Freedom, redux

A friend of mine bought me Freedom (latest Franzen novel) for Xmas and tonight I had a chance to talk with her about it. I basically reiterated what I’ve already said here, but something jelled for me while I was talking to her. This was his mid-life crisis novel. Bear with me:

The guy in the book is largely passive and, in fact, suffers a bit of a midlife crisis. The woman in the book – the only strong female character, by the way – is essentially a dude: a jock, few if any female friends, no ‘traditional’ female qualities save a desire to stay home with the kids, and that doesn’t really feel like her desire so much as a lack of other options. The son is the other strong character in the book – someone who has little to no interaction with his parents and no discernible family connect with the possible exception of his sister (who is barely in the book). The kid is absorbed in doing what he wants to do, thinks his parents don’t understand him (they don’t) and expects them to more or less support him while he takes advantage of people and lives up to no one’s expectations.

What finally registered for me when I talked to T tonight, though, was the point of view. For that matter, the point of view of all the reviewers who are convinced that Franzen, through this book, is the second coming of Christ. I’d imagine they’re mostly in Franzen’s age group. Franzen’s age group coincides roughly with my parents. My parents had a hard time understanding the internet. There are absolutely things my parents had a hard time understanding about me – it’s called a generational gap. Exacerbated by technology and pop culture. We all have them.

This is the book my PARENTS would identify with because, to me, Franzen’s talking about this technological divide from the other side of it. One of his characters says something about how it’s SO DIFFERENT that the older character in the book learned to use email in college while they, the younger person, learned to use it ON THEIR PHONE. One: it’s not that different except that Two: email is virtually obsolete in this reference. His characters don’t come across as genuine because, other than poor impulse control, their actions/processes don’t FEEL genuine. I think this is because his ‘parent’ characters are so far removed from my own experience (personally, as well as someone who is friends with their parents) and his younger characters don’t resonate because they’re a picture that he mashed up from Jersey Shore episodes and Republican rhetoric.

For those reasons, a lot of his ‘commentary’ didn’t ring true. It didn’t leave me thinking except to wonder about what the hoopla was all about. I maintain my original premise – we’re all fucked up, we all make decisions, we all live with the consequences. His overarching theme about compromise or how compromise fails didn’t jibe for me and still doesn’t. It’s like he wrote the book from opposing premises using the wife and the husband (albeit in EXACTLY THE SAME VOICE) and then just  threw in the son as a foil to show how much none of them knew each other.

It’s not a bad book, it’s just not as good as everyone would have you believe. Now I’ll probably have to dig up some book conversation to see if someone can point out what I’m missing.