JONATHAN FRANZEN: THE COMEDY OF RAGE

Book ID/图书代码： 06840015B78011

English Summary/英文概要： Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage is the first critical biography of one of today’s most important novelists. Drawing on unpublished emails and a private interview (along with published ones), Philip Weinstein conveys the feel and heft of Franzen’s voice as he ponders the purposes and problems of his life and his art.

Franzen’s work raises major questions about the possibilities of contemporary fiction: how does one appeal to a broad mass of mainstream readers, on the one hand, while persuading connoisseurs, on the other, that one’s fiction has staying power, that it is high art? Even more acutely, how did Franzen move from the rage that animates his first two novels to the more generous comic stance of the two later novels on which his reputation rests?

Wrestling with these questions, Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage unpacks the becoming of Franzen as a person and a writer--from his ultra-sensitive Midwestern childhood, through his heady years at Swarthmore College, his marriage, and the alienating decade of the 1990s, up to his spectacular ascent and assimilation into pop-culture as one of the literary figures of his generation. Weinstein joins biography and criticism in ways that fully respect their differences--but that also grant that the work comes, however unpredictably, out of the life.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 《乔纳森•弗兰岑:愤怒的喜剧》是第一部全程记录当今美国著名小说家、随笔作家之一的传记。利用未公开的电子邮件和一个私人采访(以及发表的),本书的作者菲利普•温斯坦，向读者传达出弗兰岑年代声音，正如他对生活和他的艺术的思考和探索,从他最早期发表的作品，到他最近的小说,《纯洁》。(Sandy)

Awards/获奖情况：*The final chapter of Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage focusing on Franzen’s upcoming novel Purity will be released in early fall. This manuscript is final apart from that addition.

“Fluent and immersive, Weinstein’s criticism will interest not only scholars but also writers. Strongly recommended for academic libraries.” --Library Journal, starred review

“A convincing psychological portrait of an author who recovered from depressive years of being angry with himself by projecting that anger and rage outward and then finding love of himself and others.” --Tom LeClair, The Daily Beast

“Weinstein’s rigorously critical approach to The Corrections and Freedom reminds us that while Franzen is a legitimate contender for the mantle of literary greatness, the jury is still out. Instead of simply declaring victory for his man, Weinstein invites the reader to engage in a serious conversation about the art of modern American fiction. What more could we ask?” --David R. Riggs, Professor Emeritus of English, Stanford University

“Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage is a virtuoso performance, a triumph of rigorous thought, canny, profound insight, verbal prowess, creative imagination, and magisterial judiciousness. Weinstein’s wise, sensitive, and witty account of Franzen’s growth and development makes a compelling argument for Franzen’s place as America’s preeminent writer. Like Franzen’s fiction, Weinstein contemplates issues that fascinate and vex us all: the nature of values, personal growth, pain and suffering, intimate relationships, failure and frustration, hope and happiness. Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage is literary and cultural critique of the highest order.” --Robert H. Bell, Frederick Latimer Wells Professor of English, Williams College

“Philip Weinstein’s new book...is a probing and incisive study of an American novelist who has become one of the most recognized figures of the millennial generation. In this convincing auteur study, biographical detail and intensive close readings of the work are seamlessly combined to produce illuminating discussions of Franzen’s career and celebrity status, his difficulties with writer’s block, the encyclopedic range of his novels, and his relationship with David Foster Wallace. Weinstein successfully establishes the centrality of Franzen’s work at mid-career and at a moment when his image and capacities as an important writer are beginning to emerge more clearly from the chemical bath of contemporary canon-formation.” --Patrick O’Donnell, Professor of English, Michigan State University, USA

About the Author/作者介绍： PHILIP WEINSTEIN is an Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English at Swarthmore College. His work for the past two decades has centered on Faulkner. Weinstein’s Becoming Faulkner (Oxford University Press, 2010) was the recipient of the Hugh Holman Award for the best book written on Southern Literature. Other Faulkner books of his include Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (Cambridge, 1992), What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (Columbia, 1996), and Unknowing: The Work of Modernist Fiction (Cornell, 2005). Most recently, Weinstein wrote the introduction for Picador’s reissue of Franzen’s The Twenty Seventh City.

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