Editing Jonathan Franzen (section)

==Early life and education==
Franzen was born in [[Western Springs, Illinois]],<ref>{{cite news|url=http://contemporarylit.about.com/cs/authors/p/franzen.htm|title=Jonathan Franzen Biography – Bio of Jonathan Franzen|work=Contemporary Literature|access-date=September 23, 2010|archive-date=July 23, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723220431/http://contemporarylit.about.com/cs/authors/p/franzen.htm}}</ref> the son of Irene (née Super) and Earl T. Franzen.<ref>{{cite news|first=Michele|last=Matassa Flores|url=http://crosscut.com/2010/09/15/books/20161/A-sweaty-palmed-night-with-Jonathan-Franzen/|title=A sweaty-palmed night with Jonathan Franzen|work=[[Crosscut.com]]|date=September 15, 2010|access-date=August 20, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721161947/http://crosscut.com/2010/09/15/books/20161/A-sweaty-palmed-night-with-Jonathan-Franzen/|archive-date=July 21, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Peck |first=Claude |date=February 13, 2012 |title=Jonathan Franzen's struggle for 'Freedom' |work=[[Star Tribune]] |url=http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/102110194.html?page=2&c=y |access-date=March 20, 2011 |archive-date=October 22, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131022011832/http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/102110194.html?page=2 |url-status=live }}</ref> His father, raised in Minnesota, was the son of a Swedish immigrant; his mother's ancestry was Eastern European. Franzen grew up in an affluent neighborhood in the St. Louis suburb of [[Webster Groves, Missouri]], and graduated with high honors from [[Swarthmore College]], receiving a degree in German in 1981.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.swarthmore.edu/news-archive-2009-2011/jonathan-franzen-81-first-living-american-novelist-time-cover-decade|title=Jonathan Franzen '81 First Living American Novelist on Time Cover in Decade|date=August 16, 2010 |publisher=Swarthmore College|access-date=August 13, 2023}}</ref> As part of his undergraduate education, he studied abroad in Germany during the 1979–80 academic year with [[Wayne State University]]'s [[Junior Year in Munich]] program. While there, he met [[Michael A. Martone]], on whom he would later base the character Walter Berglund in ''[[Freedom (Franzen novel)|Freedom]]''.<ref>Ferguson, Mark. "75 Years of the Junior Year in Munich."  ''Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching of German'' 40.2 (Fall 2007): 124-132; p.132.</ref> He also studied on a [[Fulbright Scholarship]] at [[Freie Universität Berlin]] in Berlin in 1981–82;<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pen.org/author.php/prmAID/54|title=Jonathan Franzen|work=PEN American Center|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004044604/http://www.pen.org/author.php/prmAID/54|archive-date=October 4, 2012}}</ref> he speaks fluent German.

Franzen married in 1982 and moved with his wife to [[Somerville, Massachusetts]] to pursue a career as a novelist. While writing his first novel, ''[[The Twenty-Seventh City]]'', he worked as a research assistant at [[Harvard University]]'s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, coauthoring several dozen papers.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6054/jonathan-franzen-the-art-of-fiction-no-207-jonathan-franzen|title=Jonathan Franzen, The Art of Fiction No. 207|last=Burn|first=Interviewed by Stephen J.|date=2010|work=The Paris Review|access-date=June 20, 2018|issue=195|volume=Winter 2010|language=en|issn=0031-2037|archive-date=August 22, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170822175855/https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6054/jonathan-franzen-the-art-of-fiction-no-207-jonathan-franzen|url-status=live}}</ref> In September 1987, a month after he and his wife moved to New York City, Franzen sold ''The Twenty-Seventh City'' to [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux|Farrar Straus & Giroux]].<ref>{{cite news|first=Nina|last=Willdorf|url=http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi-page/documents/01997111.htm|title=An author's story: How literary It Boy Jonathan Franzen spun himself into a tornado of controversy|work=The Phoenix|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111110020931/http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi-page/documents/01997111.htm|archive-date=November 10, 2011}}</ref>