Trend Results : Jonathan Franzen
Blog Post Results (1-20 of 648)
FILTER RESULTS ►Presented Without (Much) Comment (Open Book Thread)
As I do my best to ignore the vomitaceous Wee Bush revival meeting, I find myself offering thanks to Jonathan Franzen for this bit of wisdom: Q: If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? I wouldn’t presume to require our current president to read anything, but the Vargas [...]
Peru Is True to Itself
In the start of his review of Gordon Lish’s Peru, David Winters very elegantly sums up why I find so much of the realism/notrealism debate silly. The idea that there’s some ideal “reality” that everyone from Jonathan Franzen to Alain Robbe-Grillet is trying to evoke is ridiculous. Show More Summary
Follow us on Twitter
Remember the time the New Yorker asked readers to “like” them on Facebook by promising exclusive “liker”-only access to a new Jonathan Franzen story? Well, this is kind of like that but worse. Earlier today, Vanity Fair published an “article” asking readers to help them reach a million Twitter followers. Which is fine. Well, no, it’s not...
Jonathan Franzen Q & A
At hlo they have a translation of a Q & A Eni Rostás and Dóra Szekeres had with Jonathan Franzen. I'm not sure whether he was just sucking up, or whether he has a particularly odd interpretation of what the so-called 'American Dream'...Show More Summary
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack Will Make Your Brain's Teeth Ache
I was really surprised when I read in the David Foster Wallace biography Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story that DFW hated Mark Leyner. Here, via Mother Jones, is a passage from a letter DFW wrote to Jonathan Franzen:
Right now, I amShow More Summary
Why Write?
Why write? After George Orwell, Joan Didion and Jonathan Franzen, a panel of writers at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, debate the issue.
Column by Karina Wilson
In the twenty-first century, everyone writes, to some degree. The ability to sequence words on a page is a requirement for success in a data-based world. Show More Summary
Literature, Sex, and Birds
Jonathan Franzen gets it right in this interview by Susan Cosier for Audubon Magazine. In response to being asked what...
Reversing Literary Sprawl
After reading Mark Binelli’s Detroit City Is the Place To Be and Jonathan Franzen’s notorious essay on the state of the novel, “Perchance To Dream”, Alexander Nazaryan compares the decline of the great American novel to the decline of Detroit as an industrial powerhouse: I guess what I am calling for is the literary equivalent of “rightsizing,” [...]
‘Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters’ Review: Bloody, Forgettable Fun
In Freedom, author Jonathan Franzen compares pop music hits to chicklets: their flavor is easily accessible, and when you’re through with them, you spit them out and move onto something else. He might say the same about the MTV-Paramount-MGM...Show More Summary
“A quiet hero of contemporary literature”
At The Paris Review, a remembrance of Evan S. Connell, whose work has been cited as an influence by Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis and Zadie Smith. Related posts: “Emotion, said the monk, is like a storm” [Very Quick] Recommended Reading:...Show More Summary
Brenna Clarke Gray: The 10 Commandments Of A Righteous Readerly Life
And lo from the heavens did the God of Literature (who is not, however self-appointed, Jonathan of Franzen) come down from its heavenly cloud made of unreleased Atwood novels and an unpublished fourth book of the Millennium series, and it did tell unto a lowly blogger the Ten Commandments of a righteous readerly life.
Jonathan Franzen Is ‘Out of the Blurb Business’
It might be time to stop writing books, everybody — Jonathan Franzen is on an indefinite blurb sabbatical. He told Time, “I thought, either I’m getting to be an old softie, or people are writing good novels.” Whatever it is, Franzen is "out of the blurb business.” It's cool, Jonathan
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Jonathan Franzen Gives a Reading!
Franzen, notorious for not doing readings, joined members of New York's literary glitterati in a fundraiser to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy. News by Dean Fetzer Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom and The Corrections, a man with a reputation for hating readings, Twitter, eBooks... Show More Summary
Jonathan Franzen To Discuss Play Based on His Memoir
Novelist Jonathan Franzen and director Daniel Fish will participate in a special talkback called “Franzen on Franzen.” This conversation event takes place on November 15th at New York City-based theatre, The Duke on 42nd Street.
Attendees...Show More Summary
Shorties (A Short Story by Alice Munro, An Interview with Afghan Whigs, and more)
The Guardian shares "The Eye," an Alice Munro short story from her new collection, Dear Life. World Cafe interviews the Afghan Whigs about the band's reunion tour. J. Robert Lennon interviews Jonathan Franzen at the Writers at Cornell podcast. The...
I Asked My Dad, Who Has Dementia, to Annotate Jonathan Franzen’s ‘How to Be Alone’
When my father lost his memory to dementia, everything in the house around him became new. He often can’t remember how sitting in a chair traditionally works, but turning the chair upside-down makes total sense. The rugs aren’t floor coverings any more, but mazes that he can trace by tiptoeing along the edge. Show More Summary
Coaxing Creativity
Robert McCrum marvels at the idiosyncratic ways writers try to cajole their creativity: Writing rituals, like all fetishes associated with creativity, are intrinsically interesting. Jonathan Franzen attracted a lot of attention when he described writing The Corrections in a state...
Jonathan Franzen's Bird-Watching Trip to Jamaica and St. Lucia
Jonathan Franzen wrote his story “Missing” about a trip to Jamaica and St. Lucia, the goal of which was to see all endemic birds on both islands. In less than a week he was able to add 51 species to his life list of birds—see a list of the birds and a few photos from his trip.
The Transcendence Of Birds
Jonathan Franzen's recent collection of essays, Farther Away, chronicles his love of bird-watching. Morgan Meis homes in on the near-religious awe that Franzen affords the creatures: You could say that Saint Francis is the patron saint of Farther Away. Francis...
Jonathan Franzen's 'House for Sale' to premiere off-Broadway
"House for Sale," a stage adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's essay, will make its off-Broadway debut Oct. 21 to Nov. 18 at the Duke on 42nd Street.
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