Does Veeky Forums like jonathan franzen?

I've heard a lot about him. Can someone red pull me on him? Should I buy Freedom?

He wrote some faggy thing about David Foster Wallace once, that's about all I know

lol not sure if bait but if not nice false dichotomy. franzen and pynchon use characters in their novels in entirely different ways. you really can't compare the two.

wat
I only got the corrections since it was recommended a lot here.
That said, since we got a lot of newcomers thanks to new /pol/ during last year, it's been different.

literally Oprah-tier

He writes for middle-aged people in neighborhood book clubs - not serious appreciators of literature.

I fell for the Freedom meme and bought it at B+N last summer. It had a strange effect on me. I'd never read a book of it's length so quickly yet simultaneously hate the book. I couldn't put it down though. Also, why does a punk rocker speak with perfect grammar? I mean he had him using the possessive gerund.

Been thinking about picking The Corrections. What's your opinion on it? This is the only place whose taste I trust.

I saw a picture of him wearing shorts next to some other authors.
I decided at that point to never read anything he wrote.

Katz is well-read. In some scene Patty sees him reading a novel with a large "V" on the cover

Franzen is great. His books are soap opera tier but also tackle a lot political stuff. He is one of the best if you are into character-driven narrative. Also a great prose stylist and humorist.

I just finished Freedom a few days ago and found it was a generally fine novel. There was nothing particularly groundbreaking in terms of its pose or structure, but his characters were well-developed and felt at least basely organic in their interactions. I've been kind of homing in on the idea of the American obsession with the 'family novel' recently- which seems to be Franzen's niche, and though he is not to me a master of that genre he certainly seems to have a strong grasp of its core and key components and is able to deliver them in a digestible manner. Not a hack, but not a genius, better than many but not all. A rate-able B to B+ author.

It was just match fixing but with Japanese flavor.

Started The Corrections last night and am greatly enjoying it 120 pages in. So yeah I guess I like Franzen

Did DFW write for a different demographic though? Veeky Forums still loves him.

dad-core literature

DFW is secretly just as stupid and banal as Franzen, but the difference is that Anons on Veeky Forums read DFW when they were in their formative years, so his work left an outsized impression on them.

It's like how as a kid you grow up reading The Babysitters' Club, and think it's the greatest shit ever. If you were to read it now, as an adult, you'd think it was trite and dull, but since you read it when you were growing and first experiencing books, it's seared into your memory.

Wow, that is awful. John Meme is worse than I remember. At least the blowjob scene is written better.

Why does this switch from past to present tense halfway through?

Punk rocker with good grammar doesn't surprise me. In my days in the punk scene there were actually a lot of fairly smart guys around, they just didn't get good grades because they were too edgy and cool 4 skool.

Who would you say is the best of the family-novelists?

he wants too hard to be like DFW

Faulkner.

Much agree with (I was the original poster of the comment you were replying to). Faulkner really formed a mastery of the aesthetic forms that Franzen (and most post-postmodern) novelists eschew, while retaining the depth, the scope of its character building, and the organic plausibility of its examinations of relationships, both inter and intrapersonal in the familial context. I think Faulkner works so well in this because he wrote what he saw, he wrote not on ideas but fundamentally on people and their relationships, and this reflects in his work. His most disappointing work (A Fable) fails precisely because he changed these priorities around, creating a fundamentally different style of piece for which he was less suited (in the same way I would say that McCarthy has always been more interesting to me for his ideas, rather than his examinations of people and relationships-- The Judge, one of his most deep and interesting characters, essentially being an amalgamation of literary and religious allusions, an archetype rather than a breathing, function person).

I'm very excited to get started on two books I have high hopes for-- The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead (an Australian expat author originally writing about Australia, but published as an American novel-- It actually comes recommended by Jonathan Franzen), and Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford ( a husband-and-wife novel by one of Pynchon's lost contemporaries, an author who I very greatly admire and plan to write a undergraduate/graduate thesis on in the future-- I've enjoyed some of his other works, and this one is considered his finest). I also tackled both the Greenlanders and American Pastoral by Jane Smiley and Philip Roth respectively in the last few months, and found them both to be commendable works, though somewhat individually flawed. I wish I had more to say and to recommend, but I think I've gone on for far too long already, if you haven't already stopped reading.

functioning*.

Alright Tao we get it you write

>DadLit
>dad-core

In case anyone thinks these anons are exaggerating, let me remind you that Franzen wrote a book (or it could be books at this point) containing breathless passages about bird-watching, his real-life hobby.

I keep reading these clickbait articles from angry feminists who hate how much male lit nerds love this guy
I got bored with the Corrections after one chapter. My lit friends and I are much happier sperging out over DeLillo, Cormac, Philip Roth or Vargas Llosa.
Only people I ever see reading Franzen are middle class white grils

You can do what ever you want. I enjoyed it also. But my mother is essentially Enid with a healthy dose of Annabelle mixed in. The nuanced interaction and introspective look at them have really been a mirror to many of my own struggles.

I don't like anything so no.

I read Freedom after Discomfort Zone and I couldnt help but roll my eyes at how much of himself he was writing into Walter

I know that feel. I was the same way reading Catcher in the Rye as a teenager.

I like the 1st person diary bits in Freedom, and his lit essays can be alright. besides that no, he's annoying as hell

Franzen is well-known because he writes for a group of people who still read fiction--that is, middle-class baby boomers.

When his fan base dies off (any day now, really) so too will his fame. He's like a duller, less talented Updike. And Updike wasn't that talented. They just corner the market, and a rather sizeable one that's luckily dwindling.

I liked it, but Veeky Forums obviously does not. It's just sort of a comfy family novel about post-9/11 America. Not going to change your life, but it's a good break if you're looking for a relatively easy read.

So tell me, who is are the real great authors, then?

Charlie was clearly supposed to be an intellectual of sorts, which I don't think is unrealistic for the punk community. I assume there are a fair number of "smart but lazy" artsy types there, certainly in 70's east coast there would have been.