The Kraus Project

Jonathan Earl Franzen (born August 17, 1959) is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel ''The Corrections'' drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His novel ''Freedom'' (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on the cover of ''Time'' magazine alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". Franzen's latest novel ''Crossroads'' was published in 2021, and is the first in a projected trilogy.

Franzen has contributed to ''The New Yorker'' magazine since 1994. His 1996 ''Harper's'' essay " Perchance to Dream" bemoaned the state of contemporary literature. Oprah Winfrey's book club selection in 2001 of ''The Corrections'' led to a much publicized feud with the talk show host.

Early life and education

Franzen was born in Western Springs, Illinois, the son of Irene (née Super) and Earl T. Franzen. His father, raised in Minnesota, was the son of a Swedish immigrant; his mother's ancestry was Eastern European. Franzen grew up in an affluent neighborhood in the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves, Missouri, and graduated with high honors from Swarthmore College, receiving a degree in German in 1981. As part of his undergraduate education, he studied abroad in Germany during the 1979–80 academic year with Wayne State University's Junior Year in Munich program. While there, he met Michael A. Martone, on whom he would later base the character Walter Berglund in ''Freedom''. He also studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin in 1981–82; he speaks fluent German.

Franzen married in 1982 and moved with his wife to Somerville, Massachusetts to pursue a career as a novelist. While writing his first novel, ''The Twenty-Seventh City'', he worked as a research assistant at Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, coauthoring several dozen papers. In September 1987, a month after he and his wife moved to New York City, Franzen sold ''The Twenty-Seventh City'' to Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Career

Early novels

''The Twenty-Seventh City'', published in 1988, is set in Franzen's hometown, St. Louis, and deals with the city's fall from grace, St. Louis having been the "fourth city" in the 1870s. This sprawling novel was warmly received and established Franzen as an author to watch. In a conversation with novelist Donald Antrim for ''Bomb Magazine'', Franzen described ''The Twenty-Seventh City'' as "a conversation with the literary figures of my parents' generation the great sixties and seventies Postmoderns", adding in a later interview "I was a skinny, scared kid trying to write a big novel. The mask I donned was that of a rhetorically airtight, extremely smart, extremely knowledgeable middle-aged writer."

'' Strong Motion'' (1992) focuses mainly on a dysfunctional family, the Hollands, and uses seismic events on the American East Coast as a metaphor for the quakes that occur in family life (as Franzen put it, "I imagined static lives being disrupted from without—literally shaken. I imagined violent scenes that would strip away the veneer and get people shouting angry moral truths at each other."). A ' systems novel', the key 'systems' of ''Strong Motion'' according to Franzen are "... the systems of science and religion—two violently opposing systems of making sense in the world." The novel was not a financial success at the time of its publication. Franzen subsequently defended the novel in his 2010 Paris Review interview, remarking "I think they ritics and readersmay be overlooking ''Strong Motion'' a little bit."

Franzen taught a fiction-writing seminar at Swarthmore in the spring of 1992 and 1994:

For the 1992 class, Franzen invited David Foster Wallace to be a guest judge of the workshop pieces.

''The Corrections''

Franzen's ''The Corrections'', a novel of social criticism, garnered considerable critical acclaim in the United States, winning both the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction
and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The novel was also a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award, and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (won by Richard Russo for '' Empire Falls'').

In September 2001, ''The Corrections'' was selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen initially participated in the selection, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Oprah and appearing in B-roll footage in his hometown of St. Louis (described in an essay in ''How To Be Alone'' titled "Meet Me In St. Louis"). In October 2001, however, ''The Oregonian'' printed an article in which Franzen expressed unease with the selection. In an interview on National Public Radio's ''Fresh Air'', he expressed his worry that the Oprah logo on the cover dissuaded men from reading the book:

Soon afterward, Franzen's invitation to appear on Oprah's show was rescinded. Winfrey announced, "Jonathan Franzen will not be on the Oprah Winfrey show because he is seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection. It is never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or cause anyone conflict. We have decided to skip the dinner and we're moving on to the next book."

These events gained Franzen and his novel widespread media attention. ''The Corrections'' soon became one of the decade's best-selling works of literary fiction. At the National Book Award ceremony, Franzen said "I'd also like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her enthusiasm and advocacy on behalf of ''The Corrections''."

Following the success of ''The Corrections'' and the publication of '' The Discomfort Zone'' and '' How to Be Alone'', Franzen began work on his next novel. In the interim, he published two short stories in ''The New Yorker'': "Breakup Stories", published November 8, 2004, concerned the disintegration of four relationships; and "Two's Company", published May 23, 2005, concerned a couple who write for TV, then split up.

In 2011, it was announced that Franzen would write a multi-part television adaptation of ''The Corrections'' in collaboration with ''The Squid and the Whale'' director Noah Baumbach for HBO. HBO has since passed on ''Corrections'', citing "difficulty" in "adapting the book's challenging narrative, which moves through time and cuts forwards and back": that would be "difficult to sustain in a series and challenging for viewers to follow, hampering the potential show's accessibility."

In September 2019, ''The Corrections'' was voted sixteenth in a list of the 100 best books of the twenty-first century so far by writers and critics of the ''Guardian'' newspaper.

''Freedom''

On June 8, 2009, Franzen published an excerpt from ''Freedom'', his novel in progress, in ''The New Yorker''. The excerpt, titled "Good Neighbors", concerned the trials and tribulations of a couple in St. Paul, Minnesota. On May 31, 2010, a second excerpt — titled "Agreeable" — was published, also in ''The New Yorker''.

On October 16, 2009, Franzen made an appearance alongside David Bezmozgis at the ''New Yorker Festival'' at the Cedar Lake Theatre, reading a portion of his forthcoming novel. Sam Allard, writing for North By Northwestern about the event, said that the "...material from his new (reportedly massive) novel" was "as buoyant and compelling as ever" and "marked by his familiar undercurrent of tragedy". Franzen read "an extended clip from the second chapter."

On September 9, 2010, Franzen appeared on ''Fresh Air'' to discuss ''Freedom'' in the wake of its release. Franzen has drawn what he describes as a "feminist critique" for the attention that male authors receive over female authors—a critique he supports. Franzen also discussed his friendship with David Foster Wallace and the impact of Wallace's suicide on his writing process.

''Freedom'' was the subject of a highly unusual "recall" in the United Kingdom starting in early October 2010. An earlier draft of the manuscript, to which Franzen had made over 200 changes, had been published by mistake. The publisher, HarperCollins, initiated an exchange program, but thousands of books had been distributed by that time.

While promoting the book, Franzen became the first American author to appear on the cover of ''Time'' magazine since Stephen King in 2000. Franzen appeared alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". He discussed the implications of the ''Time'' coverage, and the reasoning behind the title of ''Freedom'' in an interview in Manchester, England, in October 2010.

On September 17, 2010, Oprah Winfrey announced that Jonathan Franzen's ''Freedom'' would be an Oprah book club selection, the first of the last season of ''The Oprah Winfrey Show''. On December 6, 2010, he appeared on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' to promote ''Freedom'' where they discussed that book and the controversy over his reservations about her picking ''The Corrections'' and what that would entail.

Franzen has stated the writing of ''Freedom'' was influenced by the death of his close friend and fellow novelist David Foster Wallace.

''Purity''

In an interview with ''Portland Monthly'' on December 18, 2012, Franzen revealed that he currently had "a four-page, single-spaced proposal" for a fifth novel he was currently working on, although he went on to suggest that while he had a proposal there was no guarantee that what was proposed would make the final cut, saying of similar proposals for previous novels, "I look at the old proposals now, and I see the one part of them that actually got made into a book, and I think, 'How come I couldn't see that? What is all this other stuff?'". Franzen also hinted that the new novel would probably also be long, adding "I've let go of any illusion that I'm a writer of 150-page novels. I need room to let things turn around over time and see them from the whole lives of other characters, not just the single character. For better or worse, one point of view never seems to do it for me." In October 2014, during a discussion at Colgate University, Franzen read a "self-contained first-person narrative" that is part of a novel that he hoped will be out in the summer of 2015.

On November 17, 2014, ''The New York Times'' Artsbeat Blog reported that the novel, titled ''Purity'', would be out in September. 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.

In 2016, ''Daily Variety'' reported that the novel was in the process of being adapted into a 20-hour limited series for Showtime by Todd Field who would share writing duties with Franzen and the playwright Sir David Hare. It would star Daniel Craig as Andreas Wolf and be executive produced by Field, Franzen, Craig, Hare & Scott Rudin.

However, in a February 2018 interview with ''The Times'' London, Hare said that, given the budget for Field's adaptation (170 million), he doubted it would ever be made, but added "It was one of the richest and most interesting six weeks of my life, sitting in a room with Todd Field, Jonathan Franzen and Daniel Craig bashing out the story. They're extremely interesting people."

''Purity'' was a relative commercial disappointment compared to Franzen's two previous novels, selling only 255,476 copies, compared to 1.15 million copies of ''Freedom'' and 1.6 million copies of ''The Corrections''.

''A Key to All Mythologies''

On November 13, 2020, Franzen's publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux announced the publication of Franzen's new novel, ''Crossroads'', the first volume in a trilogy titled ''A Key to All Mythologies.''

''Crossroads'' was published October 5, 2021.

The novel received mostly favorable reviews, with a cumulative "Positive" rating at the review aggregator website Book Marks, based on 48 book reviews from mainstream literary critics. ''Bookforum'' called it Franzen's "finest novel yet," his "greatest and most perfect novel," and Dwight Garner of the ''New York Times'' said it was "warmer than anything he's yet written, wider in its human sympathies, weightier of image and intellect." According to the ''Times Literary Supplement'':

''Crossroads'' is largely free from the vices to which Franzen's previous work has been addicted: the self-conscious topicality; the show-off sophistication; the formal heavy-handedness. It retains many of his familiar virtues: the robust characterization; the escalating comedy; the virtuosic command of narrative rhythm.

Critics especially praised the character of Marion, whom Garner called "one of the glorious characters in recent American fiction."

The novel is about a pastor, his wife, and four children. It's split into two sections called 'Advent' and 'Easter.' Writing for ''The Nation'', Rumaan Alam says "in ''Crossroads'', every plotline leads to God."

Other works

In 1996, while still working on ''The Corrections'', Franzen published a literary manifesto in ''Harper's Magazine'' entitled " Perchance to Dream". Referencing manifestos written by Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe, among others, Franzen grappled with the novelist's role in an advanced media culture which seemed to no longer need the novel. In the end, Franzen rejects the goal of writing a great social novel about issues and ideas, in favor of focusing on the internal lives of characters and their emotions. Given the huge success of ''The Corrections'', this essay offers a prescient look into Franzen's goals as both a literary and commercially minded author.

In 2002, Franzen published a critique of the novels of William Gaddis, entitled " Mr. Difficult", in ''The New Yorker''. He begins by recounting how some readers felt ''The Corrections'' was spoiled by being too high-brow in parts, and summarizes his own views of reading difficult fiction. He proposes a "Status model", whereby the point of fiction is to be Art, and also a "Contract model", whereby the point of fiction is to be Entertainment, and finds that he subscribes to both models. He praises ''The Recognitions'', admits that he only got halfway through ''J R