Understanding Jonathan Franzen

by Timothy W. Galow

The first comprehensive study to address Franzen's work to date, including his latest novel, Crossroads Jonathan Franzen--novelist and essayist--is a critical darling, commercial success, and magnet for controversy. His career took off with the publication of The Corrections (2000), which won a National Book Award and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His follow-up, Freedom (2009), received so much attention that it started a debate over the politics of critical attention. Love him or hate him, Franzen has proven to be a crucial figure in twenty-first century American letters, and the publication of each new novel has been a major literary event. In Understanding Jonathan Franzen , Timothy W. Galow studies Franzen's first five novels and surveys his most recent, Crossroads , which was published to much fanfare in 2021. He traces Franzen's work from its roots in late twentieth-century literary theory and experimental postmodernism through the socially conscious family novels for which the author is best known. This careful analysis provides a new lens for viewing each of the works and demonstrates why Franzen's stories of (white, bourgeois) American life have inspired and provoked readers for over two decades.

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