The Author
Life Of Jonathan Franzen
Look at this beautiful man
Franzen was born in Western Springs, Illinois. Franzen grew up in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in German in 1981. He studied abroad in Germany in 1979-80 through Wayne State University. He also studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin in 1981-82. Because of this, he speaks fluent German. Upon graduation, Franzen got married and moved with his wife to Boston to begin his writing career. When this plan fell through, they relocated to New York in 1987. This is when Franzen managed to sell the novel that launched his career, The Twenty-Seventh City. Franzen's midwestern uprbringing and constant relocations are apparent in his writing. His two most popular books, "Freedom" and "The Corrections", both focus heavily on the dynamics of the mid-western family, and feature characters who constantly move around trying to find their place in the world.