Last year I
heard Jonathan Franzen in a literary programme being asked what he thought of
the literary courses purporting to teach would-be fiction writers the tricks of
the trade. Franzen heaved a deep sigh (which would have been heard at the back
of the auditorium even without the microphone), his body posture suggesting
this precisely was the sort of dross he was afraid he would be asked. His
answer was surprisingly sincere and unironic. He said that the literary courses
would not make a writer of you if you did not have the requisite talent;
however they could teach you the technical aspects of novel writing which you
would otherwise take a long time—as he did—to learn. He concluded by saying
that he did not enrol in any literary course but taught regularly in several.
Franzen was
on a promotion tour of Freedom which was published with a
tempest of media hype not seen since Ayatollah Khomeini took out a fatwa
against Salman Rushdie after the publication of Satanic Verses. The
interviewer was fawning over Franzen in a manner that was disrespectful to her
age, receiving every utterance of the writer as if he was revealing the secret formula for the elixir of life.
Franzen
then read out an extract from Freedom. If I remember correctly it
was about a telephonic dialogue between someone called Joey and a woman named
Carol. Joey used to go out with Carol’s daughter but had not called her since
he went to university and Carol was (rightly) thinking that he was planning to
ditch her daughter and was unhappy about it. I did not find the extract
particularly riveting but that could have been down to Franzen’s peculiarly
leaden and monotonous style of reading aloud.
Franzen’s
2001 novel, The Corrections, catapulted him to the position of a literary star.
Accolades were showered on him like confetti by the critics; the novel won the
National Book Award for that year (though not the Pulitzer), and was an
international best seller.
I read Corrections
during summer holidays a few years ago, and while I liked the novel a lot I
wasn’t sure that it was the greatest novel I had read.
Freedom is Franzen’s first work of fiction
after a long hiatus of nine years since Corrections was published. This time
round the media frenzy was even more. (The word ‘frenzy’ should be interpreted
advisedly. The frenzy surrounding the publication of a literary novel is not to
be mistaken for the frenzy outside White Hart Lane when Spurs play Arsenal in
Premiership Football; no one gets hurt. A few gushing Interviews in the culture
sections of broadsheets and ‘lively discussions’ on book blogs qualify, in my
view, for literary frenzy. To be fair Franzen’s mug did appear on the front
cover of the Time magazine, the first novelist to do so in ten years since
Stephen King; and that’s supposed to be a big deal.)
I read Freedom
after it came out in paperback, thinking, as I started reading the novel, let
me see what the fuss is about. In my experience the ‘long awaited’ follow-ups
to literary masterpieces rarely live up to expectations. Donna Tartt’s début novel, The Secret History, was sensational. She followed it, more than a
decade later, by The Little Friend, which was a damp squib.
I was
therefore not sure that I was going to like Freedom; but tell you
what, I loved it; I loved it more than The corrections.
In Freedom
Franzen tells the story of a middle-class Midwestern couple—Walter and Patty
Berglund—, their two children Joey and Jessica, and their friend Richard Katz.
These are the main characters. There is a raft of secondary, peripheral,
characters that enrich this magnificent novel.
The novel
is divided into several sections. In the opening section Franzen introduces the
reader to Walter and Patty, the baby-boomers who once lived in St Paul,
Minnesota, a run-down district before it was gentrified by the likes of Walter
and Patty. The novel opens with the
omnipresent narrator (whose presence is felt in all sections save those which
are memoirs of Patty Berglund, entitled ‘Mistakes were Made’) informing the
reader that Walter, who now lives in Washington D.C., has made a mess of his
professional life by getting embroiled in projects of dubious ethicality. The
minor notoriety Walter has attracted, the reader is informed, is in stark
contrast to the liberal, left-of-the-centre views the neighbours of the
Berglunds in St Paul associated him with.
The
panoramic introduction gives the readers some idea as to the direction the
novel will take. In the subsequent sections the reader is treated to a grand
tour, via various detours in the marriage of Walter and Patty, and lives of
other protagonists, the state of health of American society, including but not
limited to (as I understood it) the slow yet steady decline of liberalism. It
is also a compassionate commentary on the struggles and foibles of the
developed-world middle classes. At the heart of the story is the family of
Walter and Patty Berglund; Freedom is a family saga. Both
Walter and Patty have their baggages to carry. Patty is the eldest child of a
New York Jewish mother with left-leaning political views and ambitions, and an
‘exceedingly gentile’ father who is a barrister. Patty, who had a potential
career as a basketball player—never encouraged by her parents—that was thwarted
by an injury, wants to put as much distance—physical, emotional and
cognitive—between herself and her mother. Her ambition is to be a good
housewife and mother. Walter, a third generation Swede, is the middle child of
his parents, and has spent his whole childhood disliking his alcoholic father
and sociopathic brothers. He too wants to lead a life different from his
parents. Walter and Patty meet first in college and Patty is secretly attracted
to Walter’s best friend and roommate Richard Katz (a colonel Gaddafi
look-alike), another product of a dysfunctional family, who has musical
ambitions. Richard whose friendship with Walter—as Walter acknowledges at one
point—is characterized by brinkmanship covets Patty, but it is the slow and steady
Walter whom Patty marries and settles into what she hopes to be a life-time of
marital bliss. In due course they have two children—Jessica and Joey. Patty
comes to have such intense relationship with Joey that his only way not to be
suffocated by the possessive love of his mother is to rebel in a manner
calculated to enrage his parents. Joey starts a relationship with the next door
neighbour’s daughter who Patty thinks is ‘totally unsuitable’ for her son, not
least because of the difference in the social status of the two families.
Walter, a devoted conservationist, gets entangled in morally questionable
schemes of a multi-billionaire coal baron (with close links to Neo-cons) who is
apparently obsessed with creating a protected habitat of the rapidly declining
songbird, which necessitates shady dealings with other multinationals and
involve blowing off mountain tops. Walter, hired by the coal baron at
dizzying salary, convinces himself that what he is doing is
going to be of benefit in the long run even though it may make him look like a
conscienceless hypocrite in the short run. Walter is ably assisted in
maintaining this mirage by his attractive Indian assistant Lalitha. Lalitha,
engaged to an Indian neurosurgeon, has clearly fallen for her boss; and Walter
whose marriage to Patty, who is sinking deep into middle-age depression and
problem drinking, is floundering, is also attracted to Lalitha; however he is
not going to be waylaid into an affair because of his notions of fidelity to
his spouse. What Walter and Patty definitely do not need is trouble that would
jeopardize their relationship further. The trouble arrives in the form of
Richard Katz who, after years of obscurity as a musician, has, to his
discomfort, hit the popularity jackpot. Patty sleeps with Richard in the
Berglunds’ holiday cottage, bequeathed to Walter by his mother, while Walter is
running the busy schedule of enabling multinationals to inflict further damage
on nature and fending off come-ons from Lalitha. This will, in due course,
precipitate a crisis in the Berglund marriage. Walter’s son, in the meanwhile,
is running his own profiteering schemes, in partnership with other unscrupulous
characters, which involve fleecing the US army in Iraq with faulty army vehicles
for exorbitant prices. Joey has Republican sympathies and Walter’s own
lucrative dealings with the Neo-cons do not temper his horror at his son’s
betrayal of the ideology.
It all ends
well, you will be pleased to know, for the Berglunds (well, more or less). When
the novel ends Walter and Patty are back together (Lalitha having the decency
to die in a tragic road crash), and their children are settled.
Freedom is a neat novel. Despite its
various strands and the vast expanses of time covered (a large part of the
novel focuses on the years after 2001, but the time period stretches from the
1970s to present day), Franzen brings everything neatly together towards the
end, yet succeeds in not making it appearing too neat or formulaic.
Via the
Berglund family saga Franzen touches
several contemporary issues relevant both to America and wider world: the
atrocities at the World Trade Centre in 2001 and the ill-advised invasion of
Iraq; destruction of the natural habitats of birds and animals (a subject apparently
close to Franzen’s heart; he is particularly fascinated by the songbird—as
mentioned in his 2007 memoir The Discomfort Zone—which Walter so
valiantly tries to protect) and the effect on environment; and fatigue and
decline of liberal thinking in America (Franzen presumably is a Democrat, but
Walter, the fictional democrat, opines at one point that there is nothing wrong
with his wife’s mental state that a job wouldn’t resolve). All these themes
blend so well in the narrative structure of the novel that at no stage do they
seem like an unnecessary add-on.
That is not
all. One of the many reasons why this novel has struck a chord with wider
book-reading public (I think) is that it
touches upon and gives sometime-ironic-sometimes-sincere comment upon many contemporary
issues close to the heart of the developed world middle-classes. In that sense
the novel is similar to The Corrections, only better, as it is
not as inward looking as The Corrections.
Ultimately,
though, the novel succeeds because of Franzen’s eminently believable,
well-rounded and compassionate portraits of the worlds of his protagonists. The
story of Walter and Patty and their children and their friend Richard is the
story of you and me. And it is told in a manner that is funny, witty,
compassionate, humane, and, above all, utterly absorbing. (Not easy, this; Ian
McEwan could not pull it off in Solar which is on the theme of
global warming; there is a cheeky nod to McEwan’s Atonement in this novel,
when Joey struggles to interest himself in the descriptions of rooms and
paintings.) Freedom is a very well-written novel. At almost 600 pages it is
humongous, but it is also a literary page-turner.
In her
memoir Patty Berglund mentions that she is reading War and Peace; she even
compares herself at one point to Narasha. Has Franzen written a modern day War
and Peace? I wouldn’t know, as I haven’t read War and Peace. Is Freedom the Great American Novel? I
wouldn’t know about it either, because I haven’t read many American novels. What
I can say is Freedom is a smashing good read, one of the most enjoyable
novels I have read so far this year. Unhesitatingly recommended.
