Jonathan Franzen
1 book analyzed
Biography
Jonathan Franzen was born in 1959 in Western Springs, Illinois, and raised in Webster Groves, Missouri — a Midwestern suburb that informs St. Jude down to its brick ranch houses and dinner-table silences. His father Earl, a railroad civil engineer, developed Alzheimer's disease, and his decline is the unmistakable autobiographical engine of Alfred Lambert's story. Franzen's parents' marriage — his mother's suppressed vitality, his father's emotional withdrawal — maps directly onto Enid and Alfred. Franzen published The Corrections in 2001 after a decade of relative obscurity following his first two novels. The book won the National Book Award and became the center of a cultural firestorm when Franzen expressed ambivalence about Oprah Winfrey's selection of the novel for her Book Club, leading Oprah to rescind the invitation. The controversy made Franzen a symbol of literary elitism — a reputation he has spent two decades both resisting and confirming.