Three years after that, Franzen was quoted as saying he “doesn’t know if anyone has more than six fully realized novels inside of him.” And yet here is “Crossroads,” his sixth - but the first in a proposed trilogy. Then “ Freedom.” “Purity” sold less than an eighth of the previous two novels but still did better than almost every other book in 2015 (and I would argue it was formally more interesting). Then, of course, “The Corrections” happened. Pre-Oprah, pre - adulation it’s like those snapshots in Us Weekly: J Franz, he’s just like US! He was tired, terrified of writing for no one. He’d published two novels, which no one seemed to have read. I’ve long had a soft spot for Jonathan Franzen’s essay “ Why Bother?” Originally published in Harper’s in 1996, his manifesto for a more socially engaged literature - of the kind he went on to write - incorporates some of my favorite modes of Franzen: melancholic, earnest, esoteric, a little whiny.
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