Jonathan Franzen can kiss my ass while I’m passing gas, but I mean no disrespect to the man or his work.
Several years ago, I tried to read a novel by Jonathan Franzen, and didn’t make it to the end of the second chapter. But, hey, what do I know? I’ve also given up on novels by F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Clearly great literature is a concept unfamiliar to me.
Jonathan Franzen topples critics like a drunken pinsetter at a bowling alley. In every magazine, newspaper, and website, there’s relentless praise for Jonathan Franzen. In the Washington Post, a review of his new book actually, seriously, honestly opens with the line, “Thank God for Jonathan Franzen.”
It’s unanimous that Jonathan Franzen is more brilliant than the midday Sahara sun, so I must’ve been mistaken when his book fell out of my lap and I started snoring. Jonathan Franzen must be a very, very good writer — thank God! — but I’m skeptical that he’s writing for me, or anyone like me. Clearly he’s writing for normal people, and that’s not me.
Did you know that a lot of “big-time writing” does not exist until someone in a suit sees potential profit in it? Successful authors submit proposals, not manuscripts, and they usually won’t begin writing until a publisher is lined up and contracts are signed. If an author’s proposal doesn’t sell to a publisher, that book simply isn’t written.
If the contract is signed and the book is written, it’ll then be edited and re-edited, and well-paid professionals will plan the marketing. In all the stark raving reviews for Jonathan Franzen’s books, successful marketing is what I see, more than art, passion, or literature.
Sometimes, giving up on a boring book, I wonder whether it was more interesting before the editors sandblasted away everything that was quirky or personal or passionate in it.
I prefer quirky and personal, and I’d rather discover a writer whose name the world doesn’t yet know, than be the X-millionth reader of the next book by Jonathan Franzen.
You’re probably thinking I’m bonkers about all this, and you’re probably right. You’ll say, I should at least read a few paragraphs of a second book by Jonathan Franzen, before airing my almost-entirely-uninformed opinion. To that I’d say bite me, but this isn’t about Jonathan Franzen. Thank God for Jonathan Franzen!
What grates me with steel wool is the marketing of literature, and the unanimity of judgment that one author is Great, or The Greatest, or Among The Greatest.
Whether great or merely good or gawdawful, which writers we read should be a conversation, an argument — not pronounced as a plain fact, or a prayer of hosanna to the heavens.
I’m sure some of the masterpieces are terrific, but I’d rather read something that millions of other people aren’t reading. Maybe something that’s not a product, like a new flavor of Coke.
Maybe, though, today is one of the frequent times when I’m full of shit. If your life was enraptured by Jonathan Franzen’s writing, please speak up. I’d take your recommendation more seriously than all the reviews in The New Yorker and Harper’s and Publisher’s Weekly and The New York Times and Esquire and The Atlantic and AV Club …
Republished 3/4/2025
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