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"Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, like his previous one, The Corrections, is a masterpiece of American fiction."
-Well there you have it then.
I am hold number 416 our of 416 for the NYPL's dozen or so copies.
I believe I will be, for the first time in pretty much ever, buying a brand new book. $15ish on Amazon.
I mean, I love books! And bookstores! Indie bookstores! Love em all! But I don't have any money and live across the street from the library.
Oh god I am killing the publishing industry all by myself.
Oh also this is not because of the review.
". . .lured to the voluptuary capitals of the Eastern Seaboard"? Would those include Baltimore? Because Baltimore ain't anybody's voluptuary capital. Must mean NYC, right? or DC? Surely not Boston. Philly? Is Philly a voluptuary capital? I ask because I didn't think we had any of those anywhere.
You're a brave woman!
I personally found this a little uh… "The dream-power ratio is lived out most acutely – most oppressively, but also most variously and dynamically – within the family, since its members orbit one another at the closest possible range"????
Of course Boston's a voluptuary capital. People eat oysters like crazy up here.
Jesus fuck. I would find book reviews a lot more convincing if a) they contained swear words and b) I ever got the impression that the critics were more interested in convincing me than impressing me.
I didn't there had even been any voluptuaries since the Roman Empire.
I.e. didn't *think*.
Do you think he went to writing school? or was he born writing like that?
These are not gratuitous observations.
I had to stop reading the review when I realized it was basically recounting the entire plot to the novel interspersed with praise for the writer.
Jonathan Franzen's failings in novels past and present, listed in order of appearance in Michiko Kakutani's review a couple days ago:
* pontificatory
* misanthropic
* self-important
* condescending
* laughably conceited
* cynical
I mean, she liked it too though.
Misanthropes are ridiculous when they pontificate, as Molière well knew.
Guys, it's really good. Just read it.
Also Tanenhaus's review spoils almost as much as Kakutani's!
Yeah, all that neighborhood gossip and mundane dysfunction really seems literary.
Here's a disgusting line from a recent story (which I think is part of the new novel):
"In the earliest years, when you could still drive a Volvo 240 without feeling self-conscious, the collective task in Ramsey Hill was to relearn certain life skills that your own parents had fled to the suburbs specifically to unlearn . . ."
Isn't that great? A Volvo 240! (He's always giving the reader a wink and a nudge.) What an awful bullshitter–but I guess this kind of thing seems sophisticated.
The number of brand names certain novelists know and can tell apart! On a certain day in my life, I as a buyer of novels had to make up my mind once and for all whether to be impressed or depressed about that number. That was a long time ago. And so there is no way you are going to get me to google "Volvo 240."
But the Volvo 240 was a really popular car! If I mentioned Corn Flakes or CBS in a novel, would I be winking and nudging, too?
The Volvo 240 allusion shows what I think Franzen does. He tells people in a certain demographic things already know about themselves, in a cheeky, "literary" kind of way that will bore the hell out of readers years hence. Seems to me his books are made up of the dreary exposition of inconsequential events, followed by the author's telling the reader what to think about those events.
Read in a certain light, the NYT review is a pan.
And then there's the prurient appeal of Franzen–it's basically Jerry Springer with a masters degree. It seems literary, so it's OK to want to find out what slutty thing so-and-so did and how late her teenage son stayed out last night . . .
Let's start an anti-Franzen revolution.
Spoiler alert! The Iraq war was a fraud, liberal idealists are often hypocrites, and suburbia is dysfunctional. Get Franzen's unique take on American life in the new novel.
"These heckling strophes drip with spite" !!!!!!
"a citadel of aspirational self-regard" !!!!!!!!!!!!!