The magazine's profile of Mr. Franzen dwells on the topic of otters:

Otters are congenitally happy beasts. They don't worry about their future, even though they're legally a threatened species and their little estuary is literally in the shadow of the massive 500-ft. stacks of a power plant.

One of the humans admiring them is Jonathan Franzen. Franzen is a member of another perennially threatened species, the American literary novelist. But he's not as cool about it as the otters. He's uneasy.

Ah, to be a species fighting against extinction. Mr. Franzen's latest work is out at the end of the month.