Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage

Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage is the first critical biography of one of today's most important novelists. Drawing on unpublished emails and both published and private interviews, Philip Weinstein conveys the feel and heft of Franzen's voice as he ponders the purposes and problems of his life and art, from his earliest fiction to his most recent novel, Purity.

Franzen's work raises major questions about the possibilities of contemporary fiction: how does one appeal to a wide audience o...