Jonathan Franzen at the end of postmodernism PDF
Preview Jonathan Franzen at the end of postmodernism
Jonathan Franzen at the End of Postmodernism Continuum Literary Studies Series Also available in the series: Active Reading by Ben Knights and Chris Thurgar-Dawson Beckett’s Books by Matthew Feldman British Fiction in the Sixties by Sebastian Groes Canonising Hypertext by Astrid Ensslin Character and Satire in Postwar Fiction by Ian Gregson Coleridge and German Philosophy by Paul Hamilton Contemporary Fiction and Christianity by Andrew Tate Ecstasy and Understanding edited by Adrian Grafe English Fiction in the 1930s by Chris Hopkins Fictions of Globalization by James Annesley Joyce and Company by David Pierce London Narratives by Lawrence Phillips Masculinity in Fiction and Film by Brian Baker The Measureless Past of Joyce, Deleuze and Derrida by Ruben Borg Milton, Evil and Literary History by Claire Colebrook Modernism and the Postcolonial by Peter Childs Novels of the Contemporary Extreme edited by Alain-Phillipe Durand and Naomi Mandel The Palimpsest by Sarah Dillon Recalling London by Alex Murray Romanticism, Literature and Philosophy by Simon Swift Seeking Meaning for Goethe’s Faust by J. M. van der Laan Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad by Jeremy Hawthorn Such Deliberate Disguises: The Art of Phillip Larkin by Richard Palmer Women’s Fiction 1945–2000 by Deborah Philips Jonathan Franzen at the End of Postmodernism Stephen J. Burn Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704, New York London SE1 7NX NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Stephen J. Burn 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Stephen J. Burn has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-8470-6248-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk For Julie This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements viii Preface ix Abbreviations and Note on Editions xv Chapter 1 A Map of the Territory: American Fiction at the Millennium 1 Chapter 2 Genealogy: Franzen’s Early Writing 28 Chapter 3 In the Concrete Waste Land: The Twenty-Seventh City 52 Chapter 4 Midnight in the System Rooms: Strong Motion 68 Chapter 5 Millennial Fictions: The Corrections 88 Notes 129 Bibliography of Works by Franzen 141 Works Cited 146 Index 157 Acknowledgements Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC and HarperCollins Publishers Ltd have kindly granted permission to reprint: Excerpts from The Corrections by Jona- than Franzen Copyright © 2001 by Jonathan Franzen; Excerpts from The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen. Copyright © 1988 by Jonathan Franzen; Excerpts from Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen. Copyright © 1992 by Jonathan Franzen; Excerpts from How to be alone by Jonathan Franzen. Copyright © 2002, 2003 by Jonathan Franzen; Excerpts from The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen. Copyright © 2006 by Jonathan Franzen. Preface Jonathan Franzen occupies a revealing position amongst America’s millen- nial novelists. While critics at century’s end began to anatomize the end of postmodernism, mapping “postmodernism’s wake” (Harris), or announc- ing the emergence of “post-postmodernism” (McLaughlin), the confl ict between postmodern innovation and more conventional narrative forms was internalized and played out in Franzen’s novels and essays.1 His work has tried to absorb the story-based narrative energies of writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer and Alice Munro, while it has been simultaneously shaped and distorted by the achievements of American postmodernism. Given the recent interest in new directions after postmodernism signaled by critics such as Charles B. Harris and Robert L. McLaughlin, Franzen’s attempt to fuse disparate traditions would seem to make a study of his work particularly timely, but for a variety of reasons his reputation has developed somewhat unevenly. His novels have often received distractingly overblown praise from reviewers eager to fi nd and praise a major talent,2 but at the same time, his work has attracted less serious academic attention than might be expected. While Franzen is frequently compared to Richard Powers and the late David Foster Wallace—more prolifi c and more explicitly innovative writers—there is a notable discrepancy in their critical profi les. Entire books and special issues of journals have been devoted to explicating Powers and Wallace’s fi ction,3 but while references to Franzen can often be found in unusual places—in the British Medical Journal or the Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, for example4—two decades after the publication of his fi rst novel only a handful of essays solely devoted to Franzen’s work have appeared.5 Some of the reasons why scholars have overlooked Franzen’s novels aren’t diffi cult to locate. On a basic level, Franzen’s hostility toward the academy may have discouraged critics from exploring his relationship to academic constructions of postmodernism. This is particularly unfortunate, however,
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