Books: Jonathan Franzen at the Aratani/Japan America Theatre

BOOKS

Following in the footsteps of 2001’s “The Corrections,” Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, “Freedom,” has ignited several fires of controversy across the literary landscape. The biggest rager started with a disgruntled Twitter burst from author Jennifer Weiner, who coined the term “Franzenfreude,” for the pain she gets reading the multiple flattering reviews showered on the writer. In this Aloud discussion with Meghan Daum, an Op-Ed columnist for the Times and author of the memoir “Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in That House,” Franzen’s complicated position as the literary scene’s champion of realism — and its biggest blank scrim, fairly or not, for projecting all kinds of anxiety regarding the current state of literature — will no doubt be examined, alongside the themes of “Freedom,” which includes environmentalism and a family in dissolution. The Aratani/Japan America Theatre, 244 South San Pedro St., L.A. 8 p.m. Thur. $25. (213) 680-3700.