Jonathan Franzen's latest, PURITY--will you read it and is he really "America's best novelist"?

Why not have a thread devoted a writer who draws nearly as much criticism as praise...and isn't that usually a sign of a great author (see: DeLillo, Mitchell, McCarthy, etc.)?

What do you think of Franzen? How much is hype and how much is "the real deal"?

Here's the BBC piece that inspired this thread:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150901-jonathan-franzens-purity-is-it-the-gre...

No great fame over here; don't know if same is true in UK. No, I won't read it. I valiantly read all the way through the first section of The Corrections because I was certain it would come to be interesting in the second section. I was wrong, because what I read of that was just as tedious. No idea why it was so highly-regarded except inasmuch it was yet another of those provincial US/UK literary novels focussing upon domestic matters. Sorry.

I wonder if any of the authors you list--as great authors or as controversial ones?--will be much remembered 50 or even 20 years hence.

I think the guy is overpraised and possibly over-rated... but I also think he's pretty dang good - while he doesn't write LIKEABLE characters, they're certainly compelling, and his themes, while never clearly spelled out, aren't obtuse either. My copy of the new one is on order.

Luckily it looks as if this one will be a little lighter on the family-dynamic drama of his last two.

He's very good at being controversial, and that's what a lot of the criticism is actually about -- whatever publicity stunt he pulls when his new book comes out.

The biggest knock on his actual writing seems simply to be that it's not all it's cracked up to be, without having any real specific problems.

I have not read anything by him. I suppose I should start with one of his earlier works? I heard bad things about Freedom - how about The Corrections?

Oh I see bluepiano thought The Corrections tedious. Any other recommendations?

Personally, I'm more taken with his non-fiction: HOW TO BE ALONE and FARTHER AWAY.

I read THE CORRECTIONS at least a decade ago and maybe it's due for a revisit. At the time, I found it a book without incident, rather dull. But I wonder if it had more to do with my state of mind and tastes at the time. Both of which are subject to change, evolution...

I've a copy of The Corrections at home waiting to be read, and have been looking forward to it after appreciating The Casual Vacancy. They sound like they've a similar tone.

Don't really have an opinion on Franzen. I started Freedom a while back and got the impression that he was clearly a good, ambitious writer but I just didn't care much for where the plot was heading. I'm amused by the level of animosity he provokes.

#8 "I'm amused by the level of animosity he provokes."

I'll second that. People seem to conflate his writing with his life/personality. When an author isn't personable and media-friendly, does it make us look askance at his/her work?

>5 anna_in_pdx: Heavens to betsy don't feel obliged to heed me. I mean, I find Georgian architecture & ceilidh music & babies tedious as well. (Actually I find the two last annoying & tedious.) It might be to your taste; however if you look at recommendations on Corrections main page you'll find a far better novel whose potential short description would be identical to one for The Corrections.

I'm more tempted to read his essays than his fiction, now that CliffBurns has pointed them out. He does appear to be very earnest without realizing how how that earnestness can get in the way of conveying his actual meaning. I just checked his 2007 collection, How to be Alone over on Amazon, and the sample excerpt contains an introduction in which he says that he rewrote a number of the essays from their original form because he felt he'd not been clear in his meaning. His example is one that originally appeared in The New Yorker. When The Corrections was published, interviewers kept questioning him about that earlier essay in the magazine and he kept thinking that he was being misquoted. In assembling the collection of essays, he revisited that particular piece to discover that he had neither accurately remembered what he had written nor gotten his actual meaning across clearly. Hence, the rewriting. It's intriguing.

I have a sense that the essays may give a better idea of his strengths and shortcomings in his writing. He didn't seem to handle the whole Oprah debacle at all well and I've always wondered who should have assumed the blame in that.

I always gave him credit for jilting Oprah--remember the pitiful sight of Cormac McCarthy, withering under her vapid questioning? Personally, I'd rather be boiled in bacon fat.

I highly recommend Franzen's essays...and putting aside animosity toward a author who's genuinely earned his literary cred. This guy was a Fulbright scholar during his university days, learned German and years later wrote a book on German cultural critic Karl Kraus (doing his own translations of a notoriously difficult writer).

He's got brains and talent to burn, even if his personality leaves something to be desired.

But you could say the same thing about Will Self, Martin Amis, Somerset Maugham, etc, etc.

Considering that getting your novel selected by Oprah involves a lot of work by your publicists, and that you know about it well in advance, his jilting Oprah would seem to me to fall under the category of "publicity stunt." Just like his recent claim that he wanted to adopt an Iraqi orphan. I think he deliberately sets out to provoke people.

Gotta love anyone who can use the phrase 'Heavens to Betsy' Love it!

Lots of good points made in this discussion, and I would agree that Franzen is just as good as being controversial himself as he is at writing. I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, in that weird sort of self-inflicted misery way, The Corrections. It's a good, possibly great, book (I'd argued that it's hard to prove greatness until a book has stood the test of time to see if its themes and/or prose remain relevant to subsequent readers). For my he's a fine writer, I love the way he uses words and mangles meaning to stretch them into something else but America's greatest? Who am I to judge? But if I had to I can think of several who would feature higher up my list of greatest. And will I read Purity? Probably, at some point, if I'm still interested enough when the paperback comes out. All the fuss and harsh words about its treatment of women etc sort of puts me off.