Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage is the first critical biography of one of today's most important novelists. Drawing on unpublished emails and both published and private interviews, Philip Weinstein conveys the feel and heft of Franzen's voice as he ponders the purposes and problems of his life and art, from his earliest fiction to his most recent novel, Purity. Franzen's work raises major questions about the possibilities of contemporary fiction: how does one appeal to a wide audience of mainstream readers, on the one hand, while persuading connoisseurs, on the other, that one's fiction has staying power, is high art? More acutely, how did Franzen move from the rage that animates his first two novels to the more generous comic stance of the later novels on which his reputation rests? Wrestling with these questions, Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage unpacks the becoming of Franzen as a person and a writer-from his ultra-sensitive Midwestern childhood, through his heady years at Swarthmore College, his marriage, and the alienating decade of the 1990s, up to his spectacular ascent and assimilation into pop culture as one of the literary figures of his generation. Weinstein joins biography and criticism in ways that fully respect their differences, but that also grant that the work comes, however unpredictably, out of the life.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN-13
9781501307171
eBay Product ID (ePID)
221243883
Product Key Features
Book Title
Jonathan Franzen: the Comedy of Rage
Author
Professor Philip Weinstein
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Topic
Literature
Publication Year
2015
Genre
Biographies & True Stories
Number of Pages
248 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
216mm
Item Width
140mm
Item Weight
460g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Professor Philip Weinstein
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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