Jonathan Franzen on Author Videos & the Novel

Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom and The Corrections, discusses how odd it is to talk about novels through the medium of a brief author video.

http://www.jonathanfranzen.com

http://www.fsgworkinprogress.com/

• Category

  Entertainment

[socoolbooks]

I want to appreciate the heck out of a guy who "objects" to "author videos" per se ... and yet musters up the courage to do one ... BRAVO !!!

[jtomkiw]

How positively meta of you, Jonathan! Complaining about an author video while DOING the author video. Gad...what a self-important piece of work. Not the novel. Franzen.

[iamsillywarm]

I don't want to dislike this guy but he is making it very difficult.

[TheEccentricHippie]

Worthless trash.

[Smoochy44]

Which is his essay on experimental fiction? I wanna read it and I'm not sure what the essay is called (I thought I'd read most of his published nonfiction, but I could be mistaken).

[MemoryofGhostille]

More like David Foster Wallace is Cobain, Franzen is Grohl, and Donald Antrim is Novoselic

[Дмитрий Сергеев]

I"m from Russia. I want to write to Jhonatan Franzen. How can I do it?

[superclaydude]

who says you need religion or a family to have a good life?

also, he doesn't seem to be addicted to drugs. If he did, we'd probably hear about it. 

[Alex Y]

kris novoselic was and is a great basist. so the meyer comparison is completely off-base, my friend. :D

[Savorist]

David Foster Wallace is Kurt Cobain. Jonathan Franzen is Dave Grohl. Stephanie Meyer is Krist Novoselic.

[fromis111]

I don't think he was trying to be particularly sophisticated or "meta." He was just being honest about his discomfort with the whole author video thing, while still acknowledging the fact that he ultimately wanted to do it. Seems perfectly legitimate to me.

[MyBigDing]

I was so excited to read this book . . . until I saw this video