Illustration by Emiliano Ponzi
In 2021, Jonathan Franzen published his most recent novel, “Crossroads,” the story of a weekend in the life of a complicated family, the Hildebrandts, in 1971. He announced it as the first book in a trilogy titled “A Key to All Mythologies,” a self-directed joke, referring to the pedantic and unfinished work of Reverend Casaubon in “Middlemarch.” “A Talent for Seeming,” Franzen’s story in this week’s Fiction Issue, gives us hope that the punch line of that joke will not, in the end, land.
Adapted from the opening pages of the second book in the trilogy—still a work in progress—“A Talent for Seeming” features not the Hildebrandts but a new character, a teen-age girl named Adele, growing up in Butte, Montana, in the nineteen-seventies. Adele’s mother—widowed at twenty-four—takes up with a former rodeo rider, and exhibits little to no interest in her daughter: when, later in life, Adele “encountered the term ‘attention deficit disorder,’ she misunderstood it as a descriptor of her childhood.” Adele counters her mother’s behavior by becoming a devout born-again Christian and a first-rate student. Then, when a hippie from San Francisco is put in charge of her twelfth-grade English class, something shifts: she discovers both the opposite sex and her gift for acting. What follows is a continual struggle between the attractions of church and stage, virtue and desire, serving others and serving herself.
In an accompanying Q. & A. about the story, Franzen explains, “My previous novel was populated by Christian believers who, by and large, didn’t lose their religion. This seemed like a good time to write a character who does lose her religion—or, more precisely, finds a new one to replace it with.” Later in the book, he promises, Adele will cross paths with a Hildebrandt, though the full arc of the novel is “still far from finished.”
Cover by Sergio García Sánchez and Lola Mora
“Stories”
Newly translated fiction by Annie Ernaux
“Firstborn Immigrant Daughter”
A short story by Taiye Selasi
“The Twice-Widowed Khala Helai”
Fiction by Jamil Jan Kochai
The meaning of family values
Reminiscences by André Alexis, Anne Enright, Joseph O’Neill, Han Ong, and Miriam Toews
Plus: Becca Rothfeld on why the American novel refuses to grow up; Louis Menand on the legacy of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”; and more.
It’s over: The series finale of “Euphoria,” Sam Levinson’s über-dark HBO drama about drug-addled teen-agers in Southern California, aired last night.
What was the show like in its final season?
In its final stretch, the show reached peak cynicism, the critic Naomi Fry wrote earlier this year:
“ ‘Euphoria’ is a big, vulgar, carnivalesque thing—an extreme, often-disgusting vision of a rapacious, pitiless America where everyone is fighting for scraps before Empire finally collapses and God turns off the lights. If you’re looking for finely drawn characters who change, develop, and form strong and meaningful bonds with one another in a conventional sense-making way, you’ve arrived at the wrong place. But if you’re here, instead, to shriek and laugh and shiver at the spectacle? Well, then, come on in.”
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Governor of California seems like an important job. Why are there so few star applicants eager to fill it?
The fight over regulating crypto and prediction markets offers a window into how President Trump enriches his family and his wealthy supporters.
The most-clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was Peter Hessler on a crime that took him decades to write about.
Today’s Crossword Puzzle: Island west of Gran Canaria—eight letters.
Laugh Lines: Test your knowledge of classic New Yorker cartoons.
Avi Steinberg
Submit your best caption for this cartoon. Your caption will be rated by readers, like you, in the next round.
P.S. Serena Williams is returning to professional tennis, and will play doubles next week at the HSBC Championships, in London. Retirement was always going to be complicated for one of the greatest athletes of all time. 🎾
Ian Crouch contributed to today’s edition.
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