The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan FranzenMichael Gausebyline‚ Aug. 05‚ 2004Jonathan Franzen is the rare writer who consistently asks a lot of the reader. He expects a reader to not only keep pace with his novels, which are grand in scale in their prose and action, often spanning many different characters, subjects, and moral questions. Not surprisingly, Franzen is also a writer that people often love or love to hate. His most recent novel, the widely acclaimed and read The Corrections, focused on the trials and tribulations of a modern-day family. His debut novel, The Twenty-Seventh City, published in 1988, while not as widely read and not as well written, is every bit as grand in scale as The Corrections and perhaps more pertinent to the present urban American landscape. |