35 Facts About Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Earl Franzen was born on August 17,1959 and is an American novelist and essayist.

Jonathan Franzen's 2001 novel The Corrections, a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.

Jonathan Franzen has contributed to The New Yorker magazine since 1994.

In recent years, Jonathan Franzen has become recognized for his opinions on everything from social networking services such as Twitter to the impermanence of e-books and the self-destruction of America.

Jonathan Franzen's father, raised in Minnesota, was the son of an immigrant from Sweden; his mother's ancestry was Eastern European.

Jonathan Franzen grew up in an affluent neighborhood, on 83 Webster Woods Drive in Webster Groves, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, and graduated with high honors from Swarthmore College, receiving a degree in German in 1981.

Jonathan Franzen was married in 1982 and moved with his wife to Somerville, Massachusetts to pursue a career as a novelist.

Jonathan Franzen taught a fiction-writing seminar at Swarthmore in the spring of 1992 and 1994:.

On that first day of class, Jonathan Franzen wrote two words on the blackboard: "truth" and "beauty," and told his students that these were the goals of fiction.

Jonathan Franzen read our stories so closely that he often started class with a rundown of words that were not used quite correctly in stories from that week's workshop.

Jonathan Franzen initially participated in the selection, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Oprah and appearing in B-roll footage in his hometown of St Louis.

In October 2001 The Oregonian printed an article in which Jonathan Franzen expressed unease with the selection.

In 2011, it was announced that Jonathan Franzen would write a multi-part television adaptation of The Corrections in collaboration with The Squid and the Whale director Noah Baumbach for HBO.

On June 8,2009, Jonathan Franzen published an excerpt from Freedom, his novel in progress, in The New Yorker.

On October 16,2009, Jonathan Franzen made an appearance alongside David Bezmozgis at the New Yorker Festival at the Cedar Lake Theatre, reading a portion of his forthcoming novel.

On September 9,2010, Jonathan Franzen appeared on Fresh Air to discuss Freedom in the wake of its release.

Jonathan Franzen discussed his friendship with David Foster Wallace and the impact of Wallace's suicide on his writing process.

An earlier draft of the manuscript, to which Jonathan Franzen had made over 200 changes, had been published by mistake.

Jonathan Franzen discussed the implications of the Time coverage, and the reasoning behind the title of Freedom in an interview in Manchester, England, in October 2010.

Jonathan Franzen has stated the writing of Freedom was influenced by the death of his close friend and fellow novelist David Foster Wallace.

In 1996, while still working on The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen published a literary manifesto in Harper's Magazine entitled Perchance to Dream.

In 2002, Jonathan Franzen published a critique of the novels of William Gaddis, entitled "Mr Difficult", in The New Yorker.

Jonathan Franzen begins by recounting how some readers felt The Corrections was spoiled by being too high-brow in parts, and summarizes his own views of reading difficult fiction.

Jonathan Franzen proposes a "Status model", whereby the point of fiction is to be Art, and a "Contract model", whereby the point of fiction is to be Entertainment, and finds that he subscribes to both models.

Jonathan Franzen praises The Recognitions, admits that he only got halfway through J R, and explains why he does not like the rest of Gaddis's novels.

In 2004 Franzen published "The Discomfort Zone", a personal essay about his childhood and family life in Missouri and his love of Charles M Schulz's Peanuts, in The New Yorker.

Since The Corrections Jonathan Franzen has published How to Be Alone, a collection of essays including "Perchance To Dream", and The Discomfort Zone, a memoir.

Jonathan Franzen published his third essay collection, The End of the End of the Earth: Essays, in November 2018.

Later that year in a profile piece for The New York Times Magazine in June 2018, Jonathan Franzen confirmed that he was currently at work on the early stages of his sixth novel, which he speculated could be his last.

Subsequently, in an interview reproduced on The Millions website in April 2020, Jonathan Franzen mentioned that he was "almost done" with writing this sixth novel.

In February 2010, Jonathan Franzen was asked by The Guardian to contribute what he believed were ten serious rules to abide by for aspiring writers.

Jonathan Franzen appeared on CBS Sunday Morning in March 2018 to discuss his love of birds and birdwatching.

Jonathan Franzen served for nine years on the board of the American Bird Conservancy.

Jonathan Franzen is a longtime fan of the punk-rock collective The Mekons; he appeared in the 2014 documentary Revenge of the Mekons to discuss the group's importance to him.

In 2010, at an event at the Serpentine Pavilion in London celebrating the launch of Freedom, Jonathan Franzen's glasses were stolen from his face by a gate-crasher, who jokingly attempted to ransom them for $100,000 before being apprehended by police elsewhere in Hyde Park.