Jonathan Franzen is gracing the cover of Time magazine. It's the first time in ten years (the last was Stephen King) that a living author graced said cover.
From the cover story...
Franzen isn't the richest or most famous living American novelist, but you could argue — I would argue — that he is the most ambitious and also one of the best. His third book, The Corrections, published in 2001, was the literary phenomenon of the decade. His fourth novel, Freedom, will arrive at the end of August. Like The Corrections, it's the story of an American family, told with extraordinary power and richness.
The trend in fiction over the past decade has been toward specialization: the closeup, the miniature, the microcosm. After the literary megafauna of the 1990s — like Infinite Jest, by Franzen's close friend, the late David Foster Wallace — the novels of the aughts embraced quirkiness and uniqueness. Franzen skipped that trend. He remains a devotee of the wide shot, the all-embracing, way-we-live-now novel.
It's hard to say exactly what makes Franzen so uncomfortable. It could be me, or the prospect of being on the cover of TIME. It could be the pressure of having to follow up the huge success of The Corrections, or it could be the much fretted-over standing of the novel in America's cultural-entertainment complex. Maybe it's all of the above.
If they could talk, the otters would tell Franzen to man up, chill out and have a sea urchin. But I'm not sure that's possible for him, or even a good idea.
And, lucky him, he's also profiled in Vogue where he chats about his new book Freedom. The magazine has an excerpt from said work that one can read as well.
Not to be outdone, the New York Times also reviewed Franzen's latest, here.
Oh, and don't forget the Guardian's profile of him, too.
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