Just found out via /r/books that Jonathan Franzen has announced his next project: a six-volume novel based on his life, called "MY Struggle."
What we know so far:
>Franzen feels we need an American autobiographical epic in the vein of Proust or Knausgaard and that he's the novelist to take it on. "Those Knausgaard books are popular," he says, "but all the names of the places are weird. What if instead of reading about Geir and Yngve in Bergen you were reading about Jon and Dave in Boston? That's more relatable. Everybody can relate to that."
>Franzen has the entire book mapped out. The fifth book will be "the sad and serious one where I meditate on death, particularly the death of my good friend Dave Wallace."
>This will be Franzen's masterpiece. "No doubt about it," he says. "Forget Freedom. That was child's play. This is going to make Freedom look like complete shit. Get ready for it. I may even do seven volumes just to up the ante."
Are you excited?
I can't wait! Thanks for sharing, I am huge fan of Johnathon Franzen!
i never actually read anything by him, i just buy his books to cause Jennifer Weiner asspain
"irony was a mistake" -
>"I just want everybody to note that when all is said and done, this is going to be longer than Infinite Jest. Make that clear in the article. Please."
>>7891339
is he really that far up his own ass?
>>7891339
>but all the names of the places are weird. What if instead of reading about Geir and Yngve in Bergen you were reading about Jon and Dave in Boston? That's more relatable. Everybody can relate to that.
>>7891395
nigga it ain't real
![jonathan-franzen[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Nle4OJ3.jpg "jonathan-franzen[1].jpg")
>>7891339
The only reason anybody dislikes Franzen is because they're jealous and don't like what he represents politically
He's the single most important American writer still active (yes, better than DeLillo and Pynchon) and he will be remembered in a century as a defining figure of our time.
He's the go-to whipping boy for jaded teens and psueds because white-bread dads aren't considered cool or edgy. The psueds like to read somebody who they can hang a poster of on their dorm wall and sneer when they hear somebody mispronounce his name.
But in reality, the fiction Franzen's pushing is technically superior and more emotionally relevant than anything the pomo crowd has done since JR. He's warping the limits of American culture and finding kernels of insight deep within topics that are hated by wannabe-revolutionaries, topics like familial relationships, upper middle class milieu, and higher education. Topics that are more urgent and important to the average person than trash like meta-fiction, media, and identity politics, and yet ignored by the psueds because they offer no image of contrarianism or mindless individualism.
I wouldn't be surprised if he earns the Nobel before his death. I'm looking forward to what will be I'm sure a long and fruitful literary career
>>7891443
>The...reason...is because...
>>7891443
even when someone's defending him Franzen looks like the milquetoastier guy since Proust graced the earth, holy shit
>>7891459
I mean, DFW at least had the whole prodigy gone wrong thing, and the bandana and long hair dude who talks about Frege, but Franzen is just the literature equivalent of dad jeans
>>7891443
The average person has nothing to worry about besides managing their income. We're completely shut out of politics, and rightfully so. We spend our entire lives free of the struggles characteristic of the humanities. Everything is safe, and sanitary, and boring, and so too is our fiction. We're living in an infantile culture- yes, even the smart people- so everything we write is going to be trifling and ignorant. This is the best time to be alive, and the worst time to be writing fiction.
>>7891443
Nigga he's not even the best WASP writer, that's Richard Ford. He's nothing. He's a mediocrity. He is neither hot nor cold.
>>7891339
could you link me to the onion article you got this from?
>>7891443
The idea that metafiction and media aren't to be considered in literature when nearly every single person in the developed world communicates (or is communicated with) in horrible, jagged, fractured soundbytes seems ridiculous.
His gold standard of fiction is Edith Wharton, the nigga's delusional.
>>7891443
>the Nobel
Toni Morrison > Borges
>>7891339
He lived a shit boring life, and it won't be interesting to read.
>>7891443
>technically superior
lmfao find a single Franzen passage that is even mildly impressive from a technical standpoint. the dude is like a tiny step removed from pure cliche, he's just not a good fucking writer
>>7891443
Are they handing out nobels for mind numbing mediocrity and sheer unoriginality now? He is disliked because he is a banal and uninteresting writer. Take "rabbit, run" or whatever that shit series is called and make it even more trite and crappy and you get franzen's body of work.
My contrarian spirit is forcing me to read Franzen because you guys denigrate him so frequently
>>7893009
End of book 2 or 3 to The Corrections, when the "something terrible" referenced in the opening comes to pass.Enid watching alfred jump from the cruise ship.
>>7891339
>hey thats really cool and made lots of money. I'll do it! It's my idea!
>>7891443
there is zero change franzen gets the nobel
>>7891443
Wew laddio, sounds like one of those /pol/ posts where the great plan to negate all "family values" that you really seem to hold dear is laid bare.
> what he represents politically
What does he represent?
What do the others represent?
>>7893587
>What does he represent?
Mediocrity. Banality. Superficial wit. Conflation of being educated to an arbitrary degree to being highbrow. He's essentially the totem of all milquetoast middle aged white dudes who think they understand art because they have MFAs.
>>7891443
>I'm looking forward to what will be I'm sure a long and fruitful literary career
He's already in the late middle end of his career so not only are you completely wrong about everything before this, but delusional as well.
1/10 bait
>"but all the names of the places are weird. What if instead of reading about Geir and Yngve in Bergen you were reading about Jon and Dave in Boston? That's more relatable. Everybody can relate to that."
Why would I spend my precious time in reading something by a person who lacks the selfawareness to realize the simple irony and flagrant chauvinism in that statement?
>>7891339
Who?
>>7893676
People on /lit/ talking about MFAs is always hilarious. It just becomes an amorphous bogeyman for everything /lit/ sees wrong with the literary world.
>implying most MFAs are middle aged white dudes and not mostly women
>implying Franzen isn't typically reviled beyond reason in the MFA community anyway
>>7893707
Whether they're women or men isn't strictly relevant so long as they're white and milquetoast.
He's reviled by them because he's the logical conclusion to what MFAfags are. They don't like looking in the mirror.
>>7893718
So whiteness is bad now on /lit/? How strange. /lit/ frequently discusses how SJW ideals of diversity are ruining the collegiate writing community, but here you are bitching about whiteness?
Somehow Franzen and Junot Diaz are simultaneously representative of the MFA style.
Funny, seems like the goalposts are endlessly moving.
I suspect you've never read a book by an MFA other than one or two Iowa memes, and you're bothered by how many of those people get paid to spend a couple years writing without having to work.
>>7893753
No. Whiteness isn't bad. Mediocrity is. Whites are the biggest source of it per capita because just being white, middle class, and educated to a bachelor's or masters level is often good enough to land them in cushy positions where people assume they know what they're talking about.
>>7893794
Most writers of any given generation are mediocre and will be quickly forgotten. Most will speak authoritatively about what they are doing. It's just how things go. The 19th or early 20th century were no better or worse than now, it's just the shit has been filtered out.
>>7893811
Obviously, but most people now are content with being mediocre and no one's even trying to be great because the very of making that sort of effort idea is seen as a joke. The real difference is the lack of effort.
>>7891395
>>7891434
>>7891443
>taking this seriously
wew lad
if you like you can pre-order his next book, "Infinite-er Jest" off me. It's gonna be Franzo's greatest work
>>7893165
>The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal”. To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.
>>7891339
It does read exactly like an onion article, at least one other anon has noticed that part.
But not a single anon seems to have noticed that in the OP, Franzen purportedly rips off Hitler's book title. That was the very first thing that tipped me off that it was a giggle, before anything else. This post should probably be the thread's first containing the string "Hitler".
If Knausgaard is a real person, I'm not aware of them. Sounds Swedish.
I'm fairly sure the OP is a joke/troll post, but it gives us an excuse to shit on Franzen, so who cares.
>>7894104
He's right, though. Or he's right about MFAs and boring middle-aged white people. When was the last time an MFA program produced a great writer?
>>7894495
David Foster Wallace.
>>7894535
Debatable. Sure, though, let's count him. So it's been, what, thirty years?
And before him, the last absolutely undisputed great writer to come from an MFA was Flannery O'Connor, way way back in the fucking 1940s.
So every thirty to forty years we get a great writer. Not exactly the best track record.
>>7894568
It's not debatable. It's not every day a writer of such talent comes along that when he dies the language is literally impoverished.
Who the hell is Franzen?
lmao at writers writing for posteriority in ~2000+
I thought it was real
why would you do this OP
>>7891339
You know, I was just saying the other day that what we really need to see coming out of the literary game is a 5,000+ page volume about being a pussy with a distant melancholy appreciation of the female gender and an uncanny understanding of what it's like to act like somebody's Grandmother.
But what about the fact that DFW will be resurrected in ~13 years on February 1st.
>>7894472
Knausgaard's My Struggle books are real, but this Franzen thing is not. I would suggest checking out the Knausgaard books actually, they're translated into English up to the 5th book, and they're pretty darn good.
>>7895325
Lmao at lmaoing at that. How terribly sad and banal of you.
>>7891339
will the german translation be called "MEIN Kampf"
>>7891443
LOL well done sir
