“If you choose to spend an hour every day tinkering with your Facebook profile, or if you don’t see any difference between reading Jane Austen on a Kindle and reading her on a printed page, or if you think Grand Theft Auto IV is the greatest Gesamtkunstwerk since Wagner, I’m very happy for you, as long as you keep it to yourself.”

American novelist, essayist, and short-story writer

Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Born in 1959, he is best known for his fiction, especially The Corrections and Freedom, which brought him wide critical attention and major literary recognition. The Corrections, published in 2001, won the National Book Award and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, while earning the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and a place on the shortlist for the International Dublin Literary Award. Freedom, published in 2010, was similarly praised and led to a Time cover that called him the “Great American Novelist.” His novel Crossroads appeared in 2021 and began a projected trilogy.