Reading Freedom is really disturbing me. Mostly because I can’t tell if it’s a “good book” or if it’s just putting out all the characteristics we’ve decided amount to a good, serious novel. the archetypal novel: the great American novel: the best use of the form. So we have: some political discussion, depression, the clear lines psychologically drawn from parents to children, even a volatile document written in secret by one character. The argument that Franzen is writing about straight white men is sort of wrong, as the most interesting character is definitely Patty, an ex-jock woman. But it is also about the men who love her and who she hurts. this book takes SO many cues from Anna Karenina, too. Sections follow different players, leaving the previous section and its main character behind, These foreboding absences give way dramatically when their lives cross. Like Tolstoy, Franzen forces us into feeling indifferent to these characters when his narration abandons them, and then corners us with them again. Like Tolstoy, he also gives his characters political interests, although I feel like these sections in Freedom are his least successful: they’re shallow, and they all lead to the same liberal humanistic conclusions that don’t come with TOO much moral confusion. There’s an awkwardness to it all. There’s an awkwardness when 9/11 comes up.
Jodi Picoult got angry last week about not being reviewed by the new York Times, while Franzen’s new book has already been reviewed twice by them. Reading Freedom, I’m tempted to say these two authors aren’t so far removed. They’re both writing about love and mistakes. Franzen’s characters all sleep with each other. It’s sort of like All My Children. there’s an inevitability to it all, the inevitability of sex and suffering, that’s very Soap Opera. But how, HOW does he manage to produce the overall effect of seriousness?
And is this a “good book?”
If a good book should make you think, is a book good because it makes you debate all weekend in your head about whether or not it’s GOOD?
I’m still thinking about it.
