The Guardian called The Corrections “a Bleak House of the digital age.” In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called it “by turns funny and corrosive, portentous and affecting.” By the end of the year, it would win the National Book Award. Publishers Weekly wasn’t alone in its praise. “In his long-awaited third novel, Franzen does.” The review closes by announcing The Corrections to be “simply, a masterpiece.” “If some authors are masters of suspense, others postmodern verbal acrobats, and still others complex-character pointillists, few excel in all three arenas,” began the Publishers Weekly review. But its publication marked the first time that one of Franzen’s book releases would become an Event. The Corrections was not Jonathan Franzen’s first novel it was his third. 2001: The era of The Corrections and Oprah

Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads is an opus on humiliation. Here is a history of Jonathan Franzen’s career of controversy in four book releases - and why the release of his new novel is poised to meet a more welcoming atmosphere than the one that met his last. He is singular: a novelist-slash-public intellectual, and very much deliberately so, in a time when that career path doesn’t seem to exist for many people anymore. He’s released some of the most celebrated novels of the 21st century so far, and some of the most despised essays, too. The internet domain redirects to Franzen’s Facebook page. He has been embroiled in fights about Twitter (he says it is everything he opposes), birds (he likes them), and conjunctions (pro-and, anti-then). Since then, Franzen has been named, variously, the Great American Novelist, a noted crank, a human Banksy installation, and simply kind of a prick. Second, he said he was uncomfortable with Oprah selecting The Corrections for her book club because she’s picked a lot of schmaltz, and became synonymous with the worst of elitist white male snobbery.

First, he released his breakout novel The Corrections and became known as one of the most important American writers of his generation. Jonathan Franzen has flourished crankily under controversy since 2001, when two big things happened to him. Which means it is time, once again, for one of the book world’s favorite pastimes: disseminating Jonathan Franzen thinkpieces. Jonathan Franzen, the novelist who has been lauded and reviled as few figures in contemporary American letters ever are, has a new book out.

Franzen crossroads