The greatness of Jonathan Franzen

[JZD]

Just wondering if I'm the only one around here who thinks that no amount of praise is sufficient for Franzen's novels (his last two specifically). I'm certainly not as well read as some of you - I'm still in my 20s - but I've read all of Dostoevsky's major works, along with the major works of Camus, Kafka, Melville, Twain, Swift, Voltaire, and I honestly put Franzen right with any of these guys. I've been looking through the forums a bit and there is surprisingly little talk about him, considering all the hype and attention he gets. Anyone else as big a fan of The Corrections and Freedom as me? Anyone have a contrary opinion about him? Just wondering.

[Rores28]

Damn... I just got Freedom on CD and that may be enough to make it my next read...

[Drkshadow03]

Just wondering if I'm the only one around here who thinks that no amount of praise is sufficient for Franzen's novels (his last two specifically). I'm certainly not as well read as some of you - I'm still in my 20s - but I've read all of Dostoevsky's major works, along with the major works of Camus, Kafka, Melville, Twain, Swift, Voltaire, and I honestly put Franzen right with any of these guys. I've been looking through the forums a bit and there is surprisingly little talk about him, considering all the hype and attention he gets. Anyone else as big a fan of The Corrections and Freedom as me? Anyone have a contrary opinion about him? Just wondering.

I personally haven't read any of Franzen's novel, so this is NOT my opinion of his work.

However, if you're just looking for dissenting opinions. D.G. Myers apparently (http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2010/12/let-franzen-ring.html) dislikes Franzen and views his work as midcult.

[Belphegor]

In my opinion Franzen writes mediocre "literary fiction" for the pretentious middle class American. Doesn't interest me.

[Rores28]

Here is the definition of midcult. I'd never heard of it.

A whole middle culture has come into existence and it threatens to absorb both its parents. This intermediate form—let us call it Midcult—has the essential qualities of Masscult—the formula, the built-in reaction, the lack of any standard except popularity—but it decently covers them with a cultural figleaf. In Masscult the trick is plain—to please the crowd by any means. But Midcult has it both ways: it pretends to respect the standards of High Culture while in fact it waters them down and vulgarizes them.[2]

[Drkshadow03]

Here is the definition of midcult. I'd never heard of it.

A whole middle culture has come into existence and it threatens to absorb both its parents. This intermediate form—let us call it Midcult—has the essential qualities of Masscult—the formula, the built-in reaction, the lack of any standard except popularity—but it decently covers them with a cultural figleaf. In Masscult the trick is plain—to please the crowd by any means. But Midcult has it both ways: it pretends to respect the standards of High Culture while in fact it waters them down and vulgarizes them.[2]

Yeah. Personally I'm not a big fan of the midcult argument. It seems to be a convenient label to apply to any writer one dislikes, but has some critical acceptance. Also, I just don't believe books or any art can be so easily separated into clearly delineated lines of High culture and Mass culture. There is always all sorts of crossover (not just in books, but in people's interests).

Dwight MacDonald who coined the term in his essay "Masscult and Midcult," also labels writers like Steinbeck midcult, which I don't buy at all.

Myers himself names Vonnegut. I can see that, at least. Although I like Vonnegut, and I think his simplified morality is greatly exaggerated (at least based off the one book of his I've read). Then there is the even stranger candidates like Jodi Picoult: Does anyone really take Jodi Picoult's books seriously?

[blp]

As it happens, I'm reading The Corrections at the moment. It's the first Franzen I've read. I got it for Christmas, it grabbed me instantly and, despite having a few other things on the go at the moment, I'm nearly done with it.

I don't know what to make of the midcult argument. I don't think it would make sense at all, as applied to this author, if modernism had never happened. Franzen, with his (fairly) linear narrative (in The Corrections – there's quite a bit of flashing backwards and forwards) isn't challenging the reader formally, but he's dealing with material that's arguably as or even more complex than that in a lot of canonical 19th Century works and embedding that material in some some often acute observations of his human subjects.

Still, a number of cavils make it hard (EDIT: I mean 'impossible') for me to put him on the same level as Dostoyevsky. The main one is, I'm not really going to know what I think of this book until I get to the end. As I near it, I feel as if a lot of what I've read has been backstory – assiduously researched backstory from which some of the detail could have been pruned to prevent an impression of showing off. The theme of corrections has been less woven into all this than sprinkled around, used as a lens through which to view various mostly malignant (at least according to his view and mine) contemporary phenomena (the dominance of the free market, the exploitation of neuroscience by big pharma etc.), but it's not clear that Franzen has anything more to do with these things than list them and tut at them or anything more to say about correction in general. I'm starting to worry that I'll get to the end and feel I've been subject to a lot of promises that haven't been kept. But even if I'm not and he somehow pulls off a brilliant and significant dovetailing punchline, I think it'll feel more like a parlour trick than a sustained work of genius – which is what, JZD, in ranking him with Dostoyevsky, you're surely saying he's achieved.

It would take too long to cite all the ways that the latter is superior, but you don't have to get to the ends of his books to know they're great. He's just breathtakingly great all the way through. For me the difference is one of discipline. Franzen is a very careful writer. Dostoyevsky appears, by comparison, to give himself a tight narrative structure in which to go mad – which means we get incredible, seemingly undisciplined flights of both lunacy and clarity that always seem to go further than they should and, in doing so, with all the sublimity of an engulfing storm, speak to our nervous systems and seem to sort of scrub them at the same time. So far there's one bit of The Corrections that did that for me, the bit where Gary cuts himself (I won't say any more). The rest of the time I've been impressed and gripped, but not rocked.

[JZD]

blp-

Good post. No bigger fan of Dostoevsky than me; he's my favorite author and Crime and Punishment is my favorite novel. I would ask though... do you think it's even possible for a twenty-first century author to compete with the greatness of Dostoevsky? If it is, then I personally think Franzen is as close as we can get. If it's not, then that's an interesting question to ponder. What is the logical reason that no writer today is considered comparable with Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or Shakespeare or any of the greats? The question could even be extended to other arts as well. Why is there no twenty-first century Beethoven or da Vinci?

[Alexander III]

blp-

Good post. No bigger fan of Dostoevsky than me; he's my favorite author and Crime and Punishment is my favorite novel. I would ask though... do you think it's even possible for a twenty-first century author to compete with the greatness of Dostoevsky? If it is, then I personally think Franzen is as close as we can get. If it's not, then that's an interesting question to ponder. What is the logical reason that no writer today is considered comparable with Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or Shakespeare or any of the greats? The question could even be extended to other arts as well. Why is there no twenty-first century Beethoven or da Vinci?

Same reason most artists only have their reputation of genius established post-death. Time is the only way to properly judge a work. If after a hundred or several hundred years the work still resonates and is found beautiful, then it can last.

[mortalterror]

Dwight MacDonald who coined the term in his essay "Masscult and Midcult," also labels writers like Steinbeck midcult, which I don't buy at all.

That's just appalling. Steinbeck is as good as Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Lawrence, Nabokov, Woolf, Joyce, Proust, Kafka, or Borges. He just wasn't much of a stylist and that has been what we traditionally look for in that eras writers.

[blp]

JZD, I think there are a million different ways of answering your question, none definitive. Alexander III is right to mention the filter of history, but it does feel as if more than that may be at work it harder for us to find an author like Dostoyevsky now (though of course there was only ever one of him).

Factors that separate Dostoyevsky from writers of novels today include the increased competition from other mass media (TV and movies, but also radio) with fewer outlets for publication (Dostoyevsky's books, like those of Dickens, were often serialised weren't they?) and the fact of literary modernism having happened. Franzen seems to have come along at roughly the moment when a lot of young novelists with serious intent were reacting against modernism and avant-gardism in general, some of them quite violently, e.g. Dale Peck. This isn't the kind of decision a writer like Dostoyevsky – who was often writing in haste to pay off debts I believe – would have had to make. Wilde said that we often only reveal ourselves in wearing masks and it may be that, in treating his novelising as a job for pay, Dostoyevsky found himself as if by accident. In a way that's harder to escape, today's novelists are almost unavoidably more self-conscious, more stuck with thinking about which side of the high low culture divide they fall on etc.

At the same time, even as the relative necessity enjoyed by 19th C novelists has fallen away, the activity has been professionalised to the extent that it's now treated, especially in America, as a set of skills that can be learned. I don't know if the creative writing class was Franzen's background, but The Corrections seems to fairly scream that it was with its welter of carefully researched detail. I've finished the book now and there's that bit near the end where a character 'at his most rational' is suddenly perceived by his brother to be scared; and this seems like it might apply to Franzen somewhat too.

The odd thing is, I sound as if I'm arguing for head-shaking rock 'n' roll intensity and barbaric yawps, but actually I've been much helped in my own writing by the teachable skills of creative writing (even if I've never actually taken a class) and, on the whole, I think genius is a myth. There was a very good moment in a recent Matthew Collings documentary about Renaissance painting where he showed a Raphael drawing from when the artist was 17 and it was amazing and Collings said, 'So the artist must have been a genius, right? No, he was working within a well-defined tradition, learning very intensively from very good teachers including his own father...' and so on. I'm all for this kind of learning and all for the labour, not always fun, of piecing together a narrative or whatever it is one's trying to make and trying to get it 'right'. But I'm also for not being scared and I think a lot of contemporary writers are a bit scared. Maybe they don't know how to let go or maybe they've been rigorously inculcated, theoretically, against letting go in our profoundly and often knee-jerkly anti-romanticist times (which somehow, seemingly impossibly, go hand-in-hand with a continuing respect for Freud and the unconscious) or maybe the belief that their trade is entirely a set of skills that can be learned has imbued them with an intense anxiety about getting anything wrong or leaving anything unexplained.

But if I really knew, I'd be the new Dostoyevsky, instead of a man in early middle age who's only now, and only just maybe possibly, finishing something he thinks might be half-way decent.

[Drkshadow03]

That's just appalling. Steinbeck is as good as Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Lawrence, Nabokov, Woolf, Joyce, Proust, Kafka, or Borges. He just wasn't much of a stylist and that has been what we traditionally look for in that eras writers.

Heh. This is a paraphrase of what he apparently wrote about at least one of Hemingway's works:

"Midcult was Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town—works, so Macdonald argued, that mimicked the profundity and complexity and unconventional language and structure we expect from original works of art. Midcult was imitation high culture—a cheapening of the deepest artistic experiences that was passed off as deep experience."

[sixsmith]

I think it's a little too early to be talking about the greatness of Jonathan Franzen, even in terms of a candidate for posterity.

I regard him to be an author of considerable talent, but his two 'great' novels are both flawed. The Corrections, though impressive for extended periods, is infected by what I regard as a misguided attempt to explain/encapsulate the machinery and ephemera of contemporary American culture/society pace Don DeLillo. Indeed, the psychological authenticity of Franzen's characters is partially denuded as a result. I see a similar ,though significantly less pronounced, phenomenon occurring in Freedom, which is, to my mind, the superior novel.

[Jozanny]

Though Quark employed an effective counter argument about Franzen the last time I was around, I still feel The Corrections is overdone. It is in my closet, and I read it years ago, and do not have the knack of specific recall, but I felt beat over the head by the novel. Gary was the Douglas/Greed stand in, and so on, so forth, and to me the father's Parkinsons was over exploited, so graphic as to ellicit distaste. If a writer like Dixon took that physical decay and ran with it, he would have given it a gut punch force. Franzen simply leaked to the point of overwhelm, because he is a New Yorker block bust them mindset, and to me it crippled the work. Less, as in less obvious, would have amounted to more. The reviews of Freedom suggest the same flaws, so I stayed clear.

[JZD]

I think it's a little too early to be talking about the greatness of Jonathan Franzen, even in terms of a candidate for posterity.

I regard him to be an author of considerable talent, but his two 'great' novels are both flawed. The Corrections, though impressive for extended periods, is infected by what I regard as a misguided attempt to explain/encapsulate the machinery and ephemera of contemporary American culture/society pace Don DeLillo. Indeed, the psychological authenticity of Franzen's characters is partially denuded as a result. I see a similar ,though significantly less pronounced, phenomenon occurring in Freedom, which is, to my mind, the superior novel.

I'm anxious to see what he comes up with for his next novel. Hopefully it's not another nine year wait. But if his next one is as good and highly regarded as the previous two..... I think he will cement his place as the preeminent American author of this era (surpassing McCarthy, DeLillo, Roth, etc).

[HitlerProf]

First, addressing "midcult":

"Midcult" is obviously a flawed category if it includes both Franzen (who is, admittedly, a populist writer) and Jodi Picoult. It at least would have to allow for gradation. Perhaps in Myers' view Franzen's novels could be like an academy award winners and Picoult's 30 million dollar romantic comedies? This would be fair, (although I disagree with it, I really think that Franzen is a talented and perceptive writer, not just a panderer, even though he does exhibit that tendency) but Myers needs to say something to that effect.

I think that Franzen is a talented writer and I've enjoyed everything I've read by him, including the often criticized essay collections, which I thought were intelligent and even touching even when ridiculously, embarrassingly personal. He does have a tendency to luxuriate in what he considers to be the unpleasant parts of his personality, although you can tell he's sort of proud of them.

The two novels that his reputation rests on are both very good. I prefer The Corrections, maybe because it kind of reminded me of Infinite Jest with its touches of pomo, like the Mexican A and the parts in Lithuania. I also think that it does a better job of delving into its characters and presenting them as unique. Not that Freedom is psychologically shallow-- All of the characters are convincing and interesting, but they have a tendency to too-neatly represent various modern neuroses and ennui. The Corrections is also very much of its time but the Lamberts are a family being destroyed from within by flawed interpersonal dynamics. The Berglunds are being destroyed by their times. Freedom exhibits its zeitgeist chasing right on the sleeve.

Also, to JZD, I think that Franzen is of a different generation than DeLillo, Roth, and McCarthy, who all have reputations that are established on long careers full of acclaimed novels. Franzen could reach the heights of those writers (admittedly, I am most familiar with Roth, having read only two books by DeLillo and one by McCarthy), but it would take more than three highly acclaimed novels.

Also, I think that David Foster Wallace is the preeminent American author of this era, as much for his essays and short stories as his admittedly small novelistic output.

[Jozanny]

Prof, most established critics would cast Franzen as middle brow, which he is. Midcult is a bit hazy. I am going to reread at least sections of the 1st novel for my blog, because I think there is a fine line between exploiting illness and disability in such a way that it crosses the line, and using it well, and Franzen's greatest weakness is deploying Lambert's Parkinson's badly. Tolstoy never overburdened the reader in such a manner with "Death of," which is a small masterpiece.

Wallace is impressive, but he shares Franzen's flaw of overburden, though of a different kind. Franzen wants us to make no mistake about his moral imperative; Wallace threatens you with nearly too much sensory input--though I am more firmly in the Wallace loyalist camp.

[HitlerProf]

Yeah, I definitely buy middlebrow, Oprah Winfrey and all....

I don't think the sensory overload in Wallace is a problem, I think it's a good technique used to give a sense of completeness as well as reflect both his own overstimulation and the stress his characters feel.

[sixsmith]

Though Quark employed an effective counter argument about Franzen the last time I was around, I still feel The Corrections is overdone. It is in my closet, and I read it years ago, and do not have the knack of specific recall, but I felt beat over the head by the novel. Gary was the Douglas/Greed stand in, and so on, so forth, and to me the father's Parkinsons was over exploited, so graphic as to ellicit distaste. If a writer like Dixon took that physical decay and ran with it, he would have given it a gut punch force. Franzen simply leaked to the point of overwhelm, because he is a New Yorker block bust them mindset, and to me it crippled the work. Less, as in less obvious, would have amounted to more. The reviews of Freedom suggest the same flaws, so I stayed clear.

Yes, I think Garry is the best example of the kind of facile representation that eventually undermined The Corrections. On my reading, and contra Hitler Prof, the characters in Freedom are better realised than those of The Corrections, but I suspect that so long as Franzen remains so obstinately intent in telling us how we live, the authenticity of his protagonists will be somewhat compromised.


I'm anxious to see what he comes up with for his next novel. Hopefully it's not another nine year wait. But if his next one is as good and highly regarded as the previous two..... I think he will cement his place as the preeminent American author of this era (surpassing McCarthy, DeLillo, Roth, etc).

The authors you mention are not of Franzen's generation. Moreover, he has not produced a novel to rival their best work and he certainly hasn't achieved the sustained brilliance of Philip Roth.

[JZD]

Yeah true, I guess Franzen should be put in a different "generation" than Roth and DeLillo and Wallace and McCarthy. But I mean it has been twenty-two years since Franzen's debut novel, so it's not like he's some newbie.

[arrytus]

but I've read all of Dostoevsky's major works, along with the major works of Camus, Kafka, Melville, Twain, Swift, Voltaire, and I honestly put Franzen right with any of these guys.


I read The Corrections based on the vaunting of this quote. The worst book I've read this year. the terseness of hemingway, the anxiety of bellow, and the ethos of DFW, sans the insight, humor or intelligence of all three. more than disappointing in that i slid this book into my rather extensive reading list and halfway through i seriously pondered abandoning it. 5 good pages in the entire book. lacked any type of poetry or perspicacious offerings. it is right up there with 'london fields' for most over-rated and horrid book i've ever read. and this review has nothing to do with the content, although sex and dementia and internecine familial conflicts aren't very aesthetically pleasing, really the entire time i was hoping he was writing ironically. now perhaps he has better work, i mean he would have to i suppose, but i'm not testing that hypothesis for a few years. life is too short to read a bad book, especially one which doesn't teach you anything. tragedy without poetry, viz. realism doesn't have to be so horrid. for example, Sentimental Education or the Death of Ivan Ilyich.

[hanzklein]

If it means anything, I heard this lady who was apparently an acclaimed literature teacher talking about Freedom. She said it was very good in the beginning and began to seriously fall apart.

Personally, I would not waste my time with 99% of living authors...they're good for nothing, invest all of your reading time into the classics.

[sixsmith]

Personally, I would not waste my time with 99% of living authors...they're good for nothing, invest all of your reading time into the classics.

I like this plan because it yields to the demonstrable reality that the body of literature now considered to constitute the 'Classics' is henceforth immutable. Thankfully, I exist in this talentless era and not, for example, that of Shakespeare, whose work I would have had to decline after heeding the wise words of the Elizabethan Hanzklein.

[Jozanny]

I read The Corrections based on the vaunting of this quote. The worst book I've read this year. the terseness of hemingway, the anxiety of bellow, and the ethos of DFW, sans the insight, humor or intelligence of all three. more than disappointing in that i slid this book into my rather extensive reading list and halfway through i seriously pondered abandoning it. 5 good pages in the entire book. lacked any type of poetry or perspicacious offerings. it is right up there with 'london fields' for most over-rated and horrid book i've ever read. and this review has nothing to do with the content, although sex and dementia and internecine familial conflicts aren't very aesthetically pleasing, really the entire time i was hoping he was writing ironically. now perhaps he has better work, i mean he would have to i suppose, but i'm not testing that hypothesis for a few years. life is too short to read a bad book, especially one which doesn't teach you anything. tragedy without poetry, viz. realism doesn't have to be so horrid. for example, Sentimental Education or the Death of Ivan Ilyich.

I simply dislike Franzen, but this is displeasure with passion :) I disagree with you somewhat though; if the fellow had had some good editing, and it seems this species is on an endangered list, there are arcs in the novel that had interesting contrasts. Chip not eating dinner for instance, juxtaposed against the meeting at the airport where the parents are tottering, elderly, vulnerable monsters to their middle child.

Dragging out the father's death destroyed whatever strength the novel has, but same can be said for the backstories involved. Little shorter, little sharper, less sprawling, and The Corrections would probably not be so contentious.

[dfloyd]

I have tried DeLilo, Roth, and Franzen and compared to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck, they are mediocre writers. And how you can compare them to Dostoyevsky, is a reach I wont even discuss. Midcult or midlothian, these writers are definitely not my cup of tea, Let the NY Times give them kudos, but I wont try to read another one of their mediocre novels. There isn't a post modernist who has written a better novel than Treasure Island.

[TheBearJew]

Bumping this up because I finished Freedom a week ago.

I'm not sure what it is some people have against modern writers in general and Franzen in particular but it's as if they're protecting the honor of the classics.

As far as I see it, Freedom is a masterpiece. The characters are so perfectly depicted psychologically and we really understand why they do everything they do. His comments on modern society are sharp and accurate, and the writing style is simplistic yet sophisticated. I thought the plotline was extremely complex, and perfectly thought out. The characters were all intriguing, as well. He can be a little rough on his characters, but that's just his viewpoint on the world. And I love it.

[My2cents]

Bumping this up because I finished Freedom a week ago.

I'm not sure what it is some people have against modern writers in general and Franzen in particular but it's as if they're protecting the honor of the classics.

As far as I see it, Freedom is a masterpiece. The characters are so perfectly depicted psychologically and we really understand why they do everything they do. His comments on modern society are sharp and accurate, and the writing style is simplistic yet sophisticated. I thought the plotline was extremely complex, and perfectly thought out. The characters were all intriguing, as well. He can be a little rough on his characters, but that's just his viewpoint on the world. And I love it.

I agree with your assessment. I'm nearly done with Freedom, and thus far the writing hasn't struck a wrong note. The story may be too mainstream to some and too contemporary to others, but it's perfectly modulated and entirely engrossing.