By Alex Fankuchen 4/17 5:27pm

books

'Farther Away.' (Courtesy Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Between Novels: Jonathan Franzen’s Essays Meditate on Birdwatching, Solitude, Mourning

In his 2008 essay “The Chinese Puffin,” reprinted in his second essay collection, Farther Away (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 336 pages, $26.00), Jonathan Franzen contemplates the apparently limitless carpet of lights unfurling from the center of Shanghai, and asks, “Does anybody want to get into some really unprecedentedly deep shit?” In a rare moment in these essays, he answers “yes,” but is unwilling to drag us there. In fact, steering clear of the really deep shit—certain kinds of hard truths—is Mr. Franzen’s m.o. throughout this collection. Read More

By Kim Velsey 4/16 8:00am

Literary Stuff

Mr. Franzen probably would have hated that someone instagrammed this photo during his reading

Jonathan Franzen’s Reluctant Reading

The first thing the Observer noticed about Jonathan Franzen was that he was wearing a name tag. It said “Jonathan Franzen.”

We asked him if he usually wore name tags to his readings.

“Everyone is wearing one but you,” Mr. Franzen pointed out. This was true. In what appeared to be an act of almost defiant social leveling, the organizers of last Thursday’s Semiperm House’s fifth anniversary celebration/Jonathan Franzen reading had given everyone a name tag. Read More

By Daniel D'Addario 1/20 11:40am

Adaptations

Maggie Gyllenhaal (Getty Images)

Maggie Gyllenhaal May Star In ‘The Corrections’

Maggie Gyllenhaal, whose last big screen role was in Crazy Heart in 2009, is reportedly gravitating towards the planned HBO series adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. The Daily Mail reports that the series is shaping up towards a planned 40-episode run, with a two-hour pilot directed by Noah Baumbach. As sauerkraut chef Denise, she’d be Read More

By Daisy Prince 5/24/11 11:42pm

Shindigger

Shindigger: New York’s Literary Lion Turns 100!

On a damp evening in May, the great and the gray trooped up the marble stairs of one of New York City’s most hallowed institutions, the New York Public Library, for its centennial celebration. A smorgasbord of talent had been hired to showcase the library’s varied nature, including an outdoor electric harpist, the Abyssinian Baptist Read More