Jonathan Franzen Reads Colbert a Bedtime Story, Takes a Shot at Amazon

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Jonathan Franzen Reads Colbert a Bedtime Story, Takes a Shot at Amazon

It’s no secret that Amazon.com has been disastrous for independent bookstores, driving many out of business and harming the ones that remain. That’s probably not going to change, but the inevitability of Jeff Bezos’ world domination didn’t stop Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections, Purity) from taking a shot at the shipping giant. Under the guise of reading a bedtime story to Stephen Colbert on last night’s Late Show, he told of a big, scary wolf who has big teeth “the better to gobble up every retailer in the world, because then I can gobble up every consumer too, and finally earn a profit for my shareholders!”

It’s quite funny, and Franzen has a sonorous baritone perfect for a horrifying bedtime parable. Watch the video above.

Franzen also had a normal sit-down interview with Colbert, and you can watch him talk about his distaste for Twitter, and his guilty love of football, below:

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