Franzen
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
I remember seeing a little while ago comments on how Franzen is bad in some way. I believe it had to do with his person, rather than his literature itself. Can someone remind me why this guys sucks?
>>8282029
why dont you just fucking read his books and decide for yourself?
>>8282066
im having a conversation with a friend about him and i told him that i remember hearing that he's artistically corrupt, but i had no evidence or sources to resort to, so i feel like my statement was rather empty.
i'm not giving him my opinion of the guy, i'm just telling him what i've heard about him, so there's no need for me to read his books to figure it out. it would be counter-intuitive for me to develop my own opinion of him as an author if i'm trying to illuminate what other people think of him to my friend.
>>8282073
So then you felt some chinese cartoon image board would be a valid source?
Are you trying to say we don't like him because he carries a gun?
>>8282143
well i figured that i heard the rumblings here, so i might as well come back here to clear up what was actually being said about him
He's very easy to hate because he writes those big, boring realist social novels that are no longer in fashion
>>8282029
desu I've never read any of his books but always write mean things about him only because he looks like the sort of boring guy who'd write long novels about american suburbs
>>8282029
Have you read The Recognitions? Go read that then read this http://adilegian.com/FranzenGaddis.htm
If you still think he isn't a smarmy hack who doesn't know the first thing about literature but insists that he's part of the "high-art literary tradition" after this, then there's no hope for you.
>>8282168
This. He's just plain boring.
>>8282173
this 2bh
He so badly wants to usurp DFW's rep. Prolly been jealous of all the hype Wallace has been getting posthumously.
>thinks he's zany
>thinks he's properly framed America's neurosis
Also, he talked shit about E.M. Forster. So fuck him tbqh.
>>8282701
He talked shit about a whole host of people and basically dismissed Gaddis, Hawkes, Pynchon, etc. as angry young men/writers for angry young men. He's the inbred pseudo intellectual spwan of all the bastards who should've never been allowed anywhere near literature.
>>8282455
I'm not fucking reading all that. are you retarded?
>>8282168
Is he kinda like Jane Austen, Dickens and those types?
Sounds like I'd really like franzen
>>8282720
Go ahead and be a pseud fag then. Just don't expect to be taken seriously when you try to discuss any of this.
>>8282029
he is decent at best
>>8282723
>Jane Austen, Dickens and those types?
In what fucking world are Austen and Dickens the same type
>>8282965
In the kind of world where he hasn't read either of them.
Didn't he dis Oprah cause he didn't think she could appreciate his lit when she put it on her book club lol
>>8283701
lol yeah
>>8282143
Obviously not the image board itself, you prick. Information quality is independent of where it comes from, and OP can always cross check online elsewhere anyway.
>>8283426
>implying you have
He is legitimately one of the greatest living American writers. He is unpopular on 4chan because his ideas are totally in opposition to what most of the pseudo-intellectuals here idealize, but he is absolutely towards the forefront of contemporary high-art American literature, and anyone who doesn't agree with this doesn't have any idea what they are talking about.
>>8282029
Because we don't like him as a board
>>8283807
What's a good place to start with him?
He has a lot of books.
>>8282460
I agree with that. His books are nicely characterized, laid out, planned, his characters are fleshed out, but holy shit is it a borefest to read.
He then has to counteract the snooze by being a flamboyant asshole in real life.
His essays are even worse ("look at me, I own a rotary phone, I'm better than you").
All in all, forgettable.
>>8282711
That is absolutely false. He loves The Recognitions, and he was obsessed with Pynchon in his youth. He writes at length about his infatuation with Gravity's Rainbow in his book 'The Krauss Project.' He has an enormous respect for these authors, and was obsessed with them in his youth, but he doesn't see, personally, any point in actively pursuing that highly academic sort of writing right now because it is functionally pointless, as a writer, to go down that road, unless you want to end up like Vollmann -- read by just about nobody. He successfully revitalizes the high postmodern tradition by utilizing facets of it in pursuit of writing more classical social realist novels. If you do not believe this, read his first three novels. He has passionate love for the high postmodernists and it's blatantly obvious in his earlier works.
>>8283813
I started with Purity when it came out last year, and quickly read literally everything written by him, including ephemera like his memoir and his vanity Karl Krauss translations.
I was happy starting with Purity, and it's probably still my 'favorite,' due to it dealing with a lot of things that are personally relevant to me, but The Corrections is a formally 'better' novel, and might be a good place to start if you want a 'masterpiece.' I am a huge fan of Strong Motion, his second novel, but it would be a terrible starting place. His collected essays are also good, but, tldr: probably Purity or The Corrections, depending on whether or not you'd prefer something more timely and open-heartedly emotional and accessible or his objective 'masterpiece.'
>>8283807
I am one of those pseudo-intellectuals, your highness, the real intellectual. plz accept my deepest 'fuck you.'
>>8283847
i do not define myself as an intellectual. I am just saying that most of the people on lit are the sorts to totally disregard anything that isn't held in esteem by Bloom or whoever else as being the absolute most difficult/complex texts ever written.
by which i mean that most people here dive straight into Ulysses or Vollmann or whatever else without really having any comprehension of the greater context or deeper meanings of the work, and totally disregard much of the more significant 'humanist' writers, like Alice Munro or whoever else. I think it's retarded.
>>8282701
>Also, he talked shit about E.M. Forster.
No, he didn't. He said he didn't "get" E.M. Forster, but never shat on his ability or importance.
New Sincerity is middlebrow and people around here prefer highbrow.
readable but unstimulating prose. books high on words, low on content. essays/stories (his stories read like essays, and not in a good way, like mary mccarthy) are legitimately below average.
>>8283868
hasn't he only published, like, one story?
>>8283852
He called him overrated. I get not "getting" certain writers (he likened the Brits to perhaps not understanding DFW, or American fiction in general) but to call somebody overrated because you don't "get" them, or it doesn't speak to your generation or whatever is def talking shit. It's an undermining of a writer's ability based on how the writing made them feel. You don't get it? Okay, but don't say that the dude is overrated when he's prolly preaching to the choir overseas and giving the folks some serious relatable content.
>>8283824
Loving something and understanding it are two completely different things. He clearly and repeatedly shows that he has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to The Recognitions, Gaddis, Pynchon, or postmodernism as a whole.
>>8282029
He doesn't. His desire for a readership outside of academia just triggers tryhards.
>>8283807
This.
>>8283856
His writings have nothing to do with DFW. They were friends.
>>8282029
Franzen is an excellent writer, just probably a douche irl, but most you all probably are as well. I loved The Corrections. As an essayist, he is superb. Read "Farther Away" in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/18/farther-away-jonathan-franzen
>>8284508
Good essay. Read a few others on that collection, all good.
banal and trite overdone shit that was already beaten to death by the 50s. unoriginal characters (horny college teacher, working class stubborn dad getting dementia, shrew bitch wife, check check check). No insight into human transcendence or true connection, no soul in his writing. Absolutely banal resolutions. I don't even like his prose on the sentence level. One of the worst proclaimed "important" writers I've ever read - he never even flirted with showing me something that wasn't already obvious to everyone with eyes, and never pushed the limits of fiction. What a joke.
If we are going to set up a literary parallel, he is to literary fiction what the worst written minor dragonlance secondary stories are to fantasy fiction.
FUCK OFF FRANZEN
YOURE SHIT
NO ONE NEEDS TO READ YOUR BOOKS TO KNOW THAT
FUCK YOU
>>8283807
>anyone who doesn't agree with this doesn't have any idea what they are talking about.
Lowbrow is a myth, highbrow is dead, but middlebrow, middlebrow is alive and well everybody, look no further than this post. And if you must look further, look at the Marquis de Fucking-Middlebrow himself, Jon Franzen.
>>8284503
can you imagine how THAT would have gone
Hated The Corrections, and enjoyed Freedom to bits. You don't agree with me, eat my ass.
>>8283916
Franzen was asked which authors are overrated. He didn't like the question and instead listed well-acclaimed authors that never clicked for him.
