Jonathan Franzen
Autor(a) de The Corrections
About the Author
Jonathan Franzen was born in Western Springs, Illinois on August 17, 1959. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1981, and went on to study at the Freie University in Berlin as a Fulbright scholar. He worked in a seismology lab at Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences mostrar mais after graduation. His works include The Twenty-Seventh City (1988), Strong Motion (1992), How to Be Alone (2002), and The Discomfort Zone (2006). The Corrections (2001) won a National Book Award and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Freedom (2010) is an Oprah Book Club selection. He also won a Whiting Writers' Award in 1988 and the American Academy's Berlin Prize in 2000. He is also a frequent contributor to Harper's and The New Yorker. In 2015 his title Purity made The New Yort Times and New Zealand Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Image credit: Jonathan Franzen Fotograaf: Greg Martin
Séries
Obras por Jonathan Franzen
Selected Essays from: How to be Alone 10 exemplares
The Republic of Bad Taste 3 exemplares
How He Came to Be Somewhere 2 exemplares
Runaway 2 exemplares
Franzen, J. Freiheit 1 exemplar
Emptying The Skies 1 exemplar
encruzilhadas Ed. 2023 1 exemplar
Birders: The Central Park Effect 1 exemplar
Why Birds Matter 1 exemplar
2006 1 exemplar
The Failure. Stories from The Corrections: Das Hörbuch zum Sprachen lernen mit ausgewählten Kurzgeschichten.… (2005) 1 exemplar
Ambition (in McSweeney's 37 - EGGERS) 1 exemplar
Sample of Freedom 1 exemplar
Associated Works
The short end of the Sonnenallee (1995) — Introduction, Translator, algumas edições — 304 exemplares
Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process (2017) — Contribuidor — 138 exemplares
Know the Past, Find the Future: The New York Public Library at 100 (2011) — Contribuidor — 116 exemplares
The Review of Contemporary Fiction 1996: The Future of Fiction (1996) — Contribuidor — 21 exemplares
Bringing Back the Birds: Exploring Migration and Preserving Birdscapes throughout the Americas (2019) — Prefácio — 19 exemplares
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome canónico
- Franzen, Jonathan
- Nome legal
- Franzen, Jonathan Earl
- Data de nascimento
- 1959-08-17
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- Amerikaans
- Local de nascimento
- Western Springs, Illinois, USA
- Locais de residência
- New York, New York, USA
Chicago, Illinois, USA
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Berlin, Germany
Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Boulder Creek, California, USA - Educação
- Wayne State University (1979)
Swarthmore College (BA | 1981 | German)
Freie Universität Berlin (1981) - Ocupações
- writer
novelist
essayist - Relações
- Wallace, David Foster (friend)
- Prémios e menções honrosas
- Whiting Writers' Award (1988)
Granta's Best Of Young American Novelists (1996)
Fulbright Scholarship (1981)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (2012)
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2012)
Akademie der Kunste (2010)
Fatal error: Call to undefined function isLitsy() in /var/www/html/inc_magicDB.php on line 425- 1959 in Western Springs / Illinois geboren, wuchs in einer Vorstadt von St. Louis auf. 1988 veröffentlichte er den Roman "The Twenty-Seventh City", 1992 "Strong Motion". Für seinen dritten Roman und sensationellen Erfolg "The Corrections" erhielt er 2001 den National Book Award verliehen. Schon vorher hat ihn die Zeitschrift The New Yorker unter die "Twenty Writers for the 21st Century" gerechnet. Jonathan Franzen lebt in New York.
Membros
Discussions
Jonathan Franzen's latest, PURITY--will you read it and is he really "America's best novelist"? em Literary Snobs (Setembro 2015)
June 2013: The Twenty-Seventh City em Missouri Readers (Julho 2013)
1001 April Group Read: [The Corrections] em 1001 Books to read before you die (Maio 2012)
Críticas
Listas
Five star books (1)
100 New Classics (1)
Obama Reads (1)
Unread books (1)
Family Drama (1)
Secrets Books (1)
2000s decade (1)
Our digital age (1)
A Novel Cure (2)
My TBR (2)
Midwestern Books (1)
Prémios
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 34
- Also by
- 26
- Membros
- 36,932
- Popularidade
- #494
- Avaliação
- 3.7
- Críticas
- 1,011
- ISBN
- 591
- Línguas
- 27
- Marcado como favorito
- 103
God. Yes, he's everywhere, but in this book he's virtually on every page. Normally that would be enough to turn me off. But eventually it made sense. These are his people. The story would make less sense without him. You could say this book is all about people searching for God, how they find him, what happens to them, and how God and religion figure in to it. I was not expecting this. It's not a subject I would expect Franzen to be exploring. Family, yes, God, not so much. The book is actually our looking in to the lives of the members of one family. Fair warning, these people seem to see suffering as God's will, and only when they are truly suffering do they see God. Yes, they see God in beauty and in nature, but that never seems enough.
The Father, Russ, is an under achieving, has been, Associate Pastor. He grew up in a pacifist Mennonite community and sought God early. While doing service as a conscientious objector to WW II, he finds God with the Navajos in Arizona. He meets Marion and is immediately drawn to her faith in God. Her beauty is an awakening to him. But that was twenty-five years ago. Now he sees her as fat and his four kids as people who reject him. Feeling his marriage is over, he begins lusting after some of his parishioners, only to have the foxy divorcee Frances cross his path. Stay tuned.
The fellowship, Crossroads, is a youth fellowship of a local Christian church. It draws kids from other churches. It emphases sharing feelings, hugging, being supportive, honesty with total strangers. The cool kids have been attracted by a young man with a guitar and his golden-voiced girlfriend. Drugs are prohibited but right on the periphery. They are led by Rick Ambrose, who is competing with Russ. Eventually, the kids kick out Russ citing his sermonizing to them, too much God talk. When Rick doesn't support Russ, they engage in mutual hatred.
The mother, Marion, is the narrator though much of the book. She had a very troubled childhood, but there is much more to her than that. She has severe mental issues, while they are not labelled, what we see her do we normally call OCD, manic-depression, hallucinating, and more. For her, sex and God are closely related, both intense euphoria. As a young beautiful woman, she loses her virginity and falls totally for a married womanizer. His eventual rejection pushes her over the edge, and she winds up institutionalized for a couple of weeks. She feels power when she understands she can throw a switch and avoid the worst. She knows she has to hide in plain sight. Too dangerous to share everything. In a sense, she's the antithesis of Crossroads. She meets Russ when he is in Arizona having just completed his work with the Navajos. She's impressed with his need to do service, he's impressed with her constant references to God, his own religious fervor, her belief in him, and her beauty. But now it's twenty-five years later, and she's grown fat, and he's bored with the marriage and looking for something new.
Frances, foxy the widow, enters the picture. She quickly turns his head and he maneuvers things hoping to be alone with her. She flirts with him, and he is ready to give up everything for her. They engage in an extended approach avoidance dance. Even though Russ tries to hide it, others can see what's going on.
Clem, their oldest, sees how his father is a hypocrite. He can't stand his father's constant preaching and dismissal of his mother. His only refuge is his sister Becky, who he adores. Clem can't wait to get away to college where he discovers the wonders of sex with Sharon. His grades tank. Even though Sharon has fallen in love with him, he rejects her. He drops out, gives up his student deferment, and lets his draft board know he's available to do his duty in Vietnam. His family is aghast, especially his pacifist father. This is where we see that even though he rejects religion, Clem is the most Christian of them all. He goes off to Chile and does a two-year service among the poor.
Becky, the prom queen, the social climber, had looked up to Clem while she was growing up, but as we meet her, she's going through some changes. While she had agreed with Clem's rejection of religion, she sees how the cool kids are turning toward Crossroads. She wants in, if only to show them she's still Numero Uno. But as hormones kick in, she turns her attention to the beautiful guitar-strummer. And when her beloved aunt dies and leaves her everything, her parents intervene and ask her to share it equally with her siblings. She realizes if she wants to be the good person she needs to listen to her parents, but she hates doing it and hates them for asking her. They robbed her of her opportunity to go to an elite school. Some wounds never heal. Eventually even she sees God. She winds up never going to college, getting pregnant, marrying the guitar guy, and setting up house. It takes a couple of years before she and Clem can accept each other.
Perry, the druggie, is a genius with a problem. His drug use gets out of hand. He is the master at hiding what he's doing, but it gets more challenging to keep under wraps. He even joins Crossroads, in a sense to follow his customers as he funds his drug use by selling. But what he is really hiding are serious mental health issues which eventually get out of control and land him institutionalized. He appears to have inherited much from his mother, who sees herself in him and tries to protect him.
Judson, the youngest, has not grown to the point where he can see the dysfunction all around him. Judson is usually Perry's responsibility and they are often playing games together.
It may seem like I've given away the whole story, but trust me, there's much more going on. I've only touched the surface with these summaries. You'll learn a lot more reading the book. It's worth your time.… (mais)