A homemaker who died of cancer in 1999, his mother, Irene, continues to be influential in the author’s life.
“You must have observed the person carefully and you must have identified what’s likely to hurt the most, and then there’s the rhetorical challenge of delivering the painful blow without having your fingerprints on it,” he says. “It requires a high level of subtlety,” says the 62-year-old novelist from his home in Santa Cruz, California. Jonathan Franzen’s mother knew how to wound him in just the right way.