Try free for 30 days

A 30-day trial plus your first audiobook free.
1 credit/month after trial—to buy any title you like, yours to keep.
Listen all you want to a selection of thousands of Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
Jonathan Franzen cover art

Jonathan Franzen

By: Philip Weinstein
Narrated by: Tom Zingarelli
Free with 30-day trial

$16.45/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $27.99

Buy Now for $27.99

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

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 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 ultrasensitive 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.

©2015 Philip Weinstein (P)2015 Tantor

What listeners say about Jonathan Franzen

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.