In other news, Jonathan Franzen had my @EmperorFranzen parody account suspended. R.I.P. the cloak. pic.twitter.com/Z2sof9IAWM
— Andrew Shaffer (@andrewtshaffer) March 18, 2015
Writer Andrew Shaffer’s social media persona, Emperor Franzen, has been shut down. According to Shaffer, Jonathan Franzen himself requested that the page be suspended. The tweet embedded above features Shaffer’s announcement.
This satirical character started off as an anonymous figure and existed exclusively through its parody Twitter account. We met Shaffer back in 2010 when he came face-to-face with Franzen at a reading event for the novel Freedom. Shortly after that, Shaffer graciously allowed us to unmask him.
Shaffer spoke with The Washington Post and talked about the origins of this project: “There was a big Internet pile-on to bash him. So I created the Emperor Franzen parody account to jokingly defend him. He was a mash-up of Jonathan Franzen and Emperor Palpatine from ‘Star Wars.”