Jonathan Franzen

Earth takes four of his ten planets, fire three, water two and a single one air, with six of the ten fixed and only one cardinal. Almost nothing in this chart starts anything and very little of it revises. The record calls Franzen the novelist of The Corrections and Freedom, and a serious birdwatcher who writes about conservation.

This is a loose chart and the looseness is worth stating rather than working around. Nothing here sits inside half a degree. Mars sits in quiet contact with Uranus at just over half, and the Sun sits square Jupiter at under three quarters, which is belief in its own scale meeting a limit: over promising, over extending, and the specific discomfort of having been confident in public and wrong. In a novelist the record pairs with essays about conservation, that second contact is the one with the most in it, and it is a standing reading rather than a verdict.

The Sun, Mercury and Uranus fill sixteen degrees of Leo and Venus, Mars and Pluto fourteen degrees of Virgo, so six of the ten sit in two adjacent signs: one that expects to be watched and one that wants the thing done properly. The Moon answers from Aquarius at thirteen and its sign is certain, handling a feeling by stepping back to examine it. Venus and Saturn were the two retrograde planets. For a novelist the record pairs with birdwatching and conservation, two adjacent signs holding six planets is a better account of the pairing than any single aspect here.

Jupiter came back to its Scorpio birth degree on 7 October 2018, at fifty nine, and four laps precede it. Scorpio commits totally to whatever it has chosen and will not be known on anybody else's schedule, which for a writer the record splits between two long novels and a second subject entirely is the question of which of them was the commitment. Six fixed planets with one cardinal is the fact to take from this chart: it holds a position for a very long time.