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Jonathan Franzen's 10 rules for novelists

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Alma, Nov 15, 2018.

  1. typefitter

    typefitter Well-Known Member

    I mean, you could argue that, almost by definition, someone who writes 500-page literary novels has to have a little pretentiousness in them. Almost any kind of writing kind of requires ego, doesn't it? Unless you're in it just for the money—which is fine, it's work, but I can't imagine many novelists are—you kind of have to believe that you're writing something that is worth reading. Just by writing at all, you're kind of saying that you have a voice that's worthy of being heard.
     
  2. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    Holy shit. Gee agreed with me on something!

    I’m screenshotting this!

    Peace in our time!
     
  3. daemon

    daemon Well-Known Member

    Agree, which is why I suspect Franzen grates on people in the literary community for reasons other than his supposed pretentiousness. Like I said, I'm pretty sure he's taken a considerable amount of gender-related criticism, and given the overall demographics of the literary community, I would guess that particular line of criticism ends up being amplified. At the present moment, it's not very cool or edgy or avant garde to be writing from the perspective of a straight white American male. I don't say that as a gripe. Just look at the various shortlists and the identities of the authors and the subject matter of their novels. There aren't a lot of Phillip Roth, John Updike types. I'm sure it grates on people that, in an age that seems to prize the Great Gay/Minority/Immigrant Novel, Franzen is still held up as the standard bearer of American fiction.
     
  4. typefitter

    typefitter Well-Known Member

    This is an interesting point. It would never happen, but it would be kind of fascinating if Franzen wrote a novel and put someone else's name on it, just to see the reaction to this stunning new talent, or Franzen acolyte, or whatever judgments might be cast.

    Incidentally, here is the list of Franzen's awards and honours from his Wiki page:

    Honors and other recognition

    Probably someone who has earned a little arrogance, and whose advice is worth heeding.
     
  5. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

  6. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Yes.

    The only thing worse than prescriptive lists from famous writers is the gleeful fisking of those lists on social media by slightly less famous writers.

    Other than self-promotion, not sure for example what Jeff Pearlman's interest is here.
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2018
    OscarMadison likes this.
  7. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

    It's all because he declared himself too good for Oprah fans to like his books. Otherwise no one would care about anything he says.
     
  8. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    We're all just waiting for the @Alma'n "Hard Left Turn" in American literature that takes place in 3 ... 2 ...
     
  9. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    My man, that criticism’s already been written a long time ago:

    Human, All Too Inhuman
     
  10. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    The road was a bit more complicated than that. I will attempt to summarize for those interested:

    -The Corrections is a really good book, one of the best family epics written in the last 25 years, and that's no small feat. When it was selected by the book club (before it was even published), he was not thrilled with the idea of having her big sticker on his book, or with the idea of men being turned off by it being seen as a women's book club book. But he did not think of himself as "too good" just that he was uncomfortable with the whole thing. In particularly, he was really uncomfortable with the way her television producers (in a segment they were filming for his upcoming appearance) had him stand on the lawn of his old home and re-create some brooding moment he felt did not actually occur, and that was the moment he felt like the whole thing was ridiculous. He was kind of annoyed about it in a radio interview and suddenly the backlash was on.

    -He and Oprah actually settled their beef fairly quickly and The Corrections was a huge success. He even went on the show and apologized a bunch more, and he was definitely shook by the whole thing -- the criticism, the success, the minor fame -- to the point where he couldn't write another novel for nine years.

    -When Freedom was coming out, the New York Times reviewed it twice. Sometimes they'll do this with "big" books, have two different reviewers take a swing at it, one for the Times Book Review and one for the normal part of the paper. Jennifer Weiner, author of many female-centric books that sell better than a lot of Franzen's books, took this as an enormous affront to her, because her books almost never got reviewed in the Times. She felt this was a huge example of snobbery and sexism and that highbrow literature is actually just male-driven wankery and has nothing to do with quality. Now, I've read a Weiner book. I did it at the behest of my ex-wife. It was shitty. Say what you will about Franzen's struggles to write good female characters; Weiner makes him look like Jane Austen with how thinly-drawn she writes her male characters. Weiner's lashing out at Franzen never seemed to take into account the fact that the Times regularly gushes over Franzen's actual contemporaries. Jhumpa Lahiri. Zadie Smith. Jesmyn Ward. Nicole Krauss. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Louise Erdich. Donna Tartt. Jennifer Egan. All of those women write actually literary fiction. Weiner does not, but despite selling lots of books, she's insecure about that and so a lot of her attacks have been directed at Franzen. If the Oprah thing started a fire, the Weiner thing (at least in current on-line culture) poured gasoline on it.

    -Franzen, repeatedly, was like: Hey I don't wish Weiner any ill, and it seems like she's doing great with her career. I don't read her books, but I think we'd all benefit from more female authors getting reviewed so I'm all for this.

    -This caused Weiner to flip out all over again, and Jodi Picolot to join her, and get Weiner a big long New Yorker profile. For the most part, no one is willing to come out and say what it clearly apparent: Her books are well-liked and well-read by her fans, but they are not anything resembling literature.

    -Freedom got pretty good reviews, especially initially, but as someone who read it as soon as it came out, I'd mostly say it reads like a collection of set pieces that Franzen struggled to make into a novel. It's nowhere as good as The Corrections, which is fine. It does have some weird shit in it, like a talking piece of poop, so of course that made it all the more mockable as it didn't age well. There is a lot of kinda clunky stuff in there about environmentalism and birds and stuff that's obviously very important to Franzen but feels a little shoehorned in as well.

    -As Franzen was explaining his process (both prior to Freedom coming out and after it was published) he talked a lot about how he struggled to write with the internet always looming as a distraction. He even made a big thing about how he bought a laptop without WiFi that he glued the ethernet portal shut so he couldn't connect to the Internet. He suggested this was the best way for him to write, without distraction, and of course the Internet roasted him for it, calling him Mr. Very Not Online, and mocked him for not wanting to engaged in the daily string of endless bullshit we all engage in. He wrote an essay for The Guardian essentially saying "if you want to really hear what's going on in life, you have to block out 99 percent of the noise." The Internet did not take this well.

    -At this point, ever piece of Jonathan Franzen news became another reason to roast him. Every time he offered his banal thoughts about something, or some heartfelt thoughts about David Foster Wallace (including feeling conflicted about the fact that Wallace did make shit up in his nonfiction, which left Franzen not sure how to feel) people got pissed off again. Weiner used every bit of Franzenfraude as an excuse to re-litigate their "fight" which seemed to (I'd say rightfully) exasperate Franzen.

    -Purity came out and got kind of meh reviews. More schadenfreude from people who didn't like him. I quit halfway through. It wasn't bad, it just didn't connect with the German parts.

    -Taffy Akner wrote a really good Times Magazine profile about him that raised a really good point about how it's actually ok to not want to fight with people on the Internet. That Franzen declaring he wasn't going to participate in the stupid bullshit we all think of as so important every day on Twitter wasn't arrogance, but might actually be sanity.

    -The internet again missed this point entirely and just raged all over again about him being so arrogant as to think he's above the misery of Twitter.

    -Occasionally he drop some writing advice, like he did yesterday, and people will use it as an excuse to flip out all over again. Like, god bless Jeff Pearlman, but he doesn't write literary novels and since Franzen's whole list was about writing fiction, I don't for the life of me understand why it upset him so.

    I think that mostly catches us up.
     
  11. typefitter

    typefitter Well-Known Member

    I hate so many parts of this journey. Not how you wrote it, of course. That they happened. Fucking hell.

    Jennifer Weiner's name rang a bell, and then I remembered: She's the one who took down Andrew Goldman at the New York Times Magazine, too, after he tweeted some dumb things in her direction. STEER CLEAR.

    Jennifer Weiner on Andrew Goldman's Suspension - The Atlantic
     
    OscarMadison likes this.
  12. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Nothing to add about the Jennifer Weiner / Jodi Picoult. I remember some of that stuff playing out, and yeah, even though there is sexism in the world, not everything is a result of sexism.

    On the Oprah thing, I don't think any of it was orchestrated, but I think The Corrections sold way better than it might have because he snubbed Oprah, and in a way, even though he remained dormant for a long time afterward, that incident made him more well known than he might otherwise be. A lot of people read the book because the Oprah spat gave it publicity, didn't they? I may have read it for that reason. I also don't remember the Oprah thing simply being him not being comfortable. I just looked at exactly what he said. Prior to the apologies, he had called some of her book-club selections “schmaltzy” and “one-dimensional.” That is just arrogance -- even if he is right. I used to find Oprah ridiculous, and hated that the reading tastes in America were largely a function of her putting her stamp on books. But that was the way it was. If I was trying to sell a book that found its way to her radar screen, I am sure I would have kissed Oprah's ass. At the least, I wouldn't have been a dick toward her. Also, I am not sure the Oprah thing is why it took him so long to publish his next novel. The guy just seems to take quite a while between books.

    In any case, I read The Corrections, and even though I finished it, it was a chore. I found it pedantic (cue a snarky remark about me). It may have been epic I guess, but it almost bored me to death. For me, it was one of those books that critics try to one-up each other heaping praise on, but I just couldn't figure out what the fuss was about. I do know the guy is a good craftsman. He just doesn't write books that grip me, I guess.
     
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