Tag Archives: Jonathan Franzen

Tao and Franzen

Thanks, S, for sending this interesting blog post from the Economist.  In the blog, the author compares two cover stories from Time Magazine and a magazine called the Stranger.  Time featured a posed Jonathan Franzen with the title Great American Novelist, while the Stranger had the same exact title with Asian American author Tao Lin in the exact same pose. In the article, the blogger talks about how the literary fiction establishment restricts its definition of mainstream normalcy to authors who are White men.  The author writes, “Will an Asian-American author, or an African-American or a woman, ever be credited with writing the Great American Novel?”