Jonathan Franzen Is Battle-
Ready for the End of the World
“I grew up in the middle of the country in the middle of the golden age of the American middle class,” Jonathan Franzen wrote in a 2006 autobiographical essay. While so much cultural pioneering of this new century has been centered on expanding the borders and peripheries of what constitutes the national character, the 62-year-old writer who was born in Illinois and grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis—a writer who excels in capturing that vivid, queasy American middle from which he hails—arguably remains the most vital fiction writer of our times. Franzen’s third novel, 2001’s The Corrections, has become the cornerstone of literary wit and style. Since that book catapulted him to fame, Franzen has continued to chart the wry, delirious struggle of American fulfillment in a series of brilliant, broad-canvas novels, while regularly delivering essayistic dispatches on various obsessions (birdwatching, German modernist novelists, ecological Armageddon).