Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen's Dramatic Adventures in Webster Groves Real Estate: The Play!

A new play based on Jonathan Franzen's essay "House For Sale" opens this Saturday, October 13, at The Duke on 42nd Street, a theater in New York. Actually, it's just previews; the "post-opening" is October 25. (But where is the actual opening?) The essay concerns Franzen's return to Webster Groves ... More >>

Walrus Publishing, Making Books By St. Louisans For St. Louisans

When Lisa Miller moved to St. Louis from Jefferson City twenty years ago, she was impressed by the number of writers in town. Not the ones who moved away and got famous (though there are plenty of those), but the ones who've stuck around, formed writing groups, showed up at readings, published small ... More >>

Franzen's Corrections Won't Be An HBO Series After All

Gentle readers, please try to contain your disappointment. If you must shed tears, please shed them discreetly in the privacy of the bathroom. (If you see a taunting piece of poop, remember it's only a hallucination. Probably.) HBO has announced that it will not be picking up the TV series version o ... More >>

Five Things Like 'Glee' Gotye Must Erase From The 'Somebody That I Used To Know' Wikipedia Page

I like to call this move the Jonathan Franzen: Gotye, who managed to get a rock song onto the radio in 2012, has rolled his eyes at the Glee version of "Somebody That I Used To Know," probably while covered in angular paint swatches and looking really nervous about something. Which is fine, becaus ... More >>

Modern Mother Teresa

Celebrating Chopin

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending January 8, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. Bob Reuter's got a band (Alley Ghost), a radio sh ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 16, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. Hey, look, it's Freedom! Back again, in it ... More >>

Your Weekly St. Louis Bestseller List

​Here's your weekly St. Louis bestseller list for the week ending October 9, as compiled by the St. Louis Independent Booksellers Alliance and based on sales at Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books and Sue's News. We don't know of any other author for young ... More >>

The Corrections Slated to Become HBO Series

image viaHowdy ho! Daily RFT hearby nominates Mr. Hankey to star in HBO's series based on The Corrections.​How much misery can you stand with your premium cable? You may get to find out soon: HBO is preparing to order the pilot episode of a new series based on The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen ... More >>

UPDATE: Help Save Subterranean Books From the Evil Recession

image viaDon't freeze Subterranean Books out of business.​Subterranean Books, the awesome independent bookstore that has graced the Delmar Loop for the past eleven years (and winning Riverfront Times' Best of St. Louis honors several times along the way) may be forced to close up shop on Septe ... More >>

Can Freedom Save Your Life?

This book could save your life!​Another year in the most dangerous city in America. Gunshots went off everywhere at midnight on New Year's Day, and nobody gave you a bulletproof vest for Christmas. (Not that you asked for one. But still.) The good folks at ElectricLiterature have a solution. O ... More >>

Reminder: Franzen Meets Oprah at 4 P.M.!

image via​Just on the off chance you may have forgotten: Jonathan Franzen finally makes his appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show this afternoon to discuss Freedom. Locally, the show airs at 4 p.m. on KSDK-TV (Channel 5). And on the off chance you're not up on your Oprah book news (but why e ... More >>

Jonathan Franzen Expresses His Love for the Mekons In -- Surprise -- A Verbose Way

​We've written so much about Jonathan Franzen over on Daily RFT, it's finally reached critical mass and overflowed to infest A to Z. So here we go: Didja know the famous novelist (author most recently of Freedom) who grew up in Webster Groves has a favorite band? Of course, Franzen being Fran ... More >>

Franzen Nominated for Another Prestigious Award

Does the Bad Sex in Fiction Award come with a little sticker that goes on the cover?​Jonathan Franzen's latest novel Freedom may not have been nominated for the National Book Award (though it sold way more copies than the eventual winner, Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon -- which Daily RFT paid abs ... More >>

A Century After His Death, Twain is Back Atop of the Best-Seller List

image via​October has been a rough month for Jonathan Franzen. First his glasses got stolen. Then he didn't get nominated for the National Book Award. And now Freedom has been overtaken and surpassed on the Amazon best-seller list by volume one of The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Yeah, Franzen ... More >>

Franzen Frenzy: Why Couldn't This Have Happened Here?

Catastrophe befell Jonathan Franzen this afternoon at the launch party for Freedom (aka The Greatest Novel Of Our Time) in London: ​ ​ The thief escaped by jumping into the Serpentine in Hyde Park (where, incidentally, Percy Shelley's first wife drowned herself). He or she left a ransom ... More >>

Jonathan Franzen Comes to Town, Gets Adulation and a Marriage Proposal

No photos were allowed while Franzen was reading (Kris Kleindienst threatened violence), but imagine, if you will, him standing behind this podium in a dark gray checked shirt and jeans.​All hail the Mighty Franzen, who finally returned to his hometown last night, just days after his anointmen ... More >>

Even Oprah Must Concede That Franzen Reigns Supreme

​Even Queen Oprah must bow down to the overpowering literary force that is Freedom. Although she doesn't plan to reveal her new book club selection till tomorrow's show, the Associated Press reports that the Queen of Talk, like everyone else (except the Washington Post's Ron Charles) thinks Jo ... More >>

And Then Along Comes Franzen

Jonathan Franzen Is Too Big for the Schlafly Library Branch

And they say no one reads books anymore! ​So many people have purchased Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, that Left Bank Books is moving its September 20 book-signing event from the Schlafly branch of the St. Louis Public Library to Christ Church Cathedral.The cathedral, at 1210 Locust Street ... More >>

Jonathan Franzen Deserves the Freedom Hype

Every writer hates a winner. And so with Jonathan Franzen's new novel earning raves from just about everybody who matters in American letters, we've been subjected to the predictable envious backlash about how Franzen is overrated (and annoying), how middle-aged white guys get preferential treatment ... More >>

Daily RFT Aids in Emperor Franzen's Quest For World Domination

image via​Last week, Daily RFT reported on literary feud in which the authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner joined forces to fight the white male literary Establishment, impersonated by Jonathan Franzen whose new book Freedom, in a single week, received not one, but two rave reviews from the Ne ... More >>

Once Again, Franzen Offends Powerful Literary Women

Jonathan Franzen's new book, Freedom, isn't out until Tuesday, but he's already pissed off some pretty prominent women in literary circles. This time, however, it's not Oprah. And he hasn't really done much besides exist and be the recipient of a rave review in the New York Times from another powerf ... More >>

Even Obama Loves Jonathan Franzen

image viaDon't look so grumpy, Jon.​We already know that everyone loves St. Louis local-boy-made-hella-famous-author Jonathan Franzen, but we didn't know that "everybody" extended even to el presidente, Barack Obama. Obama is currently on a ten-day vacation in Martha's Vineyard with the First ... More >>

From Mark Twain to Jonathan Franzen, St. Louis has been home to a surprising number of great writers

Franzen Love-Fest Continues

Blow out your candles, Jon.​Today marks the 51st birthday of Jonathan Franzen, the novelist formerly of Webster Groves (although he has not really lived there since he left for college -- in the East of course) and now the author of the much-lauded new novel Freedom. Early reviews in such prom ... More >>

White Palace: The Great St. Louis Novel?

This week's Riverfront Times explores our city's literary history. Check back throughout the week for online-only maps and articles supplementing this week's cover story. ​After you've spent several weeks examining the literature of St. Louis, one thing becomes glaringly obvious: St. Louis' great ... More >>

Jonathan Franzen's Face Graces Cover of Time

​Webster Grovians, prepare yourselves! Tomorrow the newest edition of Time magazine hits newsstands, featuring, on its cover, the tortured visage of native son Jonathan Franzen beside the headline "Great American Novelist". Franzen is the first living writer to grace the magazine's cover since ... More >>

Tennessee Williams Writes Like ... H.P. Lovecraft? WTF?

We at the Daily RFT will admit to being suckers for the latest Internet craze, whatever it happens to be. Foursquare? We're on it. *%&^! My Dad Says? We read it every day back when it was just a stream on Twitter.We do not write like Stephenie Meyer. We do not write like Stephenie Meyer.​So la ... More >>

Jonathan Franzen's New Novel (and Oprah-Snubbing?) Due Out in September

courtesy Farrar, Straus and GirouxPlease, oh please let not the presence of the bird mean this will be as awful as Franzen's New Yorker essay about birdwatching. Thank you.​Webster Groves native Jonathan Franzen's first novel since 2001's The Corrections will be out this September. Titled Freedom, ... More >>

St. Louis Serenade: Seven years in the making, Kyle Beachy's debut novel is a love letter to the Gateway City

Unreal News Challenge 2007

Week of December 27, 2007

How Not to Be Alone

Unreal News Challenge 2006

Week of December 21, 2006

Dancin' and Drinkin'

News to Muse

The Year in Review: A Quiz

Gerbergate

Jennifer Joyce contest results, a psychic porn star and perhaps the only Provel-related legal battle in history: Who could ask for anything more? (We've got dirt on Gephardt and the Cards, too, just in case you're greedy.)

In the Cup

To find a bra that fits, we go to the experts

Third Lip Cabaret, featuring the Julia Sets, the Highway Matrons, Cloister, Fred's Variety Group and dHHP

Thursday, Nov. 22; Galaxy

Mr. Fix-It

The American belief in progress, and the resultant failures, makes for high comedy in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections