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Jonathan Franzen

Born: 1959 in Western Springs, Illinois
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Jonathan Franzen was born in Western Springs, Illinois.

Biography: Jonathan Franzen is a novelist and essayist. He was born in Western Springs, Illinois and grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. A graduate of Swarthmore College (1981), Franzen began publishing novels in the late 1980s. His book, ''The Corrections'', a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Corrections, his third novel, was getting good reviews and selling well when Oprah Winfrey announced she had selected it as her 'book of the month.' Franzen's response was less than enthusiastic and he became known as the guy who snubbed Oprah Winfrey's television book club.Franzen currently resides in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.


Awards:
  • -- 1988 Whiting Writers' Award
  • -- 1996 Granta's Best Of Young American Novelists
  • -- 2001 National Book Award for ''The Corrections''
  • -- 2001 New York Times Best Books of the Year
  • -- 2001 Salon Book Award (Fiction)
  • -- 2001 New York Times Best Books of the Year for ''T

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction; Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Jonathan Franzen on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=jonathan+franzen


Selected Titles

CORRECTIONS.
ISBN: 0008329702 OCLC: 1076228969

FOURTH ESTATE LTD, [Place of publication not identified], 2019.

Freedom /
ISBN: 0312600844 OCLC: 548616620

This novel follows several members of an American family, the Berglunds, as well as their close friends and lovers, as complex and troubled relationships unfold over many years. The book follows them through the last decades of the twentieth century and concludes near the beginning of the Obama administration. The Berglunds are the middle class suburban family that the neighbors just love to talk about. Walter, the successful and doting husband, and Patty, the tall ex varsity basketball player who bakes Christmas cookies for each resident of Barrier Street, seem like the perfect couple. But life is not the pretty picture presented to the world. When their precious first born is corrupted by the wanton girl next door, the edges fray on the Berglunds' family fabric. An old friend emerges, tall, dark and only slightly disheveled and mistakes are made.

  Freedom :
ISBN: 9781427227775 OCLC: 779255561

Playaway Digital Audio : [Solon, Ohio] : [2012], ℗2010.

The idyllic lives of civic-minded environmentalists Patty and Walter Berglund come into question when their son moves in with aggressive Republican neighbors, green lawyer Walter takes a job in the coal industry, and go-getter Patty becomes increasingly unstable and enraged.

  How to be alone
ISBN: 9780007389063 OCLC: 874931604

How to be alone :
ISBN: 0312422164 OCLC: 49226197

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York : 2002.

The author presents his 1996 work, "The Harper's Essay," offering additional writings that consider a central theme of the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the increasing persistence of loneliness in postmodern American.

Strong motion /
ISBN: 031242051X OCLC: 23287302

Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York : 1992.

Louis Holland inherits the family chemical business and meets someone who thinks the earthquakes around Boston are caused by human hands.

  Strong motion :
ISBN: 9781480518186 OCLC: 874753667

Louis Holland falls in love with a seismologist who discovers that recent Boston earthquakes had human causes, in a novel that deals with such issues as environmental pollution, religious fundamentalism, abortion, and the threat of the apocalypse.

The discomfort zone :
ISBN: 0374299196 OCLC: 63277685

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York : 2006.

The author describes growing up in a family of all boys in Webster Groves, Missouri, reflecting on such topics as the dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship, his role as the school prankster, his marriage, and the life lessons he has learned from birds.

The discomfort zone :
ISBN: 9780007383221 OCLC: 898156124

  The twenty-seventh city
ISBN: 9780007383245 OCLC: 1015893836

The twenty-seventh city /
ISBN: 0312420145 OCLC: 17619684

Farrar Straus Giroux, New York : 1988.

St. Louis is embroiled in a political conspiracy after Jammu, a young woman from India, is installed as its new police chief. To succeed she realizes that respected businessman Martin Probst must be seduced or destroyed.

 

 

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