There’s a new essay up on The Guardian by Jonathan Franzen, author of the recent Oprah book club pick Freedom. He talks about his first book, The Corrections, and about the topic of shame:

When I went to work in earnest on The Corrections, in the mid-90s, I found my way blocked by shame. I was ashamed of almost everything I’d done in my personal life for the last 15 years. I was ashamed of having married so early, ashamed of how strange and singular my marriage had been, ashamed of my guilt about it, ashamed of the years of moral contortions I’d undergone on my way to divorce, ashamed of my sexual inexperience, ashamed of what an outrageous and judgmental mother I had, ashamed of being a bleeding and undefended person instead of a tower of remoteness and command and intellect like DeLillo or Pynchon, ashamed to be writing a book that seemed to want to turn on the question of whether an outrageous midwestern mother will get one last Christmas at home with her family.

Read the rest here.