The Twenty-Seventh City, published in 1988, is set in Franzen's hometown, St. Louis, and deals with the city's fall from grace, St. Louis having been the "fourth city" in the 1870s. This sprawling novel was warmly received and established Franzen as an author to watch.
Strong Motion (1992) focuses on a dysfunctional family, the Hollands, and uses seismic events on the American East Coast as a metaphor for the quakes that occur in family life.
Franzen's
The Corrections, a novel of social criticism, garnered considerable critical acclaim in the United States, winning both the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The novel was also on the short list for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was named a finalist for the 2002 PEN /Faulkner Award. A finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it lost to
Empire Falls by Richard Russo.
In September 2001,
The Corrections was selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen initially participated in the selection, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Oprah and appearing in B-roll footage in his hometown of St. Louis (described in an essay in
How To Be Alone entitled "Meet Me In St. Louis"). In October 2001, however,
The Oregonian printed an article in which Franzen expressed unease with the selection. In an interview on National Public Radio's
Fresh Air, he expressed his worry that the Oprah logo on the cover dissuaded men from reading the book:
So much of reading is sustained in this country, I think, by the fact that women read while men are off golfing or watching football on TV or playing with their flight simulator or whatever. I worry ... I'm sorry that it's, uh ... I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience and I've heard more than one reader in signing lines now at bookstores say "If I hadn't heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women. I would never touch it." Those are male readers speaking. I see this as my book, my creation.
Soon afterward, Franzen's invitation to appear on Oprah's show was rescinded. Winfrey announced, "Jonathan Franzen will not be on the Oprah Winfrey show because he is seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection. It is never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or cause anyone conflict. We have decided to skip the dinner and we're moving on to the next book."
These events gained Franzen and his novel widespread media attention.
The Corrections soon became one of the decade's best-selling works of literary fiction. At the National Book Award ceremony, Franzen said "I'd also like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her enthusiasm and advocacy on behalf of
The Corrections."
Following the success of
The Corrections and the publication of
The Discomfort Zone and
How To Be Alone, Franzen began work on his next novel. In the interim, he published two short stories in
The New Yorker: "Breakup Stories", published November 8, 2004, concerned the disintegration of four relationships; and "Two's Company", published May 23, 2005, concerned a couple who write for TV, then split up.
On June 8, 2009, Franzen published an extract from
Freedom, his novel in progress, in
The New Yorker. The extract, titled "Good Neighbors", concerned the trials and tribulations of a couple in St. Paul, Minnesota. On May 31, 2010, a second extract-titled "Agreeable"-was published, also in
The New Yorker.
On October 16, 2009, Franzen made an appearance alongside David Bezmozgis at the
New Yorker Festival at the Cedar Lake Theatre, reading a portion of his forthcoming novel. Sam Allard, writing for North By Northwestern about the event, said that the "...material from his new (reportedly massive) novel" was "as buoyant and compelling as ever" and "marked by his familiar undercurrent of tragedy". Franzen read "an extended clip from the second chapter."
On September 9, 2010, Franzen appeared on
Fresh Air to discuss
Freedom in the wake of its release. Franzen has drawn what he describes as a "feminist critique" for the attention that male authors receive over female authors...a critique he supports. Franzen also discussed his friendship with David Foster Wallace and the impact of Wallace's suicide on his writing process.
While promoting the book Franzen became the first American author to appear on the cover of
Time magazine since Stephen King did so in 2000. He discussed the implications of the
Time coverage, and the reasoning behind the title of
Freedom in an interview in Manchester, England in October 2010.