Rumpus Exclusive: “The Arrogance of Style”
Dickens and the Brontës did it; so can you!
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Posts Tagged: jonathan franzen
Notable San Francisco: 9/18–9/24
Literary events in and around the Bay Area this week!
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This Is Literary: A Conversation with Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner discusses her debut novel, FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE.
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Notable San Francisco: 11/21–11/27
Literary events in and around the Bay Area this week!
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Notable NYC: 11/10–11/16
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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What to Read When You Need to Understand Corrupt Families
As we wait for the latest Trump crisis-slash-scandal to shake out, here is a list of great books about terrible families.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #84: Susan DeFreitas
Picture this: a curbside juggler with a rose between his teeth. That’s the opening image of Susan DeFreitas’s powerful debut novel, Hot Season. Vivid (and sometimes strange) images strike again and again, conjuring ponderosa pines, cafés, old houses, and new characters. The book is firmly set in the fictional town of Crest Top, Arizona, and […]
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Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living edited by Manjula Martin
Today in Rumpus Books, Elizabeth Stark reviews Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, edited by Manjula Martin.
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The Rumpus Interview with D. Foy
D. Foy discusses his latest novel, Patricide, the evolution of “gutter opera,” his writing process, free will, and memes.
...moreWhat Not to Wear
For The Millions, Rosa Lyster analyzes the “dos and don’ts” of writing about clothes, arguing that strong descriptions of clothing can help enliven a narrative and provide clues about a character’s tastes and class.
...moreLiterary Layers
In her review of Cynthia Ozick’s new essay collection, Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays, Zoe Heller quotes Ozick quoting Lionel Trilling in reference to Jonathan Franzen’s commercial-literary ambition: “a writer must ‘direct his words to his spiritual ancestors, or to posterity, or even, if need be, to a coterie.’” Heller is interested in […]
...moreKids Books All Grown-Up
…like Franzen’s novels, the Berenstain Bear books might meander, reveling in details alternately informative and irrelevant, but ultimately they’re straightforward tales about family. (Also, as a friend pointed out to me recently, JFran sort of looks like a Berenstain Bear. This can’t be coincidental.) At The Millions, Edan Lepucki compares children’s books to their grown-up counterparts.
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Michel Tournier and the Novel of Ideas
Do novels think?
...moreThe President’s Holiday Reading List
Electric Literature has the scoop on the list of books President Obama and his family bought during their recent excursion on Small Business Saturday. Salman Rushdie and Jonathan Franzen made their way onto the President’s reading list.
...moreNearer to Nonsense
If “show, don’t tell” were really that great advice, why bother writing anything at all? Slate’s Forrest Wickman makes the case for saying what you mean: Twenty-first-century tastemakers like to think of themselves as beyond highbrow vs. lowbrow—that monocle popped long ago—but our eye for subtlety persists.
...moreJustifying the Template
Too many stories about mopey suburbanites. Too many well-off white people. A surfeit of descriptions, a paucity of action. Too much privileging of prose for the sake of prose, too little openness to rougher energies. And those endings? At the New Yorker, Jonathan Franzen writes about “the New Yorker story” as a genre that emerged […]
...moreThe Fiction of Work
Most work is not fulfilling, and by the time we finally realize it all the friends we’d like to turn to for support have been scattered across the globe in pursuit of fulfilling work. At Ploughshares, Tim Ellison looks at the world of work in fiction.
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Against Realism
What is it Ferrante has that American fiction lacks?
...moreNeil Gaiman Versus China
The Guardian reports that Neil Gaiman has added his name to a letter urging China’s president Xi Jinping to release dissident writers “languishing in jail for the crime of expressing their opinions.” In addition to Gaiman, several other famed authors, including Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Eagan, have contributed to the effort, calling for “immediate steps to defend and protect […]
...moreNotable NYC: 9/19–9/25
Saturday 9/19: Jami Attenberg, Lauren Groff, Alice Sola Kim, Sara Novic, Chinelo Okparanta, and Julia Pierpont join Mellow Pages Library Summer Vacation for a blowout bookend event. Silent Barn, 2 p.m., Free. Marie Buck, Laura Elrick, Luke McMullan, and Rachel Warriner are hosted by Sophie Seita for reading of assorted poetry. Unnameable Books, 7 p.m., […]
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Rewrite, Reboot, Remix
Rewriting the classics has become a stale and risk-averse strategy. But that shouldn’t spoil the fun of our larger culture of remixing.
...moreLiberty, Justice
From Freedom to Purity, there’s no denying the man likes his themes. Over at Flavorwire, Jonathon Sturgeon reviews Jonathan Franzen’s forthcoming novel: Does Franzen truly believe his readers need to hear that the world is impure? For another take on Purity, check out Alden Jones’s Rumpus review of the novel here.
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Purity by Jonathan Franzen
Alden Jones reviews Purity by Jonathan Franzen today in Rumpus Books.
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The Rumpus Interview with Etgar Keret
Writer Etgar Keret talks about his new memoir The Seven Good Years, the early criticism he faced as a writer, and the surreal that is always waiting.
...moreTruly, Zero
To write a book like Mislaid, you have to simultaneously be aggressively assured of your own cultural experience and have, truly, zero fucks to give. VICE talks to Nell Zink about process, practice, and poor old Jonathan Franzen.
...moreLiving in the Republic
The church on Siegfeldstrasse was open to anyone who embarrassed the Republic, and Andreas Wolf was so much of an embarrassment that he actually resided there, in the basement of the rectory, but unlike the others—the true Christian believers, the friends of the Earth, the misfits who defended human rights or didn’t want to fight […]
...moreIrony Genius Vs. Realism Hero
If Franzen is our genius realist, and DFW our genius postmodernist — how might they meld irony and sincerity? In an excerpt over at Salon from his new book, Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, Eric G. Wilson talks irony, realism, postmodernism, David Foster Wallace, and Jonathan Franzen.
...moreWeekly Geekery
Grumbling about technology. Reddit users can report harassment. Will it help? The New York Times and Buzzfeed published directly to Facebook, just like your mom. Is technology destroying men? Pooping in space!
...moreIn the Birdhouse
For the New Yorker, Kathryn Schulz profiles Nell Zink, touching on her love for birds, her complicated relationship with the publishing industry, and her “improbable literary fame.”
...moreFranzen Continues…
Wait, he’s not done yet. Franzen talks birds, climate change, and religion with Salon: I think more broadly, there has been a general trend in the environmental movement over the last couple of decades to try to learn to speak the language of economics and capitalism and human values, things like ecosystem services. I’m not […]
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