>But since the rip-roaring success of The Corrections 14 years ago, isn't he a 1 per center himself? “I am literally, in terms of my income, a 1 per center, yes,” he says, his eyes not on me but on the empty table next to us. “I spend my time connected to the poverty that's fundamental to mankind, because I'm a fiction writer.”
>He doesn't write about poverty, I protest. He writes about the angst of people like him and the people he knows. Franzen gives the neighbouring table top a weary look. “That's a quotation from Flannery O'Connor, by the way.”
>While I smart, he goes on: “I'm a poor person who has money.”
>Franzen doesn’t spend anything. The fleece he is wearing is 10 years old. He doesn’t like shopping and hates waste. Upstairs in the fridge in his hotel room are the leftovers from meals, all of which he will eat in due course. His only luxury is expensive kit for birdwatching.
i havent read any of his stuff, but this guy is my nigga
Nolan Wood
I actually can't stand people like him. Like he really gets what being poor is like but has never wanted for anything in his entire life and in fact, lives far better than most. His being "ironically" poor is pretty insulting tbqh.
Adam Morales
DFW was exactly the same:
>wears shitty clothing >complains of living in an apartment the size of a closet while writing IJ
Even though both his parents were academics and he never had to work a single full-time job in his entire life.
Kevin Hill
i thought i remember reading that david drove a bus at one point? and some other thing where he talks about doing menial work and making his mind go blank to pass the time
can't find a source for either, though. also his sister worked at baskin robbins.
Jace Morales
>“I would love some still water if I may, please,” says Franzen, all politeness and diffidence. “And maybe something along the lines of a Diet Coke?”
why does he talk like that
Jaxson Young
because he's an Author
Adrian Scott
He worked at a spa or something too. I don't think you're informed sir.
Camden Gonzalez
>“I don’t like to hire people to do work that I can do,” he says. So that means he does his own dusting in the New York apartment he shares with his girlfriend? Franzen looks slightly shifty. “We do have a cleaner, although even that I feel some justification because we pay her way more than is standard and she’s a nice Filipino woman who we treat very well and we’re giving her work.”
Ryan Powell
>I ask if he saw the review of Purity in the Financial Times, which called it “middlebrow”. He says he never reads what people write about him. “I don’t know what ‘middlebrow’ even means. I think it’s threatening to commercial writers that someone who’s selling well is also getting literary respect, and it’s threatening to literary writers who don’t sell that somebody who’s literary also is getting commercial success.”
Franzen BTFO pseuds
Robert Rodriguez
>for a while he considered adopting an Iraqi orphan so he could get to know young people.
I know he denies it but kek
James Sullivan
this cannot be real!!!!!!!!!!
Jaxon Gonzalez
words to live by in my book!
Lucas Nguyen
You're both HUGE fucking retards.
He drove a schoolbus for a couple of weeks after taking a semester away from Amherst.
He worked in a spa for under a week because a other writer he knew, a well-known poet, appeared there and it embarrassed him so much to be working there that he quit.
His other job was as a security guard which was part of his recovery at Jamaica House (halfway house). He worked there a few days but then quit because he felt the early mornings were effecting his writing.
I hate you fucking normies who make ZERO effort to understand anything.
Eli Anderson
>stares at the table with his eyes closed Hello, editor!
Dominic Ross
>worked for a couple of weeks in total
Gavin Brooks
>His only luxury is expensive kit for birdwatching. >expensive kit for birdwatching >expensive >birdwatching kit nigga open your eyes
Austin James
>tfw too poor to have any expensive birdwatching equipment
Gabriel Taylor
Good telescopes can get pretty expensive my dude
Luke Nguyen
Rich people who live meagerly are better than poor people.
Most poor are retards who would blow all their money on shit.
See niggers
Mason Jackson
Is Franzen autistic
Michael Anderson
I dont think he goes out of his way to prove how much hes slumming. Its more like, "i have a lot of money but i dont live as extravagantly as all the haters think i do."
Ryder Gomez
What the fuck is in an expensive bird-watching kit?
Blake Reed
>Antique binoculars that Flannery O'Connor once used to watch her personal collection of exotic birds >A leatherbound set of bird identification field guides with gold trim >snacks(various aged cheeses and a flask of single malt whiskey, aged 18 years) >Comes in a koa wood case with brass accents Can't watch birds without it desu
Jaxson White
My God.
Henry Powell
Honestly, I respect this. Someone trying to guilt him for being rich, that's pretty assholey. In fact, we should rather praise him for not just punching them in the face. Being snarkily autistic and passive-aggressive instead is almost saintlike.
Sebastian Campbell
David kinda despised Franzen's bird-watching (though probably somewhat jealous of his ability to enjoy such a simple-minded pleasure) . He wrote a chapter in IJ about it (all he hears is the birds yelling warcrys and "kill", "mine" etc), and I believe there's a reference in Freedom as well.
Samuel Phillips
Why dissect why Purity sucked? It should be enough to simply say it sucked and instead talk about a writer that deserves it... although I couldn't tell you who that might be. John Irving? He's not my favourite, but..... he's alive.
Alexander Cook
>Why dissect why Purity sucked? It should be enough to simply say it sucked No, it shouldn't.
Had a dream last night that I ran into Jonathan Franzen and told him that he was the Spaceghostpurrp of literature, which wasn't wrong when you think about it.
Asher Murphy
>That's a quotation from Flannery O'Connor sauce?
Anthony Miller
But it's not the same as "Wow I have no money left to pay for food or bills at the end of this month". Which, good for him but that doesn't mean he knows what it is like at all.
Jonathan Bell
He said poor not retarded
Caleb Adams
>You have to be mentally deficient to be in a state where you cannot afford food Wew lad
Andrew Adams
This board is redpilled, libshit
Xavier Collins
>you have to not be able to eat in order to say you're poor wew lad indeed
Robert Ward
>literary respect
Oh Jonathan, sweetie
Jaxson Peterson
Privileged people have more refined sensibilities and are therefore make better artists. This has been true throughout history, despite what all smug self-hating liberals say.
Nobody is "poor" in the US you mong. Stop romanticizing poverty like a fucking slave moralist.
Gabriel Ward
hey he had to get in those 6-10 hours of daily TV watching!
Anthony Price
Honestly this article sure makes him seem like he is. Or very disconnected and bad social skills.
Could be the author of the story though portraying him like that
Brayden Morales
yes. being poor means being in want; being "poor" and not in want of anything means your "poverty" is just a subjective descriptor of your habitat and material possessions.
Brody Flores
Sounds exactly like himself.
Logan Cox
...
Juan Clark
Where to start with Franzen?
Jayden Lee
fucking kek
Juan Sanders
Try the one with the discontented liberals and overbearing malaise.
Ryan Jones
You should write a book. You just summed up every upper middle class kid I've ever met at college.
Hudson Reyes
fuck off /pol/ no one wants you here
Liam Anderson
why do you still bring this guy up without even mentioning any of his fucking books
If you want celebrity bullshit, go to tv. If you want the vapid poverty argument going on above me, go to pol.
This board is supposed to be about literature you fucks
Levi Thompson
>57 years old >successful, independently wealthy >has a "girlfriend"
This bothers me. He's at a point in his life where he should either be married or we should know something about his religious status.
David Roberts
>why are you guys talking about an author on a literature board?
Nolan Fisher
i'm pretty sure they've been dating since before the corrections, too. marriage is a meme anyways.
