His father, raised in Minnesota, was the son of an immigrant from Sweden his mother's ancestry was Eastern European. Early life and education įranzen was born in Western Springs, Illinois, the son of Irene (née Super) and Earl T. In recent years, Franzen has become recognized for his opinions on everything from social networking services such as Twitter ('What happens to the people who want to communicate in depth, individual to individual, in the quiet and permanence of the printed word?' 'the actual substance of our daily lives is total electronic distraction' ) to the impermanence of e-books ('All the real things, the authentic things, the honest things, are dying off') and the self-destruction of America. Oprah Winfrey's book club selection in 2001 of The Corrections led to a much publicized feud with the talk show host. His 1996 Harper's essay ' Perchance to Dream' bemoaned the state of contemporary literature. Franzen's latest novel Crossroads was published in 2021, and is the first in a projected trilogy.įranzen has contributed to The New Yorker magazine since 1994. His novel Freedom (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine alongside the headline ' Great American Novelist'. His 2001 novel The Corrections, a sprawling, satirical family drama, 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.

He didn’t write it for his mother, who he says “became a full, amazing person in the last years of her life,” exactly, but he’s taken a significant departure with it-keeping an eye on the sort of story she might have enjoyed by taking a kinder tack toward his characters.Jonathan Earl Franzen (born August 17, 1959) is an American novelist and essayist. His upcoming novel, Crossroads, is meant to be different. The anger he’s long harbored, manifested in everything from his self-admitted road rage to his vocal hatred of social media, informed his five previous novels, from his 1988 debut, The Twenty-Seventh City, to 2015’s Purity, he says. A homemaker who died of cancer in 1999, his mother, Irene, continues to be influential in the author’s life.

“You must have observed the person carefully and you must have identified what’s likely to hurt the most, and then there’s the rhetorical challenge of delivering the painful blow without having your fingerprints on it,” he says. “It requires a high level of subtlety,” says the 62-year-old novelist from his home in Santa Cruz, California. Jonathan Franzen’s mother knew how to wound him in just the right way.

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