Franzen at Lisner Auditorium...

I really enjoyed it. Even though he did his "withholding" thing with the audience - Franzen really didn't want to give anything away. When asked directly, "What is this story about?", he wouldn't answer the question. But it didn't annoy me - his talk was free. An author can play any game he pleases when I'm not paying to hear him speak. They only get my wrath when they keep that game up after I've paid to hear them.

He said his favorite character was a Republican. From that, we were supposed to infer Joey. Well sure, a young Republican with a sex slave for a wife who makes a fortune off the Gulf War while still in college. What guy wouldn't love a character like that?

But hey, this is anything but a feminist age. Can you blame Franzen for tapping the backlash with some great writing and making money off it?

Methinks he enjoyed toying with the audience a wee bit too much - they schlepped in 90 degree heat to hear him read. In his defense, he was exhausted. He was on the last day of a three week book tour, he said. And at least the questions weren't as bad as the ones he encountered the night before in Philadelphia.

There was a lot more of this sly humor. Call it "cynical" only if you're in a bad mood. When accused, Frazen pointed out that "cynical" is something that folks love to call OTHER PEOPLE. If you're in a good mood, that's a witty guy.

What I've Been Reading Lately...

Why is there a bird on the cover of the literature?, September 18, 2010




This review is from: Freedom: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club) (Hardcover)
Freedom is very easy on the brain. From the beginning, the reader can sit back and enjoy the cynicism, and the unexpected passages that shock without warning. It's easy to get into the story, and it flows fast without obstacles. Franzen does a great portrait of a discontented, bored suburbanite in his protagonist, Patty Berglund.

What I liked was Franzen's choice of a theme that we don't see too much of in recent literature - the exploration of a relationship that I would call "blood brothers" - two men who are not related, and not homosexual, but whose personalities are so meshed that they are closer than actual brothers. He does a good job of showing how both men benefit from competing with each other as much as they love each other...and really shows us the envy underlying the love. The author also shows us how the "blood brother" relationship can destroy the life of a woman trapped in the middle of it, while also making Patty fully responsible for her own problems. If anything, "Freedom" is a potent argument against poly-amory.

The character who really fascinates me isn't Patty, however. It's Connie. She is absolutely driven by a single goal in life, to get married to a guy that she identifies as a "winner", one whom she has formed a soul-mate relationship with by the time she is ten, and one who she will convince to love her in return, no matter what the cost or how many years it takes.

Whenever Connie is reintroduced to the narrative, it picks up tempo. The psychic bondage and domination in the relationship between Connie and Joey is the perfect counter-weight to the feminism of an earlier era that Patty benefits from and Walter promises to uphold. At the end of the story, when Patty says that her overachieving daughter Jessica is a working dog to Joey's show dog, we have no doubt by how much the submissive, underachieving Connie has left Jessica behind in the dust by marrying the "show dog". Tolstoy was no feminist, and in this story, Franzen isn't much of one either.

Patty says there is something "not right" about Connie that makes her hair stand on end, and this reaction is shared by the reader. Yet I knew a few "Connies" when I lived in the Midwest - the straight-A students who followed their boyfriends from high school to college. They had the grades to go anywhere after college, but they made sure to get accepted to the grad school where the boyfriend was, and then dropped out as soon as the boyfriend graduated. A year or so after grad school they got the prize, after committing more than a decade of their lives without a "solid guarantee". Of course, it helps that this Connie had a $50,000 trust fund to seal the deal, but even without it, Franzen captures a particular type of Midwestern girl perfectly. He also shows how her mother Carol colludes with Connie's ambition - another true-to-life scenario based on my own experience.

Surprisingly, the argument about "Freedom" is a conservative one. Franzen may mock the evil of mountaintop removal, and indulge repeatedly in his pet liberal passions of zero population growth and "bad" outdoor cats vs. helpless birds, but he really seems to be criticizing the freedom with which we so easily follow our emotions if it feels good. Anyone who doubts that this is the heart of the conservative argument should check out the essay on Jane Austen in "10 Books Every Conservative Must Read" by Benjamin Wiker.

Sometimes the author's craft is a little weak. It is obvious Walter sold his morals out long before he got involved with Vin Haven and the Cerulean Mountain Trust, but the reader doesn't get to see this happen. There is no sense of real dollar amounts underlying what is otherwise a realistic story - the author has Patty starting over on her own with a job that doesn't pay the rent and a $75,000 inheritance that wouldn't last more than two years, yet wants us to believe that she "holds out" against Walter without one word for six years. Franzen is no Balzac either.

Yet the wonderfully subversive quality of this story is what makes it a winner, as well as the good writing. Does the story advocate for what is precious to liberals? Does it show the ultimate failure of feminism? Does it show how conservatives misuse freedom to do whatever they want, or does it show how liberals do the same damn thing? You be the judge. Why is there a bird on the cover of the literature? When Walter tells us, the subversive laughter lets the reader "have cake and eat it too".

***

The other thing I really liked didn't make it into the above amazon.com review. Franzen captured the ambivalence of partially Jewish characters perfectly. Patty is the daughter of a Jewish mother, but otherwise unobservant. Her son Joey is half-Jewish and skeptical about whether our involvement in Iraq is justified if it benefits Israel (something I can relate to). Joey isn't aware of his Jewish heritage because he knows almost nothing about his Jewish family (something I can also relate to). Here's a wonderful conversation between Joey and his mother, when he questions why she never shared her heritage with him.

“A house full of Jews! How interesting for you.”

You’re a Jew yourself. And that makes me a Jew, too.”

“No, that’s only if you’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid…I think, when it comes to religion, you’re only what you say you are. No one else can say it for you.”

“But you don’t have any religion.”

“Exactly my point….Although apparently my sister disagrees with me…”

“Which sister?”

“Your aunt Abigail. She’s apparently deep into the Kabbalah and rediscovering her Jewish roots, such as they are…”

“I don’t even know what the Kabbalah is.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’d be happy to tell you about it, if you ever want to be in touch with her. It’s very Important and Mystical – I think Madonna’s into it, which pretty much tells you all you need to know right there.”

“Madonna’s Jewish?”

“Yah, Joey, hence her name.” His mother laughed at him.

***
Franzen “gets” the ambivalence of his partially Jewish characters. (I totally enjoyed the above dialogue.) Unfortunately, his portrait of Jonathan’s fully Jewish, hawk-on-Iraq father got a little ugly. A scene with an Orthodox Jewish jewelry store owner was inaccurate. If Franzen doesn’t get the Pulitzer for this book, the backlash may have something to do with it…which is a shame, because the writing is worth the Pulitzer. I wish Franzen hadn’t shot himself in the foot this way.