Jonathon Franzen has had a lot of hype lately ....

[dfloyd]

There was no epiphany contained in them. I guess that my opinion of Franzen, after purveying his essays and the novel, 'Corrections', is that he is a capable writer. But he doesn't begin to compare with the giants of yesteryear; eg, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, etc. Perhaps he should have written a much smaller novel at first, rather than a 600 pager. Now I'm reluctant to read 'Freedom'. Only a writer with the ability of a Somerset Maugham can entice me into reading a 600 page book.

[WyattGwyon]

For those wanting to know what Freedom is about, there have been numerous extensive reviews in the press. A recent issue of New York Times Review of Books, for example. Harpers? The Atlantic? Anyway, there are lots of them. It even got a review on the op-ed pages of the NY Times, I forget by which columnist. No one could live up to the hype he is getting now, poor bastard! I enjoyed each of his three previous novels, all of which are rather hefty.

His first, Twenty-Seventh City, is full of political intrigue and scheming out of all proportion to what is at stake. The ending is so utterly right and yet at the same time so deflating that it comes off as the punchline to an elaborate joke. The book is sort of damned by its own unerring logic.

I enjoyed Strong Motion, whose motive force is a sinister crime against the environment and its unraveling. The Corrections is disturbing family drama. It was particularly heartbreaking to see the senile patriarch's well-oiled methods of deflecting attention from his infirmities. He had me fooled for quite a while.

Anyway, all of these novels have vivid characters and Franzen's ear for language and dialogue is formidable. All are well-structured and plotted. He may not be one of my favorite novelists, but I will continue to read—and expect to enjoy—all of his work.

To dFloyd: I am always happy to agree to disagree.

[laymonite]

If we get into the comparison game, then, yes, I rank giants like Hemingway much higher. But we are talking about Franzen and writing in a different time. His subject matter, his interests are different than those of his last-century modernist predecessors. I, for one, am just glad Franzen is approaching social commentary on modernity without the mish-mash form 60s-70s postmodernism.

But, again, if we are the play the comparison game with the stipulation that we stay within the same literary vein, I would highly recommend David Foster Wallace (R.I.P.) over Jonathan Franzen any day! Wallace approaches all of the subjects as Franzen--and more--but with a finesse and intellectual brilliance that is unsurpassed in my experience of American writers. Wallace invites you to have a casual discussion on a profound plane; an unpretentious bel esprit who tackles topics that breed pretension.

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

Laymonite, I'm caught up in some limerence with DFW myself, but, being about 3/4 of the way through Freedom, and being very impressed, I was going to come into this thread and say that Franzen is similar to DFW albeit without the pretentiousness.

In my experience, people find DFW to be extremely pretentious, though I've defended him on that front myself.

[laymonite]

Laymonite, I'm caught up in some limerence with DFW myself, but, being about 3/4 of the way through Freedom, and being very impressed, I was going to come into this thread and say that Franzen is similar to DFW albeit without the pretentiousness.

In my experience, people find DFW to be extremely pretentious, though I've defended him on that front myself.

Interesting! Before experiencing DFW for myself, I had heard inklings of the title 'elitist,' so perhaps my expectations were set for haughty pretension. Instead I found an intellectual who felt like a friend with adequate social skills.

In any case, I am really looking forward to Freedom! And, I must add, I believe that Franzen's whole 'Oprah thing' was bold and showcased integrity as opposed to the elitism that mass media attached to it. I've heard a lot of aspiring writers slam her book club, saying they would never allow their High Art to become branded with a Low Art stamp, but I've always supposed they'd quake under the mega influence of The O Factor.

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

O(!) for sure. He wasn't even dissing Oprah, just acknowledging that a lot of people, guys maybe moreso, would look at her seal of approval and form expectations that are congruent with her show.

[WyattGwyon]

I don't really want to express an opinion on DFW yet because I have only read The Broom of the System and not his magnum opus. But based on that book, I don't see much similarity to Franzen at all. Franzen doesn't have any of the absurdist elements, for one thing—and he doesn't seem to have Pynchon looking over his shoulder either. But maybe DFW grew out of that? I'll find out when I read Infinite Jest, no doubt.

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

Stylistically they are more opposite than similar. Content-wise, by which I mean message-wise, they are on the same page. I think anyway.

DFW's vocabulary sends you to the dictionary over and over again. And he can be heavily experimental. Especially in his short stories.

Franzen's prose is direct, never tripping over itself, but I wouldn't call it utilitarian and it's a very straightforward story.

In short, I feel like if you took DFW and stripped all the postmodern tropes away you might come out with Franzen.

But, that's not to say that if you love DFW you'll love Franzen so I don't want to give that impression. He's not DFW 2.0.

[Sancho]

dfloyd –dfloyd – dfloyd, have you been reading The Atlantic Monthly again?

Let me expound: In an incoherent rant, the curmudgeon B.R. Myers wrote what passes for a book review these days in October’s Atlantic Monthly. He essentially restated the thesis (if you can call it that) of his book, A Reader’s Manifesto – a fine coffee-table book for literature snobs everywhere.

I guess he couldn’t decide what exactly it was he hated about Jonathan Franzen’s, Freedom or current literary trends, so he lashed out at everything – the characters, the prose, the language, the content, the length of the book, Don DeLillo, and modernity in general, and in doing so, he insulted the book, the author, the editors, and the readers. So let’s hear it for B. R. Myers – P-Tooey.

Here’s an excerpt of B.R. Myers Atlantic article:

It is the style of all who think highly enough of their own brains to worry about thought “elitist,” not one of the gang. The reassuring vulgarity follows the flight of pseudo-eloquence as the night the day. Like the rest of these people, Franzen should relax. We don’t need to find a naughty word on every page to know that he is one very regular Joe.

That comment reminded me of a comment made by Irish novelist George A. Moore about James Joyce’s Ulysses shortly after publication:

How can one plow through such stuff. I read a little here and there, but oh my god, how bored I got. Probably Joyce thinks that because he prints all the dirty little words he is a great novelist. Joyce, Joyce, why he’s a nobody, from the Dublin docks, no family, no breeding.

Here’s the part that matches dfloyd’s hypothisis:

Many people who eschew great books for the latest novel do so because they want precisely this kind of thing. (Every new book we read in our brief and busy lives means that a classic is left unread.) These readers want a world that is recognizable their own in every trivial particular, right down to Twitter, even if the book says less of real relevance to their lives than one written a century ago.

The relevance comment is arguable, but sacrificing a classic for a new book is drivel. A well rounded reader should read both; I don’t care about football, so it frees up a lot of time to read. And I looked at Franzen’s style from a different angle; where Myers seems to be trying to get inside the writer’s head to determine what makes him write in that style, I looked at it from a reader’s standpoint. As I read along, I kept thinking how much of the sub-text I understood because I live in this time and place, and how much background work I need to do when reading an author like Tolstoy. I doubt even a thorough research of the Crimean War or the Decembrist Revolution would give me the nuanced understanding I have of the terrorist attacks of 9-11. I knew people who died when those airplanes hit those buildings.

Here’s an example of what Myers is getting at with his “every trivial particular” comment: This is a randomly selected quote from Freedom. Two college roommates are on a trip to NYC and one sort of has the hots for the other’s older sister:

Joey wanted to see the city, and he wanted even more not to seem to Jenna like some Eminem-listening Juvie, but the living room was equipped with a huge plasma TV and late-model Xbox that Jonathan insisted he immediately join him in enjoying.

A hundred years from now, that sentence will need a footnote. And speaking of footnotes, David Foster Wallace’s name keeps popping up in this thread. Franzen and Wallace had one of the great friendships in modern literary circles, and, inevitably, comparisons have been made. While the two men’s styles couldn’t be more different, they both share, in their writing, a tremendous warmth towards their readers.

[tonywalt]

I think the fact that Franzen and DFW were very good friends, but the writing styles are different-except for a vein of cynicism.

[Mr. Mauve]

I've read the Corrections and I think I'd side with the Amazon users and give his writing 3 stars. While certainly the prose is, on the whole, captivating and readable, if a little conventional, I can't say I'm too sympathetic towards the overall sentiment of the novel. I felt that the novel took itself too seriously, placed itself on a sort of pedestal against the rest of the post-modern world. Its characters are all shown in a very negative light, like the narrator can only see flaws and insists that these flaws are inevitable in a 21st-century America that is dominated by corporate greed and consumerism. Of course, this is just the sentiment that I took away from it. Still, I feel like a writer should keep as a highest maxim that saying, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," and should never condemn his characters. Should never pass judgment on them. Franzen, to me, passes too much judgment.

[tonywalt]

I have read Freedom and it's a bit refreshing to get back to traditional story telling set in and hyper cognisant of the Modern Technological Age.

[Emil Miller]

Only a writer with the ability of a Somerset Maugham can entice me into reading a 600 page book.

I have a feeling that you will have to wait a very long time.

[Kjetil]

Front cover of Time, Picked by Oprah then declined by Franzen, and his new novel 'Freedom' being out this month. I have listened to a CD of his essays written for the New Yorker plus, this week, I listened to a very long CD of Corrections which won a National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. I have to admit I don't care much for contemporary writers or post modernists if that's what you want to call them. Without the CD to listen to, I wouldn't have approached the novel. It is an easy listen while you are doing another chore. But has anyone else listened to or read Franzen? The modernists or writers of fifty years or so ago, I can get involved with: Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald etc. When I hear of a new American novelist, I want to give him a try, but Franzen's book is overly long and not very interesting to begin with. I'm beginning to think that fiction is dead as far as American novelists go. What do you think?

I've read The Corrections and Freedom, as well as his essays. Like you, I come to them from a background of not having read widely in contemporary literature, but mainly rather in that of the first half of the 20th century. I am more impressed by Franzen as an essayist than as a novelist. Not that they are not very good, but to me they fail by a healthy margin to live up to their billing as Dostoevsky reborn. One thing I enjoy though in his novels is his focus on family relations, which has been a battlefield unwisely abandoned by serious literature, to a large extent.

I prefer Roth for a contemporary american, but I'd look in other places for really great contemporary literature ( which my relatively recent foray into the field has, somewhat to my surprise, made me discover). Such as Spain, where you have an author who has been compared to Proust and who deserves to be: Javier Marias. His trilogy "Your face tomorrow" is a magnificent piece of literature, and certainly far more impressive than any contemporary american fiction I've read. Or England, where Edward St Aubyn richly deserves comparison with Waugh ( how is that for a compliment?). Or Ireland, where John Banville writes prose that approaches poetry (with Nabokov being the frequent reference in his case). The american novel is hardly dead, but I for one am currently finding much better things elsewhere. At least so far.

[tonywalt]

I do agree with the comments here, but many views are flavoured with the standard sort of "current popular music/literature is not like it used to be" mentality that many of us share.

I notice it myself with popular music. I still naturally like the stuff I grew up with and do not download alot of current music. And the cross cultural affinity is natural too.

I read everything from Chaucer to Maugham to Gabo to David Foster Wallace(sign of cross) without getting into the Apples to Oranges to Steaks type comparison.

In terms of the best writing I have seen - ever, it would have to be DFW's the cruise ship piece and State Fair Piece. Both are availalbe online on the Harpers website. The pieces are not like his experimental books, but rather linear, humourous, and the most observant writing I have seen.