Here is yet more proof that I was wrong, and he was right. It's been at least a decade since I asked him about fame and doubted his answer. Franzen assured me this was mostly bullshit, but I can't say I believed him entirely. Purity by Jonathan Franzen (9780007532780) - PaperBack - Adventure Fiction Modern. Some years after he became Jonathan Franzen, American Writer, I brought up something Norman Mailer had once said about how “celebrity took away much of the necessary anonymity” he needed to complete the “large, collective novels about American life” he aspired to write. If the how of this book sometimes strains credulity-a cruel decision Wolf makes late in the novel will be a flashpoint of criticism-it is never uninteresting. But great fiction is never about the what or the who. A common assumption of commercial fiction holds that what truly matters is the what or the who. Franzen often telegraphs and outright spoils his big dramatic twists, as though to suggest to readers that the pleasure of narrative shockeroos is beneath them. A magnum opus for our morally complex times from the author of FreedomY. That fascination, coupled with his narrative skill, helps explain why his books so cunningly walk the line between commercial success and high-lit achievement. Read 4,838 reviews from the world's largest community for readers.
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