Jonathan Franzen’s fifth novel, Purity, appears, like his previous one, Freedom, amid the media equivalent of the fog of war. There have been trumpeted interviews and fatuous raves, but also misleading headlines, Twitter diatribes, backlashes to the backlash and a deluge of emptily sassy online retorts aggregating all of the above. Low-key irony and a stickler’s insistence on saying exactly what one thinks have never played well in the press, so this author—whose original sin consists of being inanely praised in the New York Times Book Review and declared a “Great American Novelist” on the cover of Time—has only succeeded in compounding the murk. Someone has to be the face of every (real and imagined) injustice writers face when negotiating the publishing establishment; it’s so much more fun to hate a face. Continue reading at 'Slate'
[ Slate | 2015-08-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
A first novel with glowing endorsements from such literary lights as Jonathan Franzen, Paul Auster, Geoff Dyer, and John Ashbery—what more could a young writer want? Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-05-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
To many devoted readers, bookstores, and collectors, a book is good, but a signed book is best—and the absence of a title page to autograph is just another reason for purists to eschew those newfangled e-readers. A signed copy of a favorite book can be intensely meaningful to an avid fan. And in... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2013-10-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
'Freedom' author Jonathan Franzen, who has previously disparaged Facebook and ebooks, says Twitter 'stands for everything I oppose' Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-03-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this