Freedom is a very fine read.

B

BJ

BJ
It's not the jewelbox of The Corrections, but is more sprawling and epic - makes me think of the differences between Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety. Funny as ever, but also more moving.

The New York Times review (I waited to read it til after I finished it) was trite and stupid.
 
Costco had it for $15 so I bought it. I like Stegner.

Will post my thoughts when I finally finish Ada, a trying journey i got sucked into, for which I blame both sbowman and skraft.
 
originally posted by Bwood:
Costco had it for $15 so I bought it. I like Stegner.

Will post my thoughts when I finally finish Ada, a trying journey i got sucked into, for which I blame both sbowman and skraft.
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Looking forward to hearing back from you, jb. Next spring?
 
I'm about 50 pages from the end of Freedom, so am reserving my total judgment until the end, but if I can anticipate, I'll just say that I find it somewhat ponderous. The Corrections was more uneven, but a lot funnier. There were parts I could hardly stand to read they were so awful (the turd hallucinations, etc.), but there were moments that made me bark with laughter.

There is a kind of sodden thing overhanging all of Freedom. No grace apparent anywhere. And not much dark comedy to break up the tightly pursed lips.
 
I didn't explain the Stegner reference very well. To me Freedom and The Corrections have a similar relationship in scope and style that Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety have, but I wasn't comparing Franzen and Stegner.

The Corrections, noxious? Wow.

The Corrections is definitely funnier and more painful and to me better written, except for the cop out ending.

Sharon let me know what you think by the end, if you're looking for graceful denouement.
 
originally posted by BJ:
The Corrections is definitely funnier and more painful and to me better written, except for the cop out ending.
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Agree, agree, agree.

I was thinking about thatwe don't need characters to be "likable," but we need something human and funny and sharp. The difference between Gary the older brother's alcoholism in The Correctionswhen he tries to use power tools, or makes his mixed grill dinnerswhich is hilarious and tragic all at once, and Patty's in Freedom, just sodden, is a stark contrast.

I don't like any of the characters in Freedom. Though they were ridiculous at times, the characters in The Corrections had more human depth. You felt the lust of Denise for the other woman in The Corrections. You just get irritated with the merry-go-round of Patty and Richard in Freedom, etc. You also, in the earlier novel, felt the earth, you felt the places, and you could see the people; they had depth. Enid is a great character, completely memorable and thick with life. I find the characters in Freedom strangely blank. What does Joey look like? Who knows?

One "meta" question: why do you think he named a minor character Jonathan? I was thinking how odd a stroke that was. I mean, someone like Martin Amis in London Fields has a character named Martin Amis, but here it seems both unmarked and strangely pointless. Maybe it has no meaning.
 
Hmmm. Maybe this says something about me and the people I run with, but I felt like the characters in Freedom are more true to life, and there's a relentless monotony even across the generations that I can relate to. The Walter-Patty-Richard triangle is sad but true, at least in my experience. The Corrections for sure is crisper, but I think what Franzen did in that book was sharpen up the characters beyond what was real, to club us over the head and wake up. I laughed way more reading The Corrections but for me Freedom pulled me in emotionally more. But that may just be me.

The beauty of the writing in The Corrections, though, is fantastic. How he managed to sustain it for so long is beyond me. His ability to change internal perspective between characters is superb. I think the chapters especially with the Dad with dementia are amazing.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:

Agree, agree, agree.

I was thinking about thatwe don't need characters to be "likable," but we need something human and funny and sharp.
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I didn't get any of this from The Corrections. I felt the characters were just there to serve grander themes and to show off how clever Franzen thought he was, but hey, David Foster Wallace had already done something similar with much verve and originality. The Corrections was one of the most thoroughly boring reads I've actually read cover to cover.
 
originally posted by BJ:
Hmmm. Maybe this says something about me and the people I run with, but I felt like the characters in Freedom are more true to life, and there's a relentless monotony even across the generations that I can relate to. The Walter-Patty-Richard triangle is sad but true, at least in my experience. The Corrections for sure is crisper, but I think what Franzen did in that book was sharpen up the characters beyond what was real, to club us over the head and wake up. I laughed way more reading The Corrections but for me Freedom pulled me in emotionally more. But that may just be me.

The beauty of the writing in The Corrections, though, is fantastic. How he managed to sustain it for so long is beyond me. His ability to change internal perspective between characters is superb. I think the chapters especially with the Dad with dementia are amazing.
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Hm, you have such an interesting viewpoint on this! V. cool.

The writing in The Corrections, yes, I completely agree. I was a little baffled that he gave over so many pages to Patty's diary in Freedom. She's not dim, but... it seemed like a stylistic exercise? The excessive Capital Letters were humorous, but the length of the thing... hmm... How did you see that?

I thought he caught dialogue better in The Corrections. "So." Things like that.

And yes, the crazy stuff, like the junket to Lithuania, the pills... But there was also dead-on social satire: Chip being broke and going to the [Dean and Deluca] and putting a salmon filet down his trousers. I still chortle over that scene. And the familial interactions seemed more sparked, I can't really say why.

Though your point is very, very interesting about recognizing the types in Freedom. When I first read The Corrections, a grad student at the time, I recognized the Chip character, was completely mirthful about his pretensions and projects and the student with their drugs and untoward sex. And I felt that the parents were timeless in a true, American way: the disconnect between the parents who remain in the timeless heartland and the offspring who are up-and-coming and migrate east. That struck a chord of meaning with me. Gary, it's true, felt like a sitcom dad gone wrong, but the character still resonated more with me than these unknowable blank-faced people in Freedom. I don't "get" any of them, really. And they're all completely depressing....

I think the Connie character might be a perfect example of the young generation now. Guileless, whole, inscrutable, flat. I think that may be my favorite character of the latter book.
 
Also, the time line was disconcertingly blurry to me in Freedom, requiring some mental calculation with new sections. We never knew (aside from references to pop culture music) when things were happening. And I also felt pangs of people talking too soon about thingsdid the word "viral" (as in web sharing) have a lot of commerce in 2001?!?
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by BJ:
Hmmm. Maybe this says something about me and the people I run with, but I felt like the characters in Freedom are more true to life, and there's a relentless monotony even across the generations that I can relate to. The Walter-Patty-Richard triangle is sad but true, at least in my experience. The Corrections for sure is crisper, but I think what Franzen did in that book was sharpen up the characters beyond what was real, to club us over the head and wake up. I laughed way more reading The Corrections but for me Freedom pulled me in emotionally more. But that may just be me.

The beauty of the writing in The Corrections, though, is fantastic. How he managed to sustain it for so long is beyond me. His ability to change internal perspective between characters is superb. I think the chapters especially with the Dad with dementia are amazing.
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Hm, you have such an interesting viewpoint on this! V. cool.

The writing in The Corrections, yes, I completely agree. I was a little baffled that he gave over so many pages to Patty's diary in Freedom. She's not dim, but... it seemed like a stylistic exercise? The excessive Capital Letters were humorous, but the length of the thing... hmm... How did you see that?

I thought he caught dialogue better in The Corrections. "So." Things like that.

And yes, the crazy stuff, like the junket to Lithuania, the pills... But there was also dead-on social satire: Chip being broke and going to the [Dean and Deluca] and putting a salmon filet down his trousers. I still chortle over that scene. And the familial interactions seemed more sparked, I can't really say why.

Though your point is very, very interesting about recognizing the types in Freedom. When I first read The Corrections, a grad student at the time, I recognized the Chip character, was completely mirthful about his pretensions and projects and the student with their drugs and untoward sex. And I felt that the parents were timeless in a true, American way: the disconnect between the parents who remain in the timeless heartland and the offspring who are up-and-coming and migrate east. That struck a chord of meaning with me. Gary, it's true, felt like a sitcom dad gone wrong, but the character still resonated more with me than these unknowable blank-faced people in Freedom. I don't "get" any of them, really. And they're all completely depressing....

I think the Connie character might be a perfect example of the young generation now. Guileless, whole, inscrutable, flat. I think that may be my favorite character of the latter book.
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Yeah, I love Patty's diary, but it goes on too long. But flat and lifeless? Boy, I thought it was moving.

There is no doubt the dialogue is way better in The Corrections - that's partially what I mean by "jewelbox". It is interesting generally the difference in the narrative voice between the two - certainly more precise and precious (and I don't mean this in a negative way), and in this way it does make me think of Crossing to Safety, another very beautifully written book.

Keep in mind Franzen's first two novels have a semi surreal aspect to them; it's a tool he definitely uses in The Corrections to goose things (Lithuania maybe being the best example, or maybe the restaurant in the old power plant). While less fun that way, Freedom feels more real to me.

I think The Corrections is about people refusing to enter midlife and Freedom is about people in midlife. That accounts for some of the difference and maybe the dreariness. I wonder what Chip would look like in a decade without the bad Hollywood ending.

You have forced me to think about the books more and I think I have settled into thinking that I relate a lot more to Freedom but The Corrections is definitely the better book.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Also, the time line was disconcertingly blurry to me in Freedom, requiring some mental calculation with new sections. We never knew (aside from references to pop culture music) when things were happening. And I also felt pangs of people talking too soon about thingsdid the word "viral" (as in web sharing) have a lot of commerce in 2001?!?
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I had the same reaction but I think that was deliberate. I think Franzen was trying to show a lack of movement of the characters over time. Are they still in college or is it twentyfive years later? Are we talking about Patti or Joey?

The characters pile up on each other and I do think that is somewhat deliberate - they're all confronting something similar, how to live with relatively limitless freedom, which may be the most complicated question of today. To me the flatness of the characters reflects the unyielding drive to answer that question - they're all bound up in it.

Oh, and Jonathan - don't you think he's just sitting on the side trying to be the voice of reason? To me it makes complete sense that's his name - I think it's Franzen speaking to that core question.
 
Oh, and maybe my favorite funny scene in The Corrections is when Gary's son is monitoring his activities with the closed circuit TV.

I would have given anything for a young Catherine Keener to play Denise. Wouldn't that be perfect?
 
I really admired Franzen's first novel "The 27th City" - I almost said "loved" but the novel was too disturbing for that word - but couldn't tolerate being in the company of the characters in "The Corrections" (and Franzen writes so well that when reading his novels, you are indeed in the company of his characters) long enough to read very far into the novel. In fact, I think it's the first novel I ever bought and started that I decided to stop reading. So, I've made no attempt at his new one.

The Stegner (in particular, "Crossing to Safety")reference got me at first - I was going to ask if Franzen sounds anti-semitic in his novel but realized later the comparison was of a different sort.

If you want a couple of really well-written black comedy novels, try "Doctor Criminale" by Malcolm Bradbury and "White Man's Grave" by Richard Dooling. You will howl with laughter even on the subway.

Also in that category - "Russian Debutante's Handbook" by Gary Shteyngart.
 
originally posted by BJ:
Oh, and maybe my favorite funny scene in The Corrections is when Gary's son is monitoring his activities with the closed circuit TV.
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Completely agree.

So, I've been meaning to come back to this thread since I finished Freedom, but I don't really know what to say. Horribly (I guess?) the end to Freedom was for me the strongest and most touching part. All of the last section, with the two characters, a few pages of their time at the lake house, and the name of the place at the very end (I say this to be vague and not spoil anything); that seemed pregnant, for me.

Sadly, it put into relief what was missing in the rest. When I look back over the whole book, I feel even a sense of anger. It kind of sucked. It was really, really poorly written, stylistically. The writing was flat and trite. There was only the slightest blip of difference between Patty's diaries and the omniscient narrator's prose, which kind of shocked me at the start, but I waited to see if there was a reason for it; no. It was all bland and wan. Franzen FAIL, to speak a parlance he'd have.

I thought it was amusing, too, that I did mention here that we didn't know what Joey looked like, for example. That was shaken up in the very last pages: neighbors see a tall, blond, athletic man who is Walter's son. Tall? Blond?!? Athletic? We'd spent 500 pages with the boy; shouldn't we have had that as details earlier? I'd been seeing someone not so Aryan-seeming, especially with all of the Jewish sideline and his feeling of that tribe. It might have been pertinent on the novelist's part to describe how he felt w/r/t stereotypes and appearance, given that he was fielding stereotypes in a very pronounced way.

I don't know. Some small blips of caring and emotion were elicited in this novel, but overall I found it just painfully dull and hollow. I wouldn't lend it to anyone or recommend anyone spend the time with it.
 
Finding the corrections tough to get through - I'm only 35 pages in but it's so bleak and depressing.

There were more run-on sentences in the first chapter than 95+ point scores from Dr. Big J in the latest WA* - and that's a LOT.

*I don't subscribe, but I can only imagine.
 
originally posted by Peter Czyryca:
Finding the corrections tough to get through
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did you not ready my post?

put it down, life's too short! read one of the books I recommended. No reason why a novel can't be both very well-written and fun to read.
 
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