Jonathan Franzen : the comedy of rage / Philip Weinstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weinstein, Philip M., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Franzen, Jonathan.

Authors, American--20th century--Biography.

Authors, American.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (244 pages, 8 pages of plates) : color illustrations, photographs

Distribution:

London, England : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020

Place of Publication:

London, England : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc., 2020.

Summary:

"Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage is the first critical biography of one of today's most important novelists. Drawing on unpublished emails and a private interview (along with published ones), Philip Weinstein conveys the feel and heft of Franzen's voice as he ponders the purposes and problems of his life and his art, from his earliest fiction to his most recent novel, Purity. Franzen's work raises major questions about the possibilities of contemporary fiction: how does one appeal to a broad mass of mainstream readers, on the one hand, while persuading connoisseurs, on the other, that one's fiction has staying power, is high art? Even more acutely, how did Franzen move from the rage that animates his first two novels to the more generous comic stance of the two later novels on which his reputation rests? Wrestling with these questions, Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage unpacks the becoming of Franzen as a person and a writer--from his ultra-sensitive Midwestern childhood, through his heady years at Swarthmore College, his marriage, and the alienating decade of the 1990s, up to his spectacular ascent and assimilation into pop-culture as one of the literary figures of his generation. Weinstein joins biography and criticism in ways that fully respect their differences--but that also grant that the work comes, however unpredictably, out of the life"-- Provided by publisher.

"The first critical biography of Jonathan Franzen, exploring the trajectory of his career and the intersections of his life and work"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introductory

Becoming Jonathan Franzen

A bugged world : The twenty-seventh city

"Something wrong in the underbrush" : Strong motion

Collapse and arrival, status and contract

All in the family : The corrections

Taking and mistaking : Freedom

The New Yorker

Afterword: "Hungering for clean" : Purity.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

9781501307201

1501307207

9781501307188

1501307185

9781501307195

1501307193

OCLC:

1201426723