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Ian "Marvin" Graye's Reviews > Freedom
Freedom
by
2015 REVIEW:
Free Birds Now
I dreaded reading this novel for many years. There was a lot of media focus on the bird-watching theme, and I once endured an interview with Franzen at a writers festival that seemed to address nothing else.
I have to confess, though, that I spent much of my own childhood fascinated by native birds. I collected hundreds of cards from petrol stations and assembled them in books designed for the purpose. One of my favourite books was "What Bird is That?" I wasn't so much a Volvo-driving avian trainspotter or even a proto-Club of Rome environmentalist. I just hiked a lot in the Boy Scout movement. I saw lots of birds on the way. Our patrols were named after them. Peewit. Rosella. Lorikeet. I wanted to be able to identify them. I loved their diversity and colour. They were a vital part of the world. They were a vital part of my world.
Equally, I could tell the difference between hundreds of species of trees. I still have a large bowl that contains my spontaneously assembled collection of seeds and nuts (much to my wife's puzzlement).
Birds came to represent freedom (even if they're chained to the sky), while seeds and nuts symbolised fertility. My engagement present to F.M. Sushi was a painting of tiny abstract seed-like objects that foretold childbirth and parenthood. (Our youngest daughter got her driver's licence this week.)
So, part of my apprehension was, I didn't want to test my love of birds and trees against a more recent trend that seemed a little more self-conscious and affected (dare I say, bourgeois?) than what I had so innocently engaged in (albeit inspired by that incorrigible imperialist, Lord Baden-Powell).
Pride, Pomp and Circumstance of Glorious War
Then there was the persona of Franzen himself.
Depending on how generous you're feeling on the occasion of a Franzen interview, he can strike you as preppy, pompous, and a little starched collared when he speaks. He pauses frequently, self-consciously and deliberatively, as if to capture the perfect thought or to sever the link between the question and his answer, when often the response that eventually comes is fairly pedestrian, but for the dramatic tension.
As it turns out, the birds are a relatively discrete sub-theme of the novel. They don't really arrive until almost half way in. Then they're more incidental to the human relationships, albeit a symbol of freedom under threat, both natural and social.
In short, I needn't have been so apprehensive.
Still, for much of the novel, I resisted its allure. I looked too earnestly for things I didn't like. I catalogued them in my updates, most of which I have elected not to discuss in my review.
It was like having new neighbours move in. I was seeking fault in them first, without giving them an opportunity to make a positive impression. I was approaching them in a combative frame of mind. They were on show, and I had pre-judged them on appearances. Fraternity had taken a back seat. I wasn't being very neighbourly.
For a long time, I probably would have rated the novel three stars. However, eventually, I decided to up it to four (I'm not a fan of half stars; ultimately, you just have to make up your mind to round up or round down).
The Slow Dazzle of Construction
Franzen strikes me as a patient, if painstaking, writer. Neither he nor his characters ever seem particularly hurried or impatient.
Nevertheless, I found the novel a very quick and easy read, despite its length. For all the labour on the part of both author and reader, the resulting experience was quite leisurely.
Franzen commits words to the page like an artist wielding brush strokes. Not every word or sentence has to wow the reader. The picture emerges from the gradual accumulation of detail, the slow dazzle of construction, rather than any particular lyricism or fireworks.
Indeed, in the whole book, there was really only one lyrical sentence or phrase that really stood out in its own right (as opposed to constituting a mere bit part in a larger ensemble): "Connie, stark naked, bloody-red of lip and nipple..." There's something almost Joycean in that sentence for me.
The Connections
Franzen's subject matter is the middle to upper echelons of the American middle class. While he seems to be pretty firmly ensconced in it himself, he writes of it as "possessive...competitive...exclusive", disconnected and discontented. He describes its "liberal disagreeability" when it comes into contact with other classes or sub-classes.
Franzen's previous novel concerned the attempts of one generation to "correct" or remedy the perceived faults of its parents' generation. In this one, he broadens his perspective, while still maintaining a family base.
Although "mistakes" continue to abound, the novel could almost have been called "The Connections". It's not just concerned with the relationship between generations, we're shown the internal dynamic of all sorts of relationship or bond: parents, children, siblings, spouses, partners, employees, neighbours, consumers, readers, audiences.
Franzen shows us an entire ecosystem, a natural, social and economic environment. He paints a portrait of the American family, paradoxically, in all its liberalism, all its conservatism, all its "reactionary splendour", as if it were a breeding ground for or a microcosm of capitalist society, with all its internal contradictions. Then he implicitly asks the question whether it's heading towards a recession, a revolution or even extinction.
His answer is optimistic, but it takes a lot of effort for the modern family to survive, let alone thrive, in the face of rampant egotism.
The Soft Parade
The problem for the American family is probably the same thing that apparently makes America great. Franzen seems to take de Tocqueville's perceptions a step further in his fiction. This is a society in which freedom and individualism occupy the driver's seat. However, one man's liberty/mastery is often another man's (or woman's) subjection/slavery.
The novel is a slow, soft parade of Darwinian self-interest, narcissism, independence, rivalry, jealousy, envy, resentment, refusal, resistance, silence, blame, vileness, hatred, hostility, destruction, survival, separation, and reconciliation.
Almost imperceptibly, private domestic concerns cohere into a broader vision of humanity, post-religion, if not (yet) post-family or post-community, and hence its relevance beyond America and beyond the recent past in which it's set. Is this the way of the world, Franzen seems to be asking? At least those parts of the world that have become Americanised, if that doesn't exclude anyone.
Flight from Fancy
There's an aspect of Franzen's writing that reminds me of a less showy or ostentatious "Couples"-era John Updike, when I personally prefer Bellow and Roth, Carver and Ford. His prose rarely flies like theirs. It doesn't strike or imbue you with wonder. It's too steeped in the mundane, everyday reality of realism, naturally enough.
Still, by the time you arrive at the end of the novel, you feel you've got to know and like and recognise these characters, probably because they are just like your neighbours, and/or maybe even just like you.
Ironically, when you finish this big, ostensibly clumsy, haphazard construction, you discover that it did actually get off the ground, that it could fly after all, and you realise that for a few days you sat on its wings and enjoyed the birds-eye view it afforded you.
SOUNDTRACK:
(view spoiler)
ORIGINAL 2011 REVIEW
(view spoiler)
by
2015 REVIEW:
Free Birds Now
I dreaded reading this novel for many years. There was a lot of media focus on the bird-watching theme, and I once endured an interview with Franzen at a writers festival that seemed to address nothing else.
I have to confess, though, that I spent much of my own childhood fascinated by native birds. I collected hundreds of cards from petrol stations and assembled them in books designed for the purpose. One of my favourite books was "What Bird is That?" I wasn't so much a Volvo-driving avian trainspotter or even a proto-Club of Rome environmentalist. I just hiked a lot in the Boy Scout movement. I saw lots of birds on the way. Our patrols were named after them. Peewit. Rosella. Lorikeet. I wanted to be able to identify them. I loved their diversity and colour. They were a vital part of the world. They were a vital part of my world.
Equally, I could tell the difference between hundreds of species of trees. I still have a large bowl that contains my spontaneously assembled collection of seeds and nuts (much to my wife's puzzlement).
Birds came to represent freedom (even if they're chained to the sky), while seeds and nuts symbolised fertility. My engagement present to F.M. Sushi was a painting of tiny abstract seed-like objects that foretold childbirth and parenthood. (Our youngest daughter got her driver's licence this week.)
So, part of my apprehension was, I didn't want to test my love of birds and trees against a more recent trend that seemed a little more self-conscious and affected (dare I say, bourgeois?) than what I had so innocently engaged in (albeit inspired by that incorrigible imperialist, Lord Baden-Powell).
Pride, Pomp and Circumstance of Glorious War
Then there was the persona of Franzen himself.
Depending on how generous you're feeling on the occasion of a Franzen interview, he can strike you as preppy, pompous, and a little starched collared when he speaks. He pauses frequently, self-consciously and deliberatively, as if to capture the perfect thought or to sever the link between the question and his answer, when often the response that eventually comes is fairly pedestrian, but for the dramatic tension.
As it turns out, the birds are a relatively discrete sub-theme of the novel. They don't really arrive until almost half way in. Then they're more incidental to the human relationships, albeit a symbol of freedom under threat, both natural and social.
In short, I needn't have been so apprehensive.
Still, for much of the novel, I resisted its allure. I looked too earnestly for things I didn't like. I catalogued them in my updates, most of which I have elected not to discuss in my review.
It was like having new neighbours move in. I was seeking fault in them first, without giving them an opportunity to make a positive impression. I was approaching them in a combative frame of mind. They were on show, and I had pre-judged them on appearances. Fraternity had taken a back seat. I wasn't being very neighbourly.
For a long time, I probably would have rated the novel three stars. However, eventually, I decided to up it to four (I'm not a fan of half stars; ultimately, you just have to make up your mind to round up or round down).
The Slow Dazzle of Construction
Franzen strikes me as a patient, if painstaking, writer. Neither he nor his characters ever seem particularly hurried or impatient.
Nevertheless, I found the novel a very quick and easy read, despite its length. For all the labour on the part of both author and reader, the resulting experience was quite leisurely.
Franzen commits words to the page like an artist wielding brush strokes. Not every word or sentence has to wow the reader. The picture emerges from the gradual accumulation of detail, the slow dazzle of construction, rather than any particular lyricism or fireworks.
Indeed, in the whole book, there was really only one lyrical sentence or phrase that really stood out in its own right (as opposed to constituting a mere bit part in a larger ensemble): "Connie, stark naked, bloody-red of lip and nipple..." There's something almost Joycean in that sentence for me.
The Connections
Franzen's subject matter is the middle to upper echelons of the American middle class. While he seems to be pretty firmly ensconced in it himself, he writes of it as "possessive...competitive...exclusive", disconnected and discontented. He describes its "liberal disagreeability" when it comes into contact with other classes or sub-classes.
Franzen's previous novel concerned the attempts of one generation to "correct" or remedy the perceived faults of its parents' generation. In this one, he broadens his perspective, while still maintaining a family base.
Although "mistakes" continue to abound, the novel could almost have been called "The Connections". It's not just concerned with the relationship between generations, we're shown the internal dynamic of all sorts of relationship or bond: parents, children, siblings, spouses, partners, employees, neighbours, consumers, readers, audiences.
Franzen shows us an entire ecosystem, a natural, social and economic environment. He paints a portrait of the American family, paradoxically, in all its liberalism, all its conservatism, all its "reactionary splendour", as if it were a breeding ground for or a microcosm of capitalist society, with all its internal contradictions. Then he implicitly asks the question whether it's heading towards a recession, a revolution or even extinction.
His answer is optimistic, but it takes a lot of effort for the modern family to survive, let alone thrive, in the face of rampant egotism.
The Soft Parade
The problem for the American family is probably the same thing that apparently makes America great. Franzen seems to take de Tocqueville's perceptions a step further in his fiction. This is a society in which freedom and individualism occupy the driver's seat. However, one man's liberty/mastery is often another man's (or woman's) subjection/slavery.
The novel is a slow, soft parade of Darwinian self-interest, narcissism, independence, rivalry, jealousy, envy, resentment, refusal, resistance, silence, blame, vileness, hatred, hostility, destruction, survival, separation, and reconciliation.
Almost imperceptibly, private domestic concerns cohere into a broader vision of humanity, post-religion, if not (yet) post-family or post-community, and hence its relevance beyond America and beyond the recent past in which it's set. Is this the way of the world, Franzen seems to be asking? At least those parts of the world that have become Americanised, if that doesn't exclude anyone.
Flight from Fancy
There's an aspect of Franzen's writing that reminds me of a less showy or ostentatious "Couples"-era John Updike, when I personally prefer Bellow and Roth, Carver and Ford. His prose rarely flies like theirs. It doesn't strike or imbue you with wonder. It's too steeped in the mundane, everyday reality of realism, naturally enough.
Still, by the time you arrive at the end of the novel, you feel you've got to know and like and recognise these characters, probably because they are just like your neighbours, and/or maybe even just like you.
Ironically, when you finish this big, ostensibly clumsy, haphazard construction, you discover that it did actually get off the ground, that it could fly after all, and you realise that for a few days you sat on its wings and enjoyed the birds-eye view it afforded you.
SOUNDTRACK:
(view spoiler)
ORIGINAL 2011 REVIEW
(view spoiler)
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Freedom.
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Reading Progress
February 23, 2011
– Shelved
June 28, 2011
– Shelved as:
reviews
October 24, 2012
– Shelved as:
franzen
October 5, 2015
–
Started Reading
October 5, 2015
–
5.69%
"Lots of brush strokes so far. Each portrait is less of one individual than an entire class, street or neighbourhood."
page
32
October 9, 2015
–
37.01%
"She was dark-skinned and complexly round and slender...she had a subtle subcontinental accent, percussive, no-nonsense..."
page
208
October 9, 2015
–
37.37%
"Oh no! The moment I've been dreading for years! The bird-lovers have descended on the novel..."
page
210
October 10, 2015
–
42.35%
"Franzen's writing is shaped more by his powers of observation than pf experience."
page
238
October 10, 2015
–
43.77%
"Chits and clits:
Score now or take a chit...
...a firm little clitoris of discernment and sensitivity..."
page
246
Score now or take a chit...
...a firm little clitoris of discernment and sensitivity..."
October 10, 2015
–
45.02%
"...because it's our duty to support democracy and free markets wherever they are..."
page
253
October 10, 2015
–
46.09%
"...her excited clitoris grew to be eight inches long, a protruding pencil of tenderness..."
page
259
October 10, 2015
–
49.11%
"Underneath the table, in his boxers, his half-mast boner was pointing at her like a Jaguar's hood ornament."
page
276
October 10, 2015
–
50.53%
"Mindful of one of their crazier phone-sex episodes, in which the lips of her vagina had opened so fantastically wide that they had covered his entire face, and his tongue was so long that its tip could reach her vagina's inscrutable inner end, he had shaved very carefully...
[you'd expect nothing less of a true gentleman!]"
page
284
[you'd expect nothing less of a true gentleman!]"
October 11, 2015
–
71.71%
"...their relationship had essentially been a standoff, a stalemate of wills."
page
403
October 12, 2015
– Shelved as:
read-2015
October 12, 2015
– Shelved as:
reviews-4-stars
October 12, 2015
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-50 of 50 (50 new)
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message 1:
by
K.D.
(new)
-
rated it 3 stars
Apr 20, 2011 07:10PM
Nice!
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K.D. wrote: "Nice!"Thanks, KD. Like most bad ideas, it was eggstraordinarily easy once I mastered the underlying tech-quiche.
Mariel wrote: "Eggsquisite."Oh, beautiful, Mariel, why didn't I think of it!
What sweet eggstasy.
I loved, loved, loved this book. Freedom is an outstanding example of the Great American Novel, achieving a pinnacle in its oeufre.
Goody, a pinneggle.It's close to the top of my to-read list, but first I would like to re-read The Corrections, so I can work out whether I'm misjudging it and Franzen.
The Correggtions is also top notch.
Will wrote: "The Correggtions is also top notch."Haha, that one's been sitting there undeteggted the whole time.
Perhaps it just needed someone to gently sit on it for a while.
Top notch hatch, Will.
I just play 'em as they lay.
I thought an old rooster like you would lay them as they play.
It's good that there are still some words out there that we didn't originally think of, but I worry that the whole idea must look eggregious in the cold light of day.
Eggology 101 for dummies? It was quite the novel with many eggs left to be hatched in the end
Better to hatch an egg than a plot.
As long as its everything its cracked up to be. ..
...and it doesn't crack under the strain.
Here, I am, up at the crack of dawn again.
I thought I'd get with you:O)
It actually sounds like that here now. Sometimes it sounds like a thousand birds chattering on Facebook.
I just realised how stupid that must sound. They are obviously tweeting.
I neither farce nor tweet
to tweet or to twat is the question or to twit ???
To wit, to woo.You can't twat today, can you, only yesterday or before?
did you twat yesterday or did you twatted?Did I Post a tweet or a twit today ?
Could it be I am a twat or a twit? if I do either of these things
Eggsellent review Ian, you 'cracked' me up and I'm not eggsaggerating.
Thanks, Nilesh, I wrote these words at Easter time so long ago, they seem like distant releggs.
Read it. By turns hilarious and deeply sad it recalls Dickens and Joyce.
Mitch wrote: "Read it. By turns hilarious and deeply sad it recalls Dickens and Joyce."Thanks. It's about time I did.
Jonathan Franzen Interview"I had made a vow going into promoting this book that I was not going to talk about the title�(pause, picks up a copy of ‘Freedom�) I’m going to Germany on Wednesday and you can just imagine how the interviews will start, “Was ist ‘freiheit�?�, “What is ‘freedom�?�, and I will spend the next fifteen minutes trying to extricate myself from the concept of ‘freedom�; which I could not care less about. But since we’re all friends here, I will mention that I think the reason I slapped the word on the book proposal I sold three years ago without any clear idea of what kind of book it was going to be is that I wanted to write a book that would free me in some way.
"And I will say this about the abstract concept of ‘freedom�; it’s possible you are freer if you accept what you are and just get on with being the person you are, than if you maintain this kind of uncommitted I’m free-to-be-this, free-to-be-that, faux freedom."
Did I not know you in 2011 when all this fun occurred? It was either that or I had decided not to comment thinking the theme had been eggsausted.
We had so much more fun before I decided to read Heggel and Heidegger!
Yea, somewhere along the way you turned into a total egghead. Oh wait, that's a real word. You'll have to eggscuse me. It's late on a Fryday.
I'm still not reduced to panhandling though!
Turns out, there's a surprising amount of skill et takes to do it well.
I thought skillet was a Christian rock band? I prefer Jean-Paul Satriani, especially his third album, "Which came first? The chicken or the eggsistentialist?" It's very good, even if it's not one of his more essentialist works.
I know a man's reach should eggceed his grasp, but I'm about to throw in the towel. No use trying to keep up with you after that one.
Eggshausted but not beaten, I hope!
Jonathan Franzen: ‘Modern life has become extremely distracting�The author on the ‘meaningless noise� that pours through the internet, the writing of his fourth novel, Freedom, and the death of his friend David Foster Wallace
Ian, the Literary Ornithologist! Fantastic!
I agree with the "soft parade" part of your assessment entirely, although I did not have your eloquence to put them into words. thank you for your review!
Thanks Ian for another amazing review.I too have been avoiding this book. While I liked The Corrections, I didn't find it as amazing as everyone else did & I find him often annoying in interviews.
However, your review has made me rethink and I may (someday) read this one.
Seemita wrote: "Ian, the Literary Ornithologist! Fantastic!"Thanks, Seemita. As well as a philatelist and cartographer!
Qi wrote: "I agree with the "soft parade" part of your assessment entirely, although I did not have your eloquence to put them into words. thank you for your review!"Thanks, Qi.
Ellie wrote: "Thanks Ian for another amazing review.I too have been avoiding this book. While I liked The Corrections, I didn't find it as amazing as everyone else did & I find him often annoying."
Thanks, Ellie. I like the way he manages to overcome my resistance and win me over. It's quite the opposite of a few of his contemporaries and predecessors whose work I find overtrumpeted, in one case even overstrumpeted!
Love how you compare your experience of reading Franzen to pre-judging new neighbors. What a perfect description of that feeling! Great review!
Paige wrote: "Love how you compare your experience of reading Franzen to pre-judging new neighbors. What a perfect description of that feeling! Great review!"Thanks, Paige. I hope to read "Purity" later this year.
Thank you for the wonderful review
Stunning review Ian. Thank you. ☺️
