Jonathan Franzen : the comedy of rage /

Weinstein's Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage is a must read for writers who want to understand how a novelist puts a body of work together. Weinstein (Swarthmore College) looks at how Franzen's obsessions become the threads of his novels. Franzen--whose breakout novel was The Corrections (2001)--taps into all the anger, rage, disappointment, and insanity of an American family. When one reads Franzen, one is entertained. Weinstein reveals the building blocks of that entertainment--sex, bad parenting, misogyny, and the miserable pain that family members can perpetrate on each other. Being human is a messy business, and writing about how messy it is can be messy. Weinstein unravels how writing about that messy process takes place--how Franzen takes all that is wrong in the US and writes domestic novels that make him both a best-selling author and the darling of the literati. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. --Kate Gale, University of Nebraska

Delivering a solid but less than revelatory critical biography of "the best-known American novelist of his generation," Weinstein (Becoming Faulkner) begins by depicting Franzen as the son of "earnest and ambitious parents" in the Midwest. The author covers Franzen's early years at Swarthmore, time as a Fulbright scholar in Berlin, and ambitious yet little-noticed early novels The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion, before coming to the spectacularly successful The Corrections and Freedom. Though clear and entertaining, the book falls into clichéd prose; when discussing the entrance to a challenging university honors program, Weinstein writes that "Franzen heard and heeded the call." In Franzen's early fiction, Weinstein explains, rage was the main emotional note, and Franzen would only later see that his true style and talent lay in sympathetically capturing the intricacy and complexity of family drama. The book also delves into Franzen's essays, focusing on "Mr. Difficult," which asserts that writers fall into two categories ("Status," who write complex but prestigious novels, and "Contract," who write more accessible, less ambitious books) and expresses Franzen's wish to encompass both. According to Weinstein, "my book centers on the impossibility of Franzen's negotiating seamlessly both these positions." Although eminently readable and at times enlightening, Weinstein's book adds little new information about the well-known Franzen. 8 color illus. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Weinstein's (Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English, Swarthmore Coll.; Becoming Faulkner) critical biography of this "Great American Novelist" is not so much about the man Jonathan Franzen (b. 1959) but the writer. From The Twenty-Seventh City (1988) to Freedom (2010), and with some reference to -Franzen's newest novel, Purity (2015), Weinstein traces the author's oeuvre to uncover its creative impulse. He asserts that Franzen's artistic drive rests on his ambivalence, his simultaneous desire to both critique his world and be accepted and loved by it, a conflict that Weinstein defines as the "comedy of rage." Chapter-length close readings and biographical details frame, contextualize, and expand upon Franzen's major works. Drawing on the novelist's essays and previously published interviews as well as personal interviews and emails (Weinstein met Franzen when both taught at Swarthmore College), -Weinstein assembles a careful and convincing argument. -VERDICT Fluent and immersive, Weinstein's criticism will interest not only scholars but also writers. Strongly recommended for academic libraries.- Meagan Lacy, Guttman Community Coll., CUNY © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.