Jonathan Franzen nearly adopted war orphan to understand kids

“Oh, it was insane, the idea that Kathy [his partner] and I were going to adopt an Iraqi war orphan“, the 56-year-old said in a recent interview with the Guardian. Young people, he said, seemed cynical-and not as angry as they should be.

His New Yorker editor, Henry Finder, suggested that he “meet up with a group of new university graduates instead”, the Guardian says, which turned out to be just the Gen-Y fix Franzen needed. “One of the things that had put me in mind of adoption was a sense of alienation from the younger generation”.

The Guardian has offered the clickbait hot take of its own interview with Jonathan Franzen, the entirety of which will be published tomorrow, really taking the wind out of the sails of sanctimonious bloggers around the world. I would have somehow wanted to communicate my frustration, to essentially call him a dumb-dumb for being such a dumb-dumb, but in a tricky, understated, sort of British way.

Every article in anticipation of Jonathan Franzen’s upcoming novel, Purity, causes a flurry of reaction on Twitter, or at least Book Twitter, which is practically kept alive by screen caps of particularly barbarous paragraphs-and a place Franzen is loathe to visit.

“I’m not a sexist”. “I am not somebody who goes around saying men are superior, or that male writers are superior”.

The freaky claim came from Franzen during an interview with The Guardian, where he described wanting to do something about the discord he felt with younger people. “In fact, I really go out of my way to champion women’s work that I think is not getting enough attention”. People managed to find a way to make it sound like I was hating on Edith Wharton.

He said there’s nothing left for him to do “except die – or I suppose, retire and never write again”. I thought people were supposed to be idealistic and angry. His newest book is Purity, which is out on September 1.