I used to nanny in their old brownstone (I know this because his magazines were still delivered in the mail) and that place was freaking ginormous. With two kids, each parent had their own floor for work, separate from the huge first and second floor living areas. How much more space to they need?

Are writers allowed to say things like that? Writers who aren't married to i-bankers or trust fund babies, that is?

Look for Krauss's next book: "A Floor of One's Own."

What do you want to bet that they have trouble conceiving those two planned kids, go through a big fertility hooha, then write about the miracle of their litter in NY Magazine?

Sorry, I'm not well-versed in the vagaries of Brooklyn real estate, but why can't they do what any normal parents would and lock their kids in the garage?

If my parents were Safran Foer and Krauss I would want to keep as far away from them as possible. Fuck my own floor, I'd want my own separate house.

They don't physically need that much space, but their egos tend to take up all the available space in a building.

It's like they're both looking in the same direction for their lost relevance.

You know...she's joking. (forgive me.)

How can an author of two books afford a 7 mil brownstone? Did "Everything...." sell Stephen King style copies? Do they pay editors of the New Republic so much coin they can buy brownstones for their precocious children? Or do you just get these apartments when you're annointed a man of 21st Century letters? Background, please.

i've heard some totally illegitimate rumormongering implying that daddy krauss pays more than a handful of the bills.

Of course they'll have fertility issues - check out her Adam's Apple.

Great. A douchbag two'fer.

@Julia Allison: One of them is a trust-fund baby, honey.

Also, "separate floors"? What they need is separate PLOTS.

@bartlebysmiles: Franklin is the older brother, not the father.

Also, see JupiterPluvius and Helen for the source of their financial backing.

What's there to be jealous of? Plenty of people have big houses and money but this guy has no talent.

I'm sorry. They're nauseating. And I blame Joyce Carol Oates.

@cdmunch:

That's just stupid. Of course he's got some talent. He wrote a whole book of relatively good prose, which is an achievement by anyone's standards.

The problem is that everyone ELSE kept wanting to make him into the LiteraryWunderkindEmperorMozart of our generation. And so they did. And so the entirely appropriate backlash to his entirely inappropriate slobberingly praised fame made him into a joke. Well, that interview with the Observer didn't help, either. He is sort of a jackass.

It's like Klosterman. Don't blame him. He's just doing the same thing he ALWAYS did. Blame everyone else for inappropriately praising him.

It's not stupid, I just disagree.

@cdmunch: oh come on, he has talent. you don't have to like everything is illuminated to recognize that it is not a set of random words that anyone could pull out of their ass.

I completely understand.
One floor's for milchik.
The other's for flayschik.