simple psyche of human beings. Freedom is his best one

[OP No.17951019]

>>17951004
His takedown of Oprah was beyond genius to publicize his work. For those not familiar, he declined Oprah’s book club rec because he “wants men to read it too” and got his appearance on her show cancelled

[Anonymous No.17951030]

>>17950963
Regarding his other works, Freedom is his absolute masterpiece, piercing through the facade of the hypocritical bourgeoise american dream
Purity is a bit worse, a bit more political and focused on some collateral commentary on modernity, still amazing
Strong motion is bad, please avoid it as the plauge, childish, immature, rushed, really ruined my perception of his path as a novelist

[Anonymous No.17951038]

>>17951019
Really? Did not know that, I'm not american, but sounds like something he would do out of absolute spite for the modern popification of literary works

[OP No.17951046]

>>17951030
Thanks. I’ll grab it next. I’m really impressed by his perspective thus far. Being a New Yorker contributor I was expecting more liberal political BS but so far what I’ve read has been really eye opening on the desperate stats of modern academics

[Anonymous No.17951067]

>>17951046
He's not really political as I said, much more concentrated on the exploration of a corruption which is common to the whole humanity, and that's absolutely amazing. He wrote also some political commentary, but I had no time to read them, so I won't talk about it. He truly has remained as the sole indipendent observer of a generation

[OP No.17951144]

He was also good friends with DFW, but don’t let that be a reason not to read him. I found infinite jest tedious, but Franzen is a whole different style and very enjoyable to read

[Anonymous No.17951225]

>>17951144
Never read DFW, I've heard extremly contrasting opinions on him. I wanted to start reading it out of spite due to dumb controversy, but now you discourage me, was it really that tedious?

[OP No.17951286]

>>17951225
Yea, this will wake the thread up a bit. I’ve only read infinite jest. To me, it was trying to be the next Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow but lacked any substance - story about nothing, shallow characters, footnotes for no reason and an immature opinion on drug addiction and family. With the footnotes and endless sentences and tedium it’s prob the longest book I’ve ever read.

Other critics word it better but I’d say it’s a book by a guy with 20+ years of studying literature under his belt with nothing to say. It has all the elements to make it a pseudo intellectual hit, especially that he offed himself. There were a few diamonds in the rough but too much work to get to them.

[Anonymous No.17951471]

>>17951286
how did it have nothing to say? would you argue that he was also saying nothing in This Is Water? in IJ he was relating his experiences with reaching what he considered to be undeserved success that he received up until that point (explored in a variety of ways, not least the parable of the kid that would bring a gun to his head to every tournament, or the speeches/preparations they would try to give students to manage expectations), relating his experiences with other drug addicts at the halfway house and the the AA sort of blind faith, cliche, and paradoxical approaches that actually seemed to work, or those speeches between that comically long segment between Marathe and Remy (relating to This Is Water) about an individual in modern society's tendency to be happy to kill themselves if it's the path of least resistence and pathologically unable to submit to any causes higher than themselves (where DFW seems to argue that the ability to do this is good for its own sake even if the outcome is bad), and all these ideas are very overlapping and expressed in so many different ways throughout the book. scatterbrained sure, but having nothing to say is a weird criticism for dfw

[Anonymous No.17951551]

>>17951286
Say what you will about DFW, but it’s just plain wrong to say that the characters he writes are shallow. Even minor characters that exist in a small paragraph are fleshed out beyond most any others in literature. And there is a point to the end notes also, but you won’t get it on a shallow first reading. You may box it in to the meme box most others do as >hurr tv bad but it’s much more than that

[OP No.17951570]

>>17951471
Your post illustrates my criticism

[Anonymous No.17952083]

>>17950963
I read his Harper's essay on the decline of the novel and am interested in one of his books now

[OP No.17952716]

>>17952083
How long? Is it available online?

[Anonymous No.17952738]

>>17952716
About a 40m read
https://extrafilespace.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/why-bother-by-jonathan-franzen/#respond

[Anonymous No.17953253]

Franzen always striked me as someone you need to be American to appreciate. Is that true?

[Anonymous No.17953262]

>>17951019
The funniest part is more women read him than men. Significantly more.

[OP No.17953348]

>>17952738
Great read. You would like The Corrections - it takes this perspective and applied it to story

>>17953253
Possibly, I’m American, but I’m in the camp that globally we are more similar than we are different, and his writing from what I’ve read is the impact of this modern world on our psyche and family. There’s def an American Midwest element to it.

>>17953262
That essay anon posted was saying women make up 71% of serious readers, so his work being new aligns with that stat which has prob widened since 96. I know I tend towards older classics with a track record so as not to read something awful. Hence this thread, tryna dig up some modern gems