Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage

· Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Tom Zingarelli
Audiobook
6 hr 26 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

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 has 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 ultra-sensitive 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.

About the author

Philip Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English at Swarthmore College. He is the author of several books, including Becoming Faulkner, which received the Holman Award for the best book written on southern literature. Philip is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner.

A veteran voice artist, Tom Zingarelli has produced and narrated many audiobooks in the last several years. He has also recorded books for the Connecticut State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. His voice was featured on the popular PBS children's television program Between the Lions.

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