Franzen on Netflix's The Corrections: 'I'm waiting to wake up as a different person'

When HBO shelved its adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's bestselling novel The Corrections in 2012, the author experienced such profound relief that he performed what he describes as his first and only cartwheel across the lawn of his Santa Cruz, California home. A previous attempt at a film version had already collapsed, which Franzen had anticipated, having cautioned from the outset that condensing his intricately woven, densely plotted novel into a feature-length screenplay was fundamentally impossible. This second effort had been different: Franzen had committed to co-writing the television script alongside filmmaker Noah Baumbach. Yet the partnership faltered partly because, as Franzen acknowledges,

HBO was excluded from the development process. Mistake, because we didn't know how to do TV.

The author himself had not owned a television set until a few years before and certainly had no cable subscription. As he grappled with the script, he began renting television box sets to study the medium. Roughly three episodes into one drama series, a realisation struck him:

we have no idea what we're doing. This is not how you do TV. This is bad.

The resulting pilot, he concludes, was

one of the worst pilots anyone has ever made.

Franzen once regarded television as the sworn

enemy

of serious literary fiction. In a widely cited 1996 essay published in Harper's Magazine examining the erosion of high literature, he had denounced television's

banal ascendancy

with considerable bitterness. Yet the failed HBO venture prompted a shift in his perspective. After watching Breaking Bad, Nurse Jackie and Silicon Valley—and finding himself genuinely moved by them—he began to see television differently. In an age dominated by social media, artificial intelligence and the perpetual digital scroll, television has transformed in his estimation into a

friend.

Now, The Corrections is finally receiving the adaptation treatment as an eight-part Netflix series. Meryl Streep has been cast as Enid Lambert, the determined matriarch attempting to orchestrate a flawless final family Christmas gathering even as her husband Alfred deteriorates from Parkinson's disease and dementia, and their adult children's lives unravel in ways that are simultaneously tragic and darkly comic. When Streep's involvement was announced, Franzen felt optimistic:

the chances of making this show have gone up above 50%.

He reports being approximately one month away from completing the script.

Our conversation takes place in his office at his Santa Cruz residence, where the blinds remain drawn against the intense California sunlight. At 67, Franzen is tall and slightly bent forward, his hair now white, though his face retains a youthful quality when he smiles—wide mouth, small nose, and a mischievous glint visible behind his characteristic dark-rimmed glasses. He settles into a chair that appears undersized for his lanky body and shifts frequently, visibly uncomfortable. When I suggest we exchange seats, he declines:

No, I'm just physically expressing discomfort with repeating myself.

He maintains tight editorial control over his own speech, issuing commands like

strike that word!

and

this needs to be underlined.

When he loses his train of thought, he announces grandly,

you can redirect.

Why does The Corrections matter so much to Franzen?

The Corrections, Franzen's third novel, claimed the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction in the United States and has remained one of the most commercially successful works of literary fiction in recent memory. Released mere days before the September 11 attacks, the novel captures the materialism, anxieties and self-satisfaction that characterised America throughout the twentieth century. For Franzen, it represents his most

autobiographical novel,

drawing loosely on his own upbringing in an affluent suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. The character of Alfred mirrors his own father, an engineer who developed Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's, while Enid functions as a

cartoon version

of his mother.

There are not very many incidents from my life in the book but those two: the personalities and the self-deception about the gravity of the mental deterioration – that's all drawn from my own experience,

he explains.

Franzen credits his parents with teaching him his

psychology as a novelist.

His mother and father were

powerful characters

—simultaneously

hilarious

and

terrifying

yet also

thoughtful,

possessing rich inner lives.

They created not only Enid and Alfred, but really the notion of a character … the combination of intellectual substance, emotional wanting, emotional needs and comedy,

he reflects. His father died before The Corrections reached publication. His mother survived long enough to learn that an excerpt had appeared in the New Yorker as part of a special issue celebrating American writers under 40.

Franzen recalls a telling moment from that period.

My annoying aunt, her sister, called her up and said: 'Irene: do not read Jon's piece in the New Yorker.'

His mother was battling cancer and had been told she had months remaining. When he visited her days after that phone call, she inevitably asked why she should avoid his piece. He summarised the story for her,

making some small omissions, but basically just describing what the thing was.

Her response was definitive:

Thank you, I don't need to read it.

It became one of their final extended conversations. She died ten days later.

My parents gave us kids everything – including a lot of criticism. But then they just exited, and I was still in my 30s and could write whatever I want,

he says. The Corrections could not have been published had they lived. Most of his subsequent novels—including Freedom and Crossroads, both substantial, idea-driven works—have similarly centred on dysfunctional midwestern families.

It always puzzles me that people find it remarkable that I have characters who are related through family in my books,

he observes with evident frustration.

Because it's like, well, the Bible is a book of family stories. The Old Testament, it's all family stories. The Greek myths, Homer …

Where did Franzen's famous anger originate?

Franzen characterises The Corrections as an

angry comedy,

and his reputation as a contentious public figure is well established. When asked about the sources of his anger, he offers a candid assessment:

It's still mysterious to me, having so many privileges – not really economic privilege, but every other imaginable kind of privilege – that I was angry for so long.

He identifies several contributing factors.

There's 14 years of being in a marriage that should have ended after two years. That explains a lot, actually.

He married fellow writer Valerie Cornell shortly after graduating from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 1981, and they divorced in 1994. Additionally,

I'm a bright guy, and the stupidity of the world makes me angry.

During the 1990s, he spent considerable energy

angry that people were seen to be losing interest in the kind of novels that I wrote.

However, he adds with a wry smile,

I don't know why people think of me as angry now, because I haven't really been angry in that way since a year after The Corrections was published.

That inaugural year following publication was admittedly

bumpy.

Many recall his public clash with Oprah Winfrey, who selected The Corrections for her book club and invited him to appear on her programme, only to withdraw the invitation after he characterised her other selections as

schmaltzy.

The two eventually reconciled—Winfrey chose Freedom for her book club in 2010, and they embraced on live television. Franzen recognises his own communication patterns as problematic: he cannot

start a thought without injecting a counterthought to it.

Extracted in isolation, his remarks can make him sound like an

asshole.

While criticising Winfrey's selections, for instance, he simultaneously praised her for

promoting reading.

He now acknowledges her right to take offence. Yet he cannot resist adding a counterthought:

Well, some of her earlier picks were …

followed by a theatrical pause,

… schmaltzy.

Other controversies have followed. He engaged in a public dispute with writer Jennifer Weiner regarding the disproportionate critical attention lavished on his work. His initial position: Weiner was

freeloading

on gender debates and

asking for a respect that not just male reviewers, but female reviewers, don't think her work merits.

His counterthought: gender bias in literary criticism represents a genuine problem. He faced criticism for suggesting he read young adult fiction to better understand adolescents. Counterthought: that experiment lasted

six weeks at the most.

Franzen says he has learned to exercise greater caution.

I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to talk to people in an interview. I didn't know how to do TV. I would just say whatever I was thinking about and then I would get into trouble and I would feel like: 'Oh, unfair! I'm getting into trouble.' Well, you know, dude, wise up, learn how to protect yourself. Don't say those things.

How did Franzen become a writer?

At university, Franzen initially pursued science:

That was a bit of a beard to get my parents to pay for college.

His parents objected when he changed majors, though they accepted his choice of German literature as

serious

rather than what they viewed as the frivolous English major, which

they literally would not have paid for.

After graduating from Swarthmore in 1981, he secured a year-long Fulbright scholarship at the Freie Universität in Berlin. His debut novel, The Twenty-Seventh City, appeared in 1988, six years after his graduation. He has worked exclusively as a writer since then.

I made nothing but mistakes as a young person but actually was lucky enough to realise, this is what you're good at,

he reflects.

In 2010, following the publication of Freedom, Franzen appeared on the cover of Time magazine—a rare honour for any writer. The accompanying article described him as the

Great American Novelist.

He reveals that the cover placement was his own suggestion. He instructed his publicist to contact Time, proposing that the magazine had not featured a writer on its cover in considerable time and that Franzen would make an excellent subject. I note, shuffling through my interview notes, that the Time piece actually describes him as

singularly ungifted at what you might call brand management.

His response is delighted:

Isn't that hilarious? It's hilarious!

He dismisses the phrase

great American novel

itself.

It's usually not said kindly. It's sort of mocking,

he says, adopting a bullying sneer:

Oh, the great American novelist. Oh, you're going to write the great American novel, are you?

Is the literary novel in decline?

Franzen's outlook on the future of literary fiction has become considerably less pessimistic than it once was. His 1996 Harper's essay?

His real complaint at the time was 'people weren't buying books like mine',

he says, feigning a sob.

Actually, they were. They were just not buying my novels. That was my complaint in the 90s, and of course I blew that up into some huge cultural problem.

Contemporary hand-wringing about reading's decline requires perspective, he argues.

I think the doom-criers about the novel tend to make a fundamental mistake. They imagine some golden age when everyone read Flaubert. There was never a time.

Modern technology certainly does little to encourage reading habits.

It's easy to imagine a time soon when there is no reason to be able to read, because text can be converted into spoken language and you don't have to write because you just speak and it can be written for you.

Yet he finds this hardly catastrophic in the broader context.

That's the other thing I feel about the doom-criers of the novel, it's like, really, this is a world historical problem? People can't read Steinbeck any more? It's sad, but nothing lasts for ever. What do you want?

Concerns about reading decline have prompted various interventions. One novelist has proposed an eight-week plan modelled on the Couch to 5K fitness programme to help readers rebuild reading habits weakened by smartphone use. Meanwhile, Philip Hensher's sweeping 704-page history of British fiction from Defoe to Zadie Smith has been praised as both rigorous criticism and a gripping read, rehabilitating overlooked authors in the process.

What are Franzen's views on politics and the environment?

Franzen declines to comment extensively on American politics, reasoning that

nobody cares what the novelist thinks.

He also references a pre-interview with the German newspaper Die Welt conducted before Donald Trump's second term, in which, like numerous commentators, he predicted the president would not follow through on most campaign promises.

It's like no, I was all wrong.

However, he recognised Trump's significance early.

He wrote about the future president in his 1992 novel, Strong Motion, and in various essays that decade.

He symbolised a certain kind of horribleness, a crass, narcissistic, bullying side of American life that, yeah, I noticed early and I hated. I didn't even live in New York when I wrote Strong Motion and I could feel that odious presence.

Environmental issues command greater willingness to engage. Franzen has authored several provocative essays for the New Yorker examining the climate crisis. He provoked anger among climate activists by arguing that humanity must accept global warming's inevitability and redirect focus toward local conservation and biodiversity initiatives. An avid birder himself, he criticised the National Audubon Society in 2015 for falsely claiming that climate change represents the primary threat to birds, when collisions with glass windows and predation by domestic cats constitute more addressable problems. Audubon responded by accusing him of

extreme intellectual dishonesty.

They've apologised,

he notes when I raise the incident,

full stop.

Franzen discovered his passion for birds shortly after The Corrections was published. He undertakes birding expeditions whenever possible, though his Santa Cruz home provides abundant opportunities for observation.

There are violet-green swallows nesting next door, and hooded orioles in the back garden.

Were the weather cooler and his office blinds raised higher, he suggests,

we'd probably see a family of quail running past his office window.

If you want to see quail, this is one of the best places in the world,

he says.

What is Franzen working on now?

Franzen shares his home with his longtime partner, writer Kathryn Chetkovich. An electric guitar occupies a corner of his office. He took up the instrument while working on Freedom and has been practising this morning with Shady Characters, a band he formed with Chetkovich's brothers. The endeavour remains strictly private.

I have never performed in public, and I never will,

he announces.

Last June, Franzen published a new story in the New Yorker featuring an aspiring teenage actor confronting an unwanted pregnancy and a crisis of faith. This piece will become part of his next novel, a sequel to Crossroads, published in 2021 as the opening volume of a planned trilogy. Does this suggest his next book approaches completion?

This is not, 'I've delivered the manuscript and we're getting a little teaser.' No, this is a 'I've gone deep into the cave and I need to send a sign of life.'

Writing novels demands years of labour from Franzen, and the periods before he commits to a new project prove consistently

horrible.

He attempts distraction through nonfiction writing, then

periodically go back and beat my head against the proverbial brick wall.

It's not fun,

he confirms:

Some other day, another idea. Yeah, that one didn't work either. Wake up in the middle of the night. Yeah, I got it. No, you don't.

Franzen maintains that the most challenging aspect of novel-writing is the personal transformation it requires. He must become

the kind of person who can write the novel. I've had to become a different person in some significant way to get each book written.

Moving from The Corrections to Freedom demanded that he relinquish his anger. Writing Crossroads required him to cultivate forgiveness. Currently, he says,

I'm waiting to wake up as the person who is alive again and not the same person he was five years ago.

Does this characterise writing as a vehicle for self-improvement? Emphatically not. When engaged with a scene, attempting to capture a character or achieve the correct tone, he operates outside moral frameworks.

If you're really engaged with that, it's not a matter of morality, but a matter of getting at something true. So I prefer truth as a goal to morality, to self-improvement, to the betterment of one's soul.

I don't really care about bettering my soul. I care about getting it right.

Then, the reflexive edit:

Which is a pretty good ending line.