Jonathan Franzen cover art

Jonathan Franzen

The Comedy of Rage

Preview
Subscribe now Free with 30-day trial
Offer ends on 14 April, 2026 at 23:59.
Prime logo
Pay ₹5/month for 2 months and ₹199/month after 2 months, Cancel anytime. Offer ends on 14 April 2026 at 23:59. Take this offer!
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep.
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks.
Download titles to your library and listen offline.
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Jonathan Franzen

Written by: Philip Weinstein
Narrated by: Tom Zingarelli
Subscribe now Free with 30-day trial

Pay ₹5/month for 2 months and ₹199/month after 2 months, Cancel anytime. Offer ends on 14 April 2026 at 23:59.

₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹820.00

Buy Now for ₹820.00

LIMITED TIME OFFER | Get 2 Months for ₹5/month

About this listen

Jonathan 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 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 ultrasensitive 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. Philip Weinstein joins biography and criticism in ways that fully respect their differences but also grant that the work comes, however unpredictably, out of the life.

©2015 Philip Weinstein (P)2015 Tantor
Art & Literature Authors United States World Literature
No reviews yet