I could’ve given Crossroads a critical read, as so many others have. (Mind you, these authority figures tended to bear an uncanny resemblance to Franzen.) What prompted this infantilizing tone were often simple questions, matters of survival that had never crossed their minds: what are the procedures for dealing with transphobic slurs in the classroom? Can we do anything about a living wage because inflation is a thing? I’m in the hospital with a lung infection-can you find someone to cover my shift this weekend? More times than I’d like to admit, I’ve wondered about detransitioning-if these same folks would suddenly lend me half the grace of a bumbling Franzen, if they’d see my angst as innovative, rather than a symptom of gender deviancy.

And besides, Franzen’s name has graced every literary publication imaginable, whether it’s an old dude praising him for his bygone sensibilities or a younger writer calling him out for saying something sexist, racist, and/or vaguely reptilian-especially since his latest novel, Crossroads, has come out: “ The Church of Jonathan Franzen,” “ Is Jonathan Franzen too big to fail?,” “ Jonathan Franzen’s many controversies, explained,” “ Jonathan Franzen Is Fine with All of It,” and “ Jonathan Franzen, With Mom in Mind, Softens His Edge.”Įach time I scroll through promo for Crossroads, the voices of past professors and employers ring in my ear with the same infantilizing tone: if you want to be taken seriously, you have to man up, get your hands dirty, do the busywork-no matter how pointless.

How was I to exorcize my fascination-my Franzination, if you will-and find some sort of catharsis from my latest career spiral? I mean, sure, I could decimate my grocery budget on one of Franzen’s hardbacks. His novels, he says, are simply too long and girthy, too interior and flavorful, too full of blood and viscera and passion, and at thirty bucks a hardcover-twenty for a paperback-“there’s only one way to get it… you’re going to actually have to be a reader.” But just as I finished copying and pasting this quote from the New York Times (and caught a glimpse of the next paragraph: something about his fear of electric cars), I accidentally hit the alt + left-arrow keys, effectively backpaging me out of my last free article. “Most of the people who have complaints with me aren’t reading me,” or at least, that’s what Jonathan Franzen claims.

Crossroads by jonathan franzen review