Truly, 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…
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jonathan franzen
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Living 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…
Irony 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:…
Weekly 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…
In 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.”
Franzen 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…
Save the Birds: A Rumpus Roundup
Jonathan Franzen is an avid bird lover, as anyone who read Freedom might have guessed. Two weeks ago, Franzen wrote a piece for the New Yorker that, among other things,…
Tax Advice from David Foster Wallace
“Tax law is like the world’s biggest game of chess with all sorts of weird conundrums about ethics and civics and the consent of the governed built in,” Wallace wrote…
The Freedom of Fiction
At Booth, Susan Lerner interviews Jonathan Franzen about a range of subjects including the influence of the YA novel, social media, and the different “forms of exploration” associated with essays and…
Facebook and the Avant-garde
…our Franzen problems, these days, are pretty minor. We don’t have to worry that Chip Lambert’s hand-wringing is going to reinforce the old, realist modes of romantic reaction. But we…
All Aboard
My aspiration to spend time at sea as requisite literary training died long ago, as a teenager, on a white-knuckled ferry ride to Elba during a torrential rainstorm. Not only…
Purity Forthcoming
Jonathan Franzen will release another sweeping narrative titled Purity in September of next year, to the edification of serious intellectuals nationwide. While Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux president Jonathan Galassi promises…