Washington National Cathedral

Tickets available at the door, beginning at 6:30 pm. Online sales have closed for this event.

Come to hear an author hailed by Time magazine as “the great American novelist” in one of Washington’s most stunning and historic settings, as Jonathan Franzen delivers Washington National Cathedral’s 2011 PEN/Faulkner Lecture.

Featuring a reading from the widely acclaimed Freedom, Franzen’s latest novel, the evening includes the author’s thoughts about his own writing and life experience in addition to signing for Franzen’s books.

The New York Times calls Freedom “a masterpiece of American fiction” by an author of “profound moral intelligence,” whose narrative “moves at once backward, forward, inward, and outward—with hypnotic force”; the Washington Post admits Freedom to be a “sprawling epic” by an “extraordinary stylist.” It traces the fate of an ambitious couple, Walter and Patty Berglund, from the excitement of their early married years in St. Paul to the tumult of their life in Washington at the peak of Walter’s legal career. From the decaying Victorian mansion they renovate in Minnesota to the glamorous home they make for themselves in Georgetown, Freedom traces the Berglunds’ close, helpless embrace of the personal empowerment that leads to isolation and oppression. Throughout, as Franzen subtly reminds his readers, the Berglunds’ search for freedom is nothing less than America’s own at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Take part in a conversation about the paradoxical nature of liberty, the redemptive possibility of self-awareness, and the very soul of America today with a novelist of vision and poise.

Co-sponsored by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation brings together American writers and readers in a wide variety of programs to promote a love of literature.