Freedom [ペーパーバック]

Negative reviews get no love on Amazon, but, having been thoroughly taken in by the glowing reviews in the NYT, Time, the Economist, etc., I feel compelled to add a voice of dissent and caution.

I read and enjoyed The Corrections, so was looking forward to seeing what Franzen had been up to for the past 10 years. What he's been up to is, essentially, rewriting The Corrections, but extracting all the humor that leavened the misanthropic bleakness of his vision in the earlier work. Once again we're presented with an outwardly "perfect" nuclear Midwestern family that secretly consists of neurotic hysterics with low self-esteem who ultimately find themselves mired in infidelity and morally dubious business dealings. Once again the focus is on generational conflict, and the "sins of the fathers" revisited in the lives of the children.

Besides the lack of originality, the problem, in essence, is this time out I don't believe a single, solitary word of it. I don't believe in liberal middle-class parents who'd let their teenage son move in with their obnoxious Republican neighbors. I don't believe in a talented college athlete who'd let herself be hoodwinked for years by a ditzy, obsessive fan. I don't believe in a committed environmentalist who'd sign off on strip mining vast tracts of virgin forest in the name of reclaiming those tracts many years afterwards for a single-species preserve. I don't believe in a 19-year-old arms dealer making procurement purchases in Paraguay. I don't believe in a couple who remain married, but utterly incommunicado, for 6 years. I don't believe in a 47-year-old man with no religious convictions who is trying beer for the very first time, and is prone to bursting into tears on the least provocation. And that's just for starters.

Worse, the dialogue this time out is actually painful to read in its patent artificiality. I defy anyone to point to a passage in this book and seriously maintain that this is how parents, children or lovers actually talk to one another, in 2010 or ever. It's as stilted and laden with portentousness as soap opera dialogue. In a plot-driven page-turner in the Grisham mode, this wouldn't be a fatal flaw, but Freedom, with its political and social preoccupations, is a novel that wants to be taken be seriously, and that's simply not possible when the characters speak in an uninterrupted steam of cliche.

The very worst bit, however, is Patty's 200-page "autobiography" which purports to be her life story told in her own voice, but is, in fact, completely indistinguishable from the authorial voice used in the rest of the novel. That this "autobiography" is later part of significant -- and, again, wholly unbelievable -- plot twist compounds this reader's dismay.

A last problem is the characterization in the novel. One-dimensional caricatures abound, from Patty's Hippie-dippy sister Abigail to Walter's starry-eyed, buxom assistant Lalith to Joey's shallow, glamour-puss love-interest Jenna to the shrill Fundamentalist kook who plays a significant role in the final section of the novel. The main characters -- Walter, Patty, Richard, and Joey -- are more developed, but scarcely more believable. Walter's character, for instance, does a 180 -- starting as a preternaturally patient, kind, dutiful son and husband, and becoming an erratic, impatient, unhinged hothead. The problem is not so much the change in personality -- people do change over time -- but the fact that the reader isn't privy to what drives or motivates the change. We see the college-age milquetoast and the middle-aged fanatic, but no steps in between.

It gives me no particular pleasure to trash this novel. Franzen is to be commended for attempting something ambitious in a Tolstoyan mode (Tolstoy is, in fact, referenced directly and indirectly throughout the novel) -- to give an American picture of "how we live now." But, for me, unfortunately, his effort here falls completely flat, and I can't possibly recommend it to anyone.

I will avoid the plot review, because so many others seem compelled to summarize, and the repetition becomes tiresome. I enjoyed this novel, and I think you will too. I gave it four stars because it is not perfect, but it is better than most current fiction. Franzen may be a "serious" writer, but he is also highly readable, with an interesting story that can be enjoyed for itself alone, absent any considerations of literary aspirations.

This is a big, rambling tale of modern Americans in their modern lives, people who reminded me of real people, a plot which kept me turning the pages of this compulsively readable, mostly entertaining novel. The tone is slightly condescending, as the quote above my review would suggest, mostly cynical, and ultimately hopeful by the end of the story, when his battered, bruised and bruising characters emerge from the wreckage of their lives, and bravely carry on.

In many ways this novel is similar to his previous work, The Corrections. I remember enjoying that novel a few years back, although I could not understand why the critics raved about it. Franzen proves yet again that he is a very good writer, building a complicated but workable plot, creating characters who are real, complex and often disappointing, showing us his American self-portrait in 2010. He reaches for a big theme, as the title implies, but he doesn't quite achieve his goal of demontrating the illusory nature of our freedom (or alternatively that all this freedom is killing us). Like Sophocles, Franzen seems to take a dim view of freedom. I probably should not compare Franzen to Sophocles, or other great writers, past or present. He has a genuine voice, a straightforward style, but he does not possess lyrical abilities, nor great thematic breadth. His writing style is similar to Paul Murray's, serving up a cast of mostly unremarkable people who screw up their lives by means of their character defects, giving you a funny and sad slice of everyday life, saying something profound in the process.

Amazon reviewers were much less enamored with The Corrections than the professional reviewers: they gave only three stars on average, with almost as many one star reviews as five star. Franzen's self portraits are closer to the world of the publishing industry than the world of amazon readers. His characters are based in the Midwest, at least in the beginning of the novel, but they are not the American everyman or woman. They are highly educated, well read, socially evolved and spiritually lost in the manner of the wealthy white specimen liberalis americanus. This writing feels too focused upon their world to allow for universal appeal. Nevertheless, Freedom is a very well and carefully written novel. Only time itself will reveal if this is the work of the moment, or a work for all time.

Excellent writing when dealing with the painfully intimate and intricate details of adolescence, marriage, childrearing, infidelity and romantic yearnings. In fact, it approaches the true-to-life fictional style used so successfully by Tom Wolfe in the "Bonfire of the Vanities," and "A Man in Full."

Yet, this saga ominously hits a brick wall when it becomes enmeshed with any number of environomental, social and political issues (incluing mining and overpopulation) that seem to go on for far too long and which consume an excessive amount of time and space. Very "preachy", didactic and repetitive if you will.

As a result, we are confronted with a lengthy novel that is only partially rewarding. It is constucted on cycles of excitement and tedium which make for an erratic reading experience. You really have to invest a good deal of time and effort searching for the literary nuggets that make the effort worthwhile in the end.