Sam MacLaughlin: Hi Dustin!
Dustin Kurtz: Hello Samuel. So, introductions of our various stances, maybe?
Sam: Maybe! We are both sad young white literary men, yes?
Dustin: Emphasis on the sad and white, yes. Our manliness being in dispute at times.
Sam: At times. I do carry a tote bag. And: you're not a female novelist, are you?
Dustin: No, so I think we can agree that my dislike of this book won't come from anything as disagreeable as politics. Unless there is a political party fighting for better prose?
Sam: Which book!
Dustin: THE book, young sir, the book of our generation!
Sam: The book that takes the datum of our shared millennial life, and limns, like, mostly everything that needs a limning?
Dustin: The tome, generations hence, that people will use to judge your immortal white literary soul.
Sam: Freedom!
Dustin: Freedom!
Dustin: I wish we could have done that simultaneously.
Sam: It was pretty simultaneous.
Dustin: So you would choose this book over the life of your firstborn, yes? Whereas I think it has flaws (so nuanced)! Sometimes little but.
Sam: I think it has flaws, too, but I would say that this is a great book. I am not an enemy of Freedom.
Dustin: Can we actually get seriouschat here and make a distinction between a great book and a great novel?
Sam: Let's. I bet you have ideas.
Dustin: I do! Greatness aside (very much aside) this book is a successful novel in many ways.
Sam: Agreed.
Dustin: When we talk about The Novel (all the time, I'm sure) we're talking about a specific layering of detail, adherence to some rules, all of which this does very well.
Sam: But?
Dustin: But if we want to talk about the worth of a book more generally, we have to look at the quality of the writing, and maybe it's value to readers. Did I say seriouschat? Apparently I meant didacticchat.
Sam: They are probably the same thing. Does didactic-chat need a hyphen? That one is harder to read.
Dustin: What I'm saying is that if all it takes to be a good (honestly, not great, and definitely not Great) novel is the creation of this dense clay flesh around the frames of these characters, then Franzen is good.
Sam: And yet, as a member of the backlash (how does it feel?) you are denying greatness and Greatness. On what grounds? I'm still trying to figure out how it's possible to hate Freedom. Also Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.
Dustin: Well, so let's not get too much into whether he accomplishes his goals of a greater worth outside of that book, because I'm not Emerson and anyhow we both believe pretty soundly in the value of literature for its own sake. At least for well-fed bastards like you and I.
Sam: You want to talk about the book itself then? That's what you want to talk about?
Dustin: You are the worst Socratic interlocutor I've ever had, Zingerman McZing.
Sam: Zingerman MacZing, please.
Dustin: What I'm trying to do is throw out the idea that you and the rest of the damn world are not necessarily wrong, that this might be a good novel. But I'm maintaining that it's a pretty bad book.
Sam: Oh. Snap.
Dustin: Franzen is not a detailed writer, but an incidental one.
Sam: Right: I could make the same joke I always make about Anna Karenina: 700 pages of gossip.
Dustin: And I think that is some of what people are talking about when they call him old-fashioned. Well, that and the codpiece.
Sam: Always the codpiece. What an odd choice.
Dustin: With Franzen it comes out in a flat omniscient third that just sort of smears everyone and everything with his clunky segue phrasing.
Sam: I was re-reading some last night, and the first line of every chapter (saving the Patty chapters, but probably even those) could be: "Did you hear?"
Dustin: But I don't even dislike that about him.
Sam: You do dislike something. I still have no idea what it is.
Dustin: He's very good at the floating narrator who also gives us hints of the attitudes, if not as much the voice, of many characters in quick succession.
Sam: Free indirect discourse! My English degree is worth something. He's very, very good at that.
Dustin: Easy with that second very. He's okay.
Sam: I'm still trying to figure what you don't like!
Dustin: The writing. So, the book.
Sam: Like, sentence by sentence, you dislike this book?
Next: Does Dustin dislike the book sentence by sentence???
i would like to announce the formation of a political party fighting for better prose. we shall call ourselves the earl grey tea party...um, no. how 'bout the tea BAG party? no. okay, we can settle on a name later.
our platform:
1)better prose.
2)pro choice. on everyfuckingthing.
these are the demands and sayings of * to be announced at a later date *
The Know Something Party.
The Argyle Whigs.
The Democratic Socialites.
Damn. I read that all the way through (and it was fun!) but I live too far away to come to the store and claim my 10% discount. Can mail-order something, and claim it that way?
Well, you could go to Book Culture and instead of trying the McNally Jackson secret handshake, there's a sticker on the cover that says 20% off.
I like the fact that I read two pages of argument about the book and I still have no idea what the book is about. Is it about birds?
Apparently. And poop!
It's also "pastel-flavored." Like those wedding almonds, but a book.
I liked this, and never tire of the witty back and forthing. But the more I read about Freedom, the more I worry I'm going to have to actually read it. I don't want to miss out on some stupid cultural landmark. People still talk about the Corrections (which I thought was meh). And as everyone knows it's an awful feeling to not know what's happening in the world of LITERATURE.
exactly this.
Same here! On both the witty back and forthing AND having to read the fucking book.
Funny in a way that has me imagining they are cute and single, as I'm apt to do, so I can create those "meeting hot boy in bookstore" fantasies in my head while I cook dinner. What, just me?
Although, they both sound so Choire-ish that I half wonder whether they aren't both gay...
I think one becomes a true New Yorker when one starts to assume gayness in men.
In 40 years you will be dead and won't even remember the "cultural landmark." So cheer up!
Choire-ish?
Choirean?
Choiresque?
@Hippity: Korean?
Err, for you folks that read recent LITERATURE, would you say that anything is actually worth reading? I have gotten burned so many times (Infinite Jest, The Corrections) that I really only just read old, confirmed classics. I'd be happy to hear if, knowing that I thought DFW and Franzen's big books blew, is Phillip Roth actually good? What about Pynchon? Like, can they roll with Nabokov?
SB: Gaddis can and does.
I never actually took any literary criticism classes, so I'm a little concerned that I'm about to use a phrase that doesn't mean what I think it means.
But it seems to me that the crux of this difference of opinion has to do with authorial intent -- are we responding to the book the way Franzen wants us to? Did he write exactly the book he meant to, in a careful "sloppy" way? It seems that if we believe he did then the book is good, but it also seems like the people most willing to extend him the benefit of that doubt enjoyed the book on its surface merits anyway. (There's also of course the minority -- what, deconstruction? crowd that doesn't care either way).
Which reminds me another contemporary male author who inspires this argument -- Dave Eggers. By and large, people who hate A Heartbreaking Work think the author can't help himself-- the author reveals his nueroticism, self-absorbtion and self regard inadvertently, while people who like the book think it's a brilliantly accurate portrait of the artist, and of people who are like the artist. See related: David Foster Wallace/ Infinite Jest.
I completely agree with you hear. And I say: authorial intent is fucking bullshit. I hate it. Let's spend less time guessing at what the author intended and more time evaluating the piece on it's own terms (an absurd statement, I realize, but as a starting-place, it works, I think). I'm totally in the "death of the author" camp.
Can I just say, nu-eroticism (or, as above, and following the antihyphenative nomenclature of the post, nueroticism): awesome coinage.
Bataille (nu-/nuBataille) would be wellpleased.
We are the nuEroticism.
The author's intent is always to make money. Digging ditches is hard work.
Start from there and that's how great works are made, the marinate of history takes over from there.
A solid point against the significance of authorial intent!
Those of us who refrain from spellcheck get what we deserve, I suppose.
To evaluate ANY novel (hell, any BOOK) at a sentence-by-sentence granular level seems unfair. Everything seems filthy under a microscope. To this reader's mind, that's not at all the point of a novel - it's more the greater feeling it produces and the relationship one develops to the characters (whether likable or not). I'm halfway through this monster tome and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. The fulltime Franzenfest going on out there is certainly irritating, and I sort of wanted to hate this book, but I really, really don't.
Sharilyn, the Better Prose Party wants your vote -- no one should have to settle for ALLCAPSBIRDWATCHING.
i'm *redacted* and i approve this message.
This kind of reads like Dustin doesn't want to say why he dislikes Freedom, so he attacks the means by which you could ever like anything at all.
Also, I would have appreciated more "spoiler alert" jokes.
The world needs more discussion of DFW, Eggers and Franzen. Really. Also, I need more hand jobs. Who do we see about all this?
Me. You see me.
ALLCAPSISM
ALLCAPSIZED
ALLCAPITULATE.
ALLCAPO
I would have gone with CAPITALISM
"we'll have to start talking about Literature and people will never read the Awl again."
SO! NOT! TRUE!
Seconded! IN CAPS TOO!
Sorry, that should be ALLCAPONE
ALLCAPYBARAS
ALLCAPRICORNONE
When are they merchandising Awl caps?
"ADVERBS!" he shouted, codpieceily.
Let's remember the thing about Valéry not being able to write a novel because you would have to write sentences like "At five the marquis went out." In other words, there are supposed to be a lot of flat sentences in novels. Otherwise you come out sounding like di Chirico or a bad Nabokov imitation. -- But if the point of this post is that Franzen's prose is a little too flat too often or in the wrong places (which, maybe so! Having a hard time making up my mind, actually.), I would like to have seen much more quoting going on in this post. Me, I think the book does manage to sustain long stretches (in the first third or so, especially) of pretty high-value average sentence values.
And then sometimes it sounds like Franzen let his characters go for a walk and forget to turn off the radio.
Also, about Patty's diary and the quality of the prose -- the point of bringing in a non-literary narrator is sometimes to put professionalism to shame, and that's the case here. Mistakes Were Made is not Sarah Miles's diary in The End of the Affair, but it's definitely trying to be.
I think I'm getting old but I found this fatuous and inane. It seemed like two dancers trying to tango while denying the existence of feet.
Also, I'm with Tulley; more quoting.
this was like a gay whos afraid of virginia woolf? i think dustin is martha
"At least for well-fed bastards like you and I."
Just wanted to point out that this sentence is wrong. (Hint.)
Too granular?
So far I've only read the beginning and it seemed like awful imitation DeLillo, essentially indistinguishable from Rick Moody or Benjamin Kunkel or Oscar Wao or Eggers or Foster Wallace on a really bad day. Contemporary fiction really is in a cul-de-sac. Like, I understand that brands are a pretty integral part of 2010 life, but there must be a better way to write than this series of meaningless details about people's Volvos and the little stupid comments they make about them when in conversation with other Volvo-drivers. I felt like the whole thing was this vapid exercise in showing off his research of The Way People Lived in 1980s Suburban Minnesota. Much like bad episodes of Mad Men. Like the obscenely clunky bit around page 20 where he goes, what's her name had become a Republican, and this was happening a lot these days in that neck of the woods! Why, their mayor, Norm Coleman, switched parties! And he was thinking of running for Governor! And they had this wrestler-dude who already WAS Governor! Who wasn't actually a Republican but he was a wrestler so, like, same difference.
I don't get it who the hell is Franzen? What is 'Freedom'? Is this some literary Cave Canem reference? Who cares?