Purity- Franzen

It's important sometimes to read a novel in a vacuum. Because when we attach too much weight to other peoples' expectations or the entire Internet's views of a given author, then we could cloudy and murky up the author's actual work.

People, for some reason, either love or hate Jonathan Franzen. Yes, it is well known that he made waves when he called Edith Wharton ugly; he's known for hating the internet, and he gets a lot of shit for being a popular, domineering, overly-hyped white male. I get it, he is a lightening rod for many peoples' issues.

But what can I say? I like his work. I like his pretentious, bloated, trying-too-hard prose There is room for it in my literary diet and I enjoy the sensation of being stuffed when I consume one of his novels. Sure there is some indigestion with some of his lines, and most often his characters leave me a bit gassy, but over all, reading his work makes me feel like I went to a fancy restaurant where everyone involved was trying their best to give me a good experience. From sous chef to the sommelier, it's all hands on deck with a Franzen novel.

This post isn't meant to be an official review, because to be honest there are enough reviews of Purity on online, most of which are better written and more insightful than anything I could piece together here as my daughter plays with Lego.

Instead, I will try and weave together a few ideas that have been running rampant in my head for the last 563 pages.

Men and women are different, and although we may be trying to be what each gender needs the other to be, to make the other happy, we are often lost and confused and cause each other pain.

Franzen's characters, as per usual, are flawed and dysfunctional. To the point where they are depressed, homicidal and suicidal. I couldn't help but hate most of them for the same reasons I hate myself. The characters in Purity are all trying to be "good" but instead tend to find themselves wallowing in shame for acts they cannot seem to control.

They feel very human to me.

I am not sure that Franzen ever gets it right, as I don't think any writer ever can, when it comes to the "battle-of-sexes." I know many of my feminist female friends will cringe at the cliche characters of both genders, but what I respect is that he is trying to say something about what men and women want from each other.

And what he is saying is that we have no idea. Yes, we want equality and love and commitment, but what we tend to ignore is that all relationships are about a balancing of power, and this need for power, this equaling of the equation is not as simple as we hope. My showing the relationships between couples, men and men, women and women, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters and sons and fathers, Franzen shows us that balancing power in human relationships is a mess.

In the end, this book made me think. It frustrated the hell out of me. It entertained me and left me satisfied. What else can we expect from literature? I am not sure I would label it as a work of art, or that it has any long term staying power, at times it felt like a pulp novel focusing too much on the over-the-top plot, but this novel does what Franzen does best- this book forces us to look deeply into a mirror of our own (sexual, marital, parental, friendship and cyber) dysfunction and ask what the hell are we doing there? Who are we loving? Who are we hurting? How are we human?

If you hate Franzen then you will hate this book for sure, but if you can appreciate his work and his ambitious attempts to look at what it means to be a broken human being under a microscope for five hundred pages then give this one a read.

Literary Shenanigans

“There is something wrong with you!”

I can’t count the number of times my wife says that to me on any given week. Day? It's usually after one of my eccentric obsessions reveals itself, before burrowing back into the depths of my...Want to use the word soul, but realize that such a word is far too trite, but I am too lazy to think of a better one, so I will leave you to do it dear reader. Please humor me...
 
I am not here to argue with her. There are indeed more than several things wrong with me, most often at the same time. The older I get, the more I realize that I have borderline OCD tendencies. I'm definitely somewhere on the spectrum. And I am okay with that. This post is but one example. You tell me-- something wrong with me or am I on my way to becoming a cuddly old man?

I take my relationships with media (books, music and film) very personally. When I read an author, listen to a band, or watch films by a director or writer I respect,  I like to swim deep. If I experience something profound and life-changing, I will often consume everything the artist has ever done. I will research their life online, make connections to their influences and hopefully tangle myself in his/her web. Because let's face it, we are little more than nodes in complicated webs of meaning and beauty. I love my media. I am my media.

Recently, I was desperate for a book at the airport, and I found a collection of essays and speeches by Jonathan Franzen, who happens to be one of my favorite writers writing today. I have read everything he has ever published and can't state more clearly how much I love his worldview and mastery of language. Not withstanding the time he stuck his foot so far down his throat with the Wharton debacle, when Franzen speaks, I listen.

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Intrepid Flame 

In his latest collection Franzen writes on three topics: writing, birds, and David Foster Wallace. I was intrigued my the last one. Of course Infinite Jest has been a satellite in my orbit for years, but I knew (know) very little about it or Wallace. I didn't even know he was a suicide. Like most popular books, I let Infinite Jest spin ad infinitum until something or someone would shed a brighter light on it, forcing me to read it. Franzen was said beacon.

Here is where the weirdness begins-- I couldn't find Infinite Jest in Jakarta. And since I do not want to do any research or learn anything more about Wallace until I read his seminal work, I have been mired in a state of anticipation and excitement, like a racehorse all saddled up, raring to go, but trapped in the gate and forced to chew on the bit and watch the dust. I haven't read any wikipedia articles or watched any youtube clips on Wallace. I have chosen to leave him alone until I read Jest. That is not true. I saw and bought Pale King, his last novel, before leaving Jakarta. I also ordered Infinite Jest, which my in-laws will bring to me in July.

Problem is that after I bought Pale King, I discovered that it was never actually finished, furthermore after speaking with Ari, I found out that it was left in the room in which Wallace committed suicide. Can you see my dilemma?

I cannot start my Wallace experience with Pale King trumping Infinite Jest. There has to be an order right? Seminal work> research> bizarre final novel/suicide note> other works. Mairin thinks I am crazy.

"This is what you stress about?"
"Ari understands." I mumble.
"Of course he does."

To make matters worse, I was at the bookstore today, a massive Kinokuniya in Singapore, and obvisouly they had Jest, Pale King and everything else Wallace has ever written, but now I have to wait till July becuase the book has already been ordered and shipped. These events make me anxious.  I just want to get lost in Infinite Jest and Wallace and go for the ride, but alas I cannot

So what do I do? I've decided to start the work of another author, one that I've been terrified of since college. But first another short story! What? You're busy? Really? What else do you have to do?  Come on, finish this. It's not like you are reading a 15 page New Yorker essay. It is a blog post for goodness sake. Defy what they say about modern day attention spans. Back to my story...

Back in nineteen-ninety-something I was taking a Post-Modern lit class at San Fransisco State. A class in which the professor doused us in difficult, unapproachable texts and dared us to admit we were lost. I was young and often drunk and not really paying much attention. Despite my lack of attention,  I did discover Barth and Nabokov. True, I gave up on Pale Fire, but at least I was introduced to Lolita.

But Pynchon, oh Pynchon. What the hell was that? It was clear that I was not smart enough for Crying of Lot 49 at the tender age of twenty-something. Not while working and partying full time. Pynchon has haunted me for years. I am thirty-eight now. I was so much older then, I am younger than that now.  I decided today that it is time. I cavalierly scanned his shelf and randomly chose Vineland. Just like that, I will dive into Pynchon while waiting for Wallace. Bold move you say? Wildly irresponsible you say? I agree, but I am ready for some literary shenanigans. 

Sidenote: I also grabbed The Fight by Mailer, a book I have been wanting to read for years. I have been making my way through the Mailer catalog as well. Even reading his terrible Jesus book.

Do you think so much about books? Is there something wrong with me?

Freedom a Review

It feels quite ostentatious of me, a lowly blogger and teacher, to review of a five hundred plus page novel written by one of my favorite writers of all time, but alas we are in the digitally communal age where everyone’s thoughts matter, and I suppose that also applies to me.

I can’t think of too many things I enjoy more than writing about books, unless you count music, so it is with pleasure and gusto I take on this task. For the most part my review of Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel Freedom is nothing but glowing, but I do afford myself the audacity to take a few jabs at the areas of plot.  See what I mean? Feels brazen and sacrilegious doesn’t it?  But let us begin:

 Franzen’s novel is a return to the sweeping grand classic novels ala Tolstoy and Steinbeck, but set in the modern age. Characters as complex and complicated as any in Anna Karenina seep into the readers psyche and take root. Sometimes deadly accurate, sometimes distorted, these characters, like mirrors, reveal to the reader our collective human condition. Freedom is a case study in character development. It should be used at universities across the land as a manual on how to create story through character development.

From the start, Franzen creates characters that are both agreeable and dysfunctional. As each chapters passes, we learn more about each character and their relationships with each other, as well as their relationships to the world. This review is not meant to be a deep analysis or play-by-play of the novel; it is too wide in scope and depth for that. It is enough to say that there are few parts if any, in this book that leave the reader disengaged. Like a film, you never want to end, Franzen moves us back and forth through time to truly understand what motivates people to care or not care, to act or to stay static. He not only monitors and transcribes the evolution of the people in the story, but also sheds light on the frustrations of how families and individuals deal with regression and indifference.

His characters are at times fragile, tender, and approachable, but can suddenly show their human weaknesses and become shallow and petty. Each character is a pendulum swinging back and forth between a series of dialectics: happiness and grief; peace and rage; understanding and ignorance. In short, Franzen acutely illustrates the fact that none of us are truly ever the same. Human beings are creatures in constant flux. The instability of individual personalities becomes amplified when we are put on collision courses with each other, even in the most apparently stable of situations- family.

This is the type of book you can’t put down, but don’t want to read too quickly for fear of missing something or worse reaching the end. Well paced and skillfully written, Franzen keeps the reader engaged throughout the novel not only with his intricate characters, but also through the use of powerful imagery. These images are not painted form the traditional palette of setting, but rather brought forth in the guise of emotion. The reader becomes lost in the elaborate emotional landscapes that Franzen paints with his expert hand.

Surprisingly, it was the plot of Freedom that was the least interesting. It feels as if Franzen was trying too hard to create a novel that was making social commentary. His critiques on the current state of politics, the environment, and social media felt forced and clichéd. It read like a liberal handbook, and as a liberal, I had little use for it.  It would have served him better to simply spend another 1000 pages allowing us to wallow around the heads of the characters. This trite use of current issues, however, should not discourage anyone to read this novel. I am sadden it is over, and I will miss the Bergulands terribly.