Jonathan Franzen Net Worth: Jonathan Franzen is a novelist and essayist who has amassed a net worth of millions of dollars in the United States. In 1987, after relocating to New York, Franzen sold his debut novel, The Twenty-Seventh City. This novel, published in 1988, is set in Franzen’s hometown of St. Louis and explores the decline of the city, which was once ranked as the “fourth city” Franzen’s reputation as a promising new novelist was solidified by this work. Franzen’s vast, satirical family drama, “The Corrections,” published in 2001, won him the National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction contender, was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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Jonathan Franzen Early Life
Franzen’s birthdate is August 17th, 1959 and his hometown is in Western Springs, Illinois. Irene and Earl Franzen are his parents. He traces his ancestry back to both Sweden and Eastern Europe. A native of St. Louis’s suburbs, he completed high school there before moving on to Swarthmore. He graduated with a BA in German in 1981. He went to college in Germany and spent a semester there. After graduating, he used his Fulbright Scholarship to spend a year in Berlin, Germany, between 1981 and 1982.
Jonathan Franzen Early Career
Franzen relocated to Somerville, Massachusetts after his time in Germany so he could focus on his writing. In addition, he served as a research assistant in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, where he contributed to a number of scholarly publications.
The author also started his first novel, titled “The Twenty-Seventh City,” around the same time. He finally completed it in 1987 after working on it for quite some time. Later, after relocating to New York City, he sold the manuscript to the publishing house Farrar Straus & Giroux. Franzen’s hometown of St. Louis serves as the setting for his 1988 novel. The reviews were positive, and many people started talking about how Franzen was a promising new writer.
After finishing “The Corrections,” Franzen started working on “Strong Motion,” which came out in 1992. It followed the lives of a dysfunctional family in the Northeastern United States. Even though it was not as well received as Franzen’s subsequent works, he still holds the book in high regard. Franzen taught a fiction writing seminar at Swarthmore College from 1992 to 1994, right after the publication of “Strong Motion.”
Jonathan Franzen Personal Life
Franzen wed Valerie Cornell in the early 1980s. They stayed together through the start of Franzen’s career and were married for 14 years before splitting up. In his collection of essays, “Farther Away,” he recounts some events from his marriage and subsequent divorce. He recently committed to his long-term girlfriend, Kathy Chetkovich. They’ve made Santa Cruz, California, their permanent home.
Franzen has been a member of the American Bird Conservancy’s board of directors for the past nine years due to his passion for birdwatching. “Emptying the Skies,” an essay he wrote on the topic of birds, was adapted into a documentary in 2013. Punk rock is a genre that he enjoys as well.
Jonathan Franzen Net Worth
As an American novelist and essayist, Jonathan Franzen has amassed a net worth of $5 million. In 1987, after relocating to New York, Franzen sold his debut novel, The Twenty-Seventh City.
The Corrections
Franzen spent the latter half of the 1990s penning “The Corrections,” his most critically acclaimed work to date. Numerous prizes and acclaims were bestowed upon the book after its 2001 publication. It took home the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2002 in addition to the National Book Award for Fiction in 2001. This novel was shortlisted for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award, and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Commercially, the book did very well. Franzen was invited to appear on Oprah Winfrey’s show in September 2001, when “The Corrections” was chosen for her book club. Although Franzen was pleased at first, he later became uneasy because he believed that men might be discouraged from reading it because of the club’s distinctive logo on the cover, which indicated that the book had been chosen by Winfrey.
Once Winfrey heard that Franzen would be uneasy, she cancelled the interview. As a result, the book received extensive coverage in the media and quickly rose to the ranks of the decade’s best-selling literary fiction. For more updates you can visit Serveupdate.com.