Jonathan Franzen

[holyzombiejesus]

Anyone read/ reading Crossroads? I'm really enjoying it but it does feel extremely long. There's this Minister and his family, and it's set in the 70s. Each chapter is told though one of the family's point of view and much of it is set in the youth club of the church. It's not giving anything away to say that the dad is a right old sadsack, a lecherous old man desperately trying to hold on to his youth. Apparently, this is the first part of a trilogy so there will be big mobile phones and cocaine in the next one and someone will die in the twin towers in the final book.

[Mister Six]

Read The Corrections when that was the big thing and thought it was pretentious, overlong wank that ticked every box about upper-middle-class white US academic novels. Sibling rivalry? Check. Angst over wacky-but-troubled parents? Check. Affair with a student? Check. Struggling to complete a magnum opus novel? Check. Impending Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah celebration in which the family will be brought together and made to confront their problems? Check.

If you can't do it better than Michael Chabon - and let's face it, you can't, whoever you are - just give up. And at least Chabon's gone on to do mysteries and alternate histories and other interesting books instead of endless guff about the travails of wealthy white people in America.

Also, it annoyed me when the one who was writing a book realised he'd been writing a comedy all along, and leaned into it - like Franzen did when writing The Corrections, you see? It's meta, which is the same as clever! Especially as there's only one genuinely chucklesome moment in the whole thing (the fella talking about Aslan while trying to push some pills on the mother).*

Quite liked some of his essays in How to Be Alone though.


_{* Which is, admittedly, one more chucklesome thing than Wonderboys had despite its best efforts, but at least Wonderboys was playful and charming and had compelling characters and a sense of its own ridiculousness, whereas Franzen's book just feels lost in its own pompous self-importance, even when it's trying to be a bit outlandish and daft.}

[buttgammon]

Read The Corrections when that was the big thing and thought it was pretentious, overlong wank that ticked every box about upper-middle-class white US academic novels. Sibling rivalry? Check. Angst over wacky-but-troubled parents? Check. Affair with a student? Check. Struggling to complete a magnum opus novel? Check. Impending Thanksgiving/Christmas/Hanukkah celebration in which the family will be brought together and made to confront their problems? Check.

This is pretty much my view of Franzen, although like you, I like some of his essays. This makes him all the more frustrating, because I suspect he has an interesting outlook in some ways, but it doesn't convert into writing that does anything new, exciting or enjoyable.

[chveik]

a bad writer and a all round cunt

[Inspector Norse]

I read it and enjoyed it. I have a bit of a strange relationship with Franzen - I've read several of his novels and find them frustrating and unsatisfying, yet still regard him as a good writer: I think that he has that same quality that, say, Donna Tartt has, of writing easily readable and pacey, almost page-turning prose while filling it with ideas, comments and insight, but not everything comes off or hits the mark, and his previous novels have been full of a kind of cynical, self-defeating contempt.

In this new one he finally managed to hit the right balance, I think, allowing his characters their small victories and happy moments alongside the soul-searching and dysfunctionality. There's still a lot that stretches credibility but, well, that's fiction a lot of the time. He's still quite established in that weird zone between being overrated and underrated - you get this mixture of fawning and scathing reviews and not a lot in between.

[Catalogue of ills]

I've only read Purity, which annoyed me a lot. Middle aged man writes book with female lead character and guess what? She's got a smashing pair of tits on her. Important that we knew that about her, apparently. Also overly long (the book, not the tits) and fairly predictable, although I do give him credit for his depiction of the really horrible relationship between the two really horrible people whose names I forget. That was excruciating, as it was meant to be.

[Artie Fufkin]

Especially as there's only one genuinely chucklesome moment in the whole thing (the fella talking about Aslan while trying to push some pills on the mother).*

I laughed when the bloke fell off the boat.

[willbo]

my local Poundland had piles of Purity for sale last year