>But since the rip-roaring success of The Corrections 14

>>9733022
>Franzen doesn’t spend anything. The fleece he is wearing is 10 years old. He doesn’t like shopping and hates waste. Upstairs in the fridge in his hotel room are the leftovers from meals, all of which he will eat in due course. His only luxury is expensive kit for birdwatching.

i havent read any of his stuff, but this guy is my nigga

I actually can't stand people like him. Like he really gets what being poor is like but has never wanted for anything in his entire life and in fact, lives far better than most. His being "ironically" poor is pretty insulting tbqh.

>>9733234
DFW was exactly the same:

>wears shitty clothing
>complains of living in an apartment the size of a closet while writing IJ

Even though both his parents were academics and he never had to work a single full-time job in his entire life.

>>9733249
i thought i remember reading that david drove a bus at one point? and some other thing where he talks about doing menial work and making his mind go blank to pass the time

can't find a source for either, though. also his sister worked at baskin robbins.

>“I would love some still water if I may, please,” says Franzen, all politeness and diffidence. “And maybe something along the lines of a Diet Coke?”

why does he talk like that

>>9733665
because he's an Author

>>9733613
>>9733249
He worked at a spa or something too. I don't think you're informed sir.

>“I don’t like to hire people to do work that I can do,” he says. So that means he does his own dusting in the New York apartment he shares with his girlfriend? Franzen looks slightly shifty. “We do have a cleaner, although even that I feel some justification because we pay her way more than is standard and she’s a nice Filipino woman who we treat very well and we’re giving her work.”

>I ask if he saw the review of Purity in the Financial Times, which called it “middlebrow”. He says he never reads what people write about him. “I don’t know what ‘middlebrow’ even means. I think it’s threatening to commercial writers that someone who’s selling well is also getting literary respect, and it’s threatening to literary writers who don’t sell that somebody who’s literary also is getting commercial success.”

Franzen BTFO pseuds

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>for a while he considered adopting an Iraqi orphan so he could get to know young people.

I know he denies it but kek

>>9734476
this cannot be real!!!!!!!!!!

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words to live by in my book!

>>9733613
>>9734334
You're both HUGE fucking retards.

He drove a schoolbus for a couple of weeks after taking a semester away from Amherst.

He worked in a spa for under a week because a other writer he knew, a well-known poet, appeared there and it embarrassed him so much to be working there that he quit.

His other job was as a security guard which was part of his recovery at Jamaica House (halfway house). He worked there a few days but then quit because he felt the early mornings were effecting his writing.

I hate you fucking normies who make ZERO effort to understand anything.

>>9734991
>stares at the table with his eyes closed
Hello, editor!

>>9735008
>worked for a couple of weeks in total

>>9733030
>His only luxury is expensive kit for birdwatching.
>expensive kit for birdwatching
>expensive
>birdwatching kit
nigga open your eyes

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>>9735045
>tfw too poor to have any expensive birdwatching equipment

>>9735045
Good telescopes can get pretty expensive my dude

>>9733234
>>9733249
Rich people who live meagerly are better than poor people.

Most poor are retards who would blow all their money on shit.

See niggers

Is Franzen autistic

>>9733234
I dont think he goes out of his way to prove how much hes slumming. Its more like, "i have a lot of money but i dont live as extravagantly as all the haters think i do."

What the fuck is in an expensive bird-watching kit?

>>9736151
>Antique binoculars that Flannery O'Connor once used to watch her personal collection of exotic birds
>A leatherbound set of bird identification field guides with gold trim
>snacks(various aged cheeses and a flask of single malt whiskey, aged 18 years)
>Comes in a koa wood case with brass accents
Can't watch birds without it desu

>>9736197
My God.

David kinda despised Franzen's bird-watching (though probably somewhat jealous of his ability to enjoy such a simple-minded pleasure) .
He wrote a chapter in IJ about it (all he hears is the birds yelling warcrys and "kill", "mine" etc), and I believe there's a reference in Freedom as well.

>>9733022

Why dissect why Purity sucked? It should be enough to simply say it sucked and instead talk about a writer that deserves it... although I couldn't tell you who that might be. John Irving? He's not my favourite, but..... he's alive.

>>9736243
>Why dissect why Purity sucked? It should be enough to simply say it sucked
No, it shouldn't.

Franzen is incredibly underrated desu

>>9733022
>https://medium.ft.com/lunch-with-the-ft-jonathan-franzen-28bf49930652

Had a dream last night that I ran into Jonathan Franzen and told him that he was the Spaceghostpurrp of literature, which wasn't wrong when you think about it.

>>9733022
>That's a quotation from Flannery O'Connor
sauce?

>>9735504
But it's not the same as "Wow I have no money left to pay for food or bills at the end of this month". Which, good for him but that doesn't mean he knows what it is like at all.

>>9736815
He said poor not retarded

>>9736831
>You have to be mentally deficient to be in a state where you cannot afford food
Wew lad

>>9736835
This board is redpilled, libshit

>>9736835
>you have to not be able to eat in order to say you're poor
wew lad indeed

>>9734492
>literary respect

Oh Jonathan, sweetie

>>9733022
Privileged people have more refined sensibilities and are therefore make better artists. This has been true throughout history, despite what all smug self-hating liberals say.

>>9733234
Nobody is "poor" in the US you mong. Stop romanticizing poverty like a fucking slave moralist.

>>9735040
hey he had to get in those 6-10 hours of daily TV watching!

>>9735364
Honestly this article sure makes him seem like he is. Or very disconnected and bad social skills.

Could be the author of the story though portraying him like that

>>9733234
yes. being poor means being in want; being "poor" and not in want of anything means your "poverty" is just a subjective descriptor of your habitat and material possessions.

Sounds exactly like himself.

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>>9734476

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Where to start with Franzen?

>>9734476
fucking kek

>>9737173
Try the one with the discontented liberals and overbearing malaise.

>>9734476
You should write a book. You just summed up every upper middle class kid I've ever met at college.

>>9736845
fuck off /pol/ no one wants you here

>>9733022
why do you still bring this guy up
without even mentioning any of his fucking books

If you want celebrity bullshit, go to tv. If you want the vapid poverty argument going on above me, go to pol.

This board is supposed to be about literature you fucks

>57 years old
>successful, independently wealthy
>has a "girlfriend"

This bothers me. He's at a point in his life where he should either be married or we should know something about his religious status.

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>>9737305
>why are you guys talking about an author on a literature board?

>>9737336
i'm pretty sure they've been dating since before the corrections, too. marriage is a meme anyways.