More Jonathan Franzen news, in a less-sense sort of way

Thanks to the hordes of you who made sacrifice(s) to the dark lord(s) of your choice(s), we've been granted more information about Jonathan Franzen's next novel:

Franzen is also working on a new novel. It's poor form to grill a writer about a work in progress, but I do it anyway, and he throws me a few cryptic crumbs. "The deep ecologists like to say that nature bats last," he says. "Whenever anyone is trying to say, mankind is smarter than nature ... we are of nature. And nature does therefore always bat last." So something political? "Certainly that's another thing I've been doing over the past five years. Being upset over the state of American politics."

So, there you have it. It's pretty much like you've already read the novel. It's an angsty ecopolitical sports story! Woot!

The rest of the profile/interview is interesting enough, too, from a fanboy perspective. Gotta say the photo begs for photoshopping. Also, the quote "In places The Discomfort Zone reads like outtakes from a Judy Blume young-adult novel" is distinctly off-putting in an "Are You There, God? It's Me, J-Franz" sort of way. I mean...yikes. Yikes, I'd go so far as to say, o-rama.

(Via.)