Glenna's Blog

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is enjoyable while you’re reading it but leaves you nothing to think about when you’re through. Compared to other great narratives of the past decade, especially Franzen’s own, it’s a cupcake.

Freedom is “sweeping,” meaning it explains characters’ personalities by sketching the biographies of their great grandparents. Generally the book is big on cause and effect (it is medium on silly foreign intrigue). Every action is foreshadowed, explained by reference to the character’s ancestors, explained by reference to the character’s adolescence, analogized to the actions of an unrelated character, echoed by the character’s offspring, punished, and forgiven. Walter’s “primary interest […] was to safeguard pockets of nature from loutish country people like his brother.” Walter’s daughter “sounded like Patty and was outraged like Walter, and yet she was entirely herself.” All is connected, nothing is random. You are never dizzy, you never have to squint.

Needless to say, the main characters in this neat story are fundamentally decent. Franzen’s last chapter invites us to believe that none of them will ever sin again. Harshness only comes in at the level of politics. People shouldn’t have more than two kids. Cats shouldn’t be allowed outside. Neo-cons say things like, “we have to learn to be comfortable with stretching some facts.”

To imagine a less cheesy “sweeping” novel, look at Jennifer Egan’s Visit from the Goon Squad, which came out earlier this year. There are a few too many satisfying connections made, but there are also totally repugnant yet relatable central characters, like a PR exec who freelances for a dictator and a record executive who pressures teenagers to blow him at concerts (Freedom has a rock star who bangs teenagers, but he is not repugnant; the sex is played for laughs). There are two experimental chapters: a celebrity profile and a long powerpoint presentation set in the future. In fact the whole book has an experimental structure. There are jumbo themes and foreign intrigue (the dictator) but there are no lectures about Iraq. It’s a riskier book than Freedom, and way more fun because of it.

Franzen’s previous book, The Corrections, is also messy and dark and fun. Without warning or explanation, segments are told from the point of view of an Alzheimer’s patient. The lifelong good girl seduces a married couple one spouse at a time and discovers in the process that she is both a lesbian and a sexual sadist. At the end of the book, the most capable offspring of the Alzheimer’s guy is showing the first symptom of Alzheimer’s.

The Corrections left me unnerved and a little thrilled. Freedom just pissed me off. My mistakes aren’t my grandmother’s fault, my career isn’t caused by one annoying episode when I was 17, my ex’s new girlfriend will not be killed next month in a way which has already been foreshadowed, and I am not guaranteed a happy ending, Franzen, so screw you.