Jonathan Franzen

Mother-effing Jonathan Franzen makes it all look so easy: Write The Corrections. Wait nearly a decade to write another novel. And then make that novel—a sprawling odyssey detailing the life of one Midwestern family over the course of 500-plus pages—better than your last. And make the cover of Time magazine (the first author to do so since Stephen King) along the way. Hate him (and secretly get gooey over his prose) all you want tonight at this reading-signing.