![]() ![]() He’s not a Proust in his cork-lined study, but a Dickens, with his notebook out, on the streets. For a man who famously keeps the modern world at bay, preferring to work in silence in a dark room, wearing earplugs – when he’s not out bird-watching, that is – Franzen seems peculiarly, unnaturally alert to the many stupidities and sublimities of the modern world. It is a dense, serious, entertaining read that features a female protagonist and is sure to attract plenty of attention because it addresses a whole host of bang-up-to-the-minute issues, including the Occupy movement, state secrets, surveillance and whistle-blowing. ![]() On these terms alone, Purity is guaranteed to enrage his critics and delight his fans. And another is that he shouldn’t be getting so much attention anyway. Another is that he can’t write female characters. One of the main complaints about Franzen is that he’s really just an old-fashioned realist passing off a 21st-century version of middlebrow lit-lite to an audience who should be reading something altogether more challenging. And, as every schoolboy also knows, his work tends to irritate and annoy almost as many people as absolutely adore it. As every schoolboy knows, Jonathan Franzen is one of the world’s great living writers, having emerged from the shadows of obscurity and straight into a spotlit Oprah brouhaha with his novel The Corrections in 2001, a book about a dysfunctional family that told us everything we needed to know about a dysfunctional America. ![]()
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