Culture

The Internet Has Once Again Trolled America’s Most Insufferable Novelist, Jonathan Franzen

You know you're rinsed when Jodi Picoult weighs in.

by Jared Richards  21 November 2018
Jonathan Franzen

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Famed lover of birds and hater of the internet Jonathan Franzen has, once again, been thoroughly rinsed online — and his birds can’t save him.

Last week, Franzen dropped his latest collection of essays, The End Of The End Of The Earth. In promotion, the writer’s doing the rounds, which, inevitably, means he’s out in the world saying dumb things again. And while this time he hasn’t talked about wanting to adopt an Iraqi war orphan for research, or how he’s never “been in love with a black woman”, Franzen has made a pretty ridiculous list of “10 rules for novelists” over on LitHub.

It’s worth reading in full for the total experience, but, in short, the list is pretty much Peak Franzen (and, for the record, I love most of his novels). First, there are the pseudo-philosophical mantras, like “#7. You see more sitting still than chasing after” and “#10. You have to love before you can be relentless”, which essentially make fun of themselves.

But it’s the way Franzen elevates writing to a Righteous, Important Art which pissed off a lot of writers online. The self-righteous moralism — like the anti-web “#8. It’s doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction” — didn’t help.

Novelist Chuck Wendig made the first dig with his own list of 10 rules, including “put words after words” and “eat bees?”.

It wasn’t long before more people joined in.

Some, like New Yorker writer Rachel Syme, were pretty confused by the anti-internet and -library message found in “#5. When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.”

For some, #6 was fairly confusing too.

Lots of writers stressed that these kinds of lists are pointless and elitist — Jodi Picoult tweeted “I am delighted to tell you I have broken every single one of these rules”, though others were a bit more relentless.

As per usual, The Onion has the definitive take.