Jonathan Franzen at the End of Postmodernism

by Burn, Stephen J.

• ISBN13: 9781847062482
• ISBN10: 1847062482
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-02-07
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Jonathan Franzen is one of the most influential, critically-significant and popular contemporary American novelists. This book is the first full-length study of his work and attempts to articulate where American fiction is headed after postmodernism. Stephen Burn provides a comprehensive analysis of each of Franzen's novels - from his early work to the popular success of The Corrections - identifying key sources, delineating important narrative strategies, and revealing how Franzen's themes are reinforced by each novel's structure. Supplementing this analysis with comparisons to key contemporaries, David Foster Wallace and Richard Powers, Burn suggests how Franzen's work is indicative of the direction of experimental American fiction in the wake of the so-called end of postmodernism. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Stephen J.Burn is Associate Professor at Northern Michigan University, USA. He is the author of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide (Continuum 2003) and co-editor of Intersections: Essays on Richard Powers (Dalkey Archive Press, 2008).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. viii
Preface	p. ix
Abbreviations and Note on Editions	p. xv
A Map of the Territory: American Fiction at the Millennium	p. 1
Genealogy: Franzen's Early Writing	p. 28
In the Concrete Waste Land: The Twenty-Seventh City	p. 52
Midnight in the System Rooms: Strong Motion	p. 68
Millennial Fictions: The Corrections	p. 88
Notes	p. 129
Bibliography of Works by Franzen	p. 141
Works Cited	p. 146
Index	p. 157
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