Episode Details

 

I remember getting the knife.

 

 

It was near Christmas about 10 years ago and Leslie and I were zipping up a tiny suitcase before a beach trip with her grandparents and extended family. We weren't married and I was making a desperate last-second plea to stuff a 576-page novel called 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen into our bag. "It just won't fit," Leslie said. "You have … 100 pages left? Want to leave it and read it when we're back?"

 

 

I did *not* want to do that.

 

 

The book was slipping under my skin—serrating my soul.

 

 

So I remember getting that knife.

 

 

The deep blasphemous pain I felt slicing the paperback spine and carving the last 100-ish pages off the book was far outweighed by the exquisite suite of pleasures I had slowly savoring it on the beach all week.

 

 

I had never read anything like 'The Corrections'—with a clarity of character, wildly spinning plot, and unique three-dimensional *realness* that, page by page, twist by twist, left pits in my stomach, lumps in my throat, and tears in my eyes.

 

 

The book single-handedly elevated what I thought books could do.

 

 

I read 'Freedom' (2010), 'Purity' (2014), and 'Crossroads' (2021) the same way—equal parts admiration, fascination, and with a psychologically-transporting feeling of living outside of myself.

 

 

Jonathan Franzen is one of the most successful, accomplished, and decorated writers in the world. He is a Fulbright Scholar, National Book Awar