From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

Freedom

Jonathan Franzen

Start date: April 15, 2011

Finish date: May 15, 2011

Discussion: Reading List

Discussion leader: Barbara

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Reading List

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What Members Thought

Sep 19, 2010 Marius van Blerck rated it really liked it

I liked this book, but about a third of the way into it, I reflected that modern American writers tend to weave sagas around people who are either FIBNECs or ELIs. I’ve read Franzsen’s The Corrections and now Freedom, and it seems that he’s in the former school. What are FIBNECs? They’re people who are Fairly Interesting, But Not Entirely Compelling. While they’re not nearly in the same high league as HICCUPs (Hectically Interesting Compulsively Compelling Unmodulated People) they’re streets or ...more

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Jun 09, 2011 Laurel Bradshaw rated it liked it

Shelves: chunky-450, minnesota, 20th-century, domestic-fiction, 21st-century, audiobook, perspectives-book-club

I am reluctantly giving this one three stars, because I found it very thought provoking. It is a story that will stay with you, although you really can't stand the characters, and find them highly selfish and disfunctional, and yet you keep reading (or listening) because you want things to work out in the end. Franzen examines the theme of freedom through the often agonizing choices (mostly bad) made by the members of an affluent liberal midwestern family. At the same time he is giving us a very ...more

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Oct 27, 2010 Lisa rated it liked it

Though I am not quite finished reading it I feel the need to talk about it. It is a hard book to enjoy because I haven't developed any attachments to the characters. To be honest there is not a lovable one out of the bunch. Each character has their redeeming qualities, but also seem to be more of a character study than a real person or maybe as if it was all a platform for differing political opinions. The title and reoccurring theme of Freedom means something different to each one. The idea tha ...more

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Dec 27, 2010 Dree rated it liked it

Shelves: 2011-reads, 1001-read

OK. I did like this book, but I didn't think it measured up to The Corrections.

Franzen is really good at explaining peoples' frustrations--Walter's internal diatribes on population, oil, no-bid contracts during war, and cats, are priceless. He does a great job showing dysfunctional families--of various sorts.

But, with this book, I felt it was about 100 pages too long. Or maybe 100 pages too short. The story flows so well--the kids growing up, Joey's relationship with Connie, Patty's confusion, W ...more

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Mar 12, 2011 April rated it did not like it

Shelves: book-group

I tried; I really did. But just about every time I picked this book up it put me to sleep. I *did* finally manage to finish it, but mainly because I couldn't imagine how Franzen could possibly manage the ending I heard about at book group. And also because I've wondered for years whether I missed something by giving up too quickly on The Corrections. All I can say is that if it weren't for the naps, I'd have gotten absolutely nothing from this book. Imagine "American Beauty," but with absolutely ...more

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Sep 20, 2010 Cynthia rated it it was amazing

Franzen is one of the best authors we have. I absolutely loved this book. (And before Oprah picked it.) I could not put it down and was very sad when it was over. I have read some of the debates of how a male author can write a woman's point of view but I say Franzen nails it on the head. I related to the families here. He writes of truth, disappointment, settling, and going for what you want. Outstanding. Slight disappointment with the last section of the book but I won't give any spoilers. Buy ...more

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Oct 01, 2010 Cdrueallen rated it liked it

I expected to love FREEDOM because THE CORRECTIONS had in its day been one of my favorite novels; because I'd read the first two chapters in the New Yorker and they'd been standouts in that elite fictional environment; and above all because I'd heard that the human-precipitated collapse of the ecosystem was a major theme in FREEDOM.

The first chapter of Freedom didn't disappoint, full of Franzen's sweetly snarky descriptions of the gentrifying middle class circa 1980's:

"There were... more contemp I expected to love FREEDOM because THE CORRECTIONS had in its day been one of my favorite novels; because I'd read the first two chapters in the New Yorker and they'd been standouts in that elite fictional environment; and above all because I'd heard that the human-precipitated collapse of the ecosystem was a major theme in FREEDOM.

The first chapter of Freedom didn't disappoint, full of Franzen's sweetly snarky descriptions of the gentrifying middle class circa 1980's:

"There were... more contemporary questions, like, what about those cloth diapers? Worth the bother?... Was bulgur really necessary?... How to respond when a person of color accused you of destroying the neighborhood?... Was it better to offer panhandlers food, or nothing?.... Could coffee beans be ground the night before, or did this have to be done in the morning?"

I enjoyed this perfect skewering of a lifestyle in which moral questions about charity and gentrification carry the same weight as decisions about when to grind the coffee beans. I 'd already read B. R. Meyers review of FREEDOM in which he criticized Franzen's language for being "strenuously contemporary and therefore juvenile" but I have no objections to the easy way Franzen's prose slides from eye to brain, going down like a good Gewurztraminer, its fruity sweetness balanced by a little phenolic bitterness and hiding a suprising alcoholic punch. The first sign of trouble came with the second chapter, the one in which Franzen's heroine Patty experiences date rape by the son of a prominent family and lack of support from her own parents. Like the first chapter, I'd already read it in the New Yorker, but unlike the first chapter, I couldn't get myself to reread it. It was hard to believe that the same author who in the first chapter described Patty's neighbor as someone who "had formerly been active with the SDS in Madison and was now very active in the craze for Beaujolais nouveau" opened his second chapter with "If Patty weren't an atheist, she would thank the good Lord for school athletic programs, because they basically saved her life and gave her a chance to realize herself as a person." Realizing themselves as people isn't something I expect (or look forward to) from Franzen's characters.

Self-realizing Patty is the main problem with FREEDOM, because the only thing she ends up realizing after a lifetime of marriage, motherhood, and an illicit love affair with her husband's best friend is that she'd rather be dead than single. But Patty's an Amazon compared to creepy Connie, who atones for her small sexual rebellion against Patty's son Joey by cutting her arms and giving Joey all of her college trust fund money. This so excites Joey that he marries Connie. Because the author doesn't seem to realize how creepy these relationships are, it makes him seem a little creepy too. The only major female character in FREEDOM who has anything going for her is Patty's husband Walter's young lover Lalitha, who though she works for, has sex with, and adores Walter, is at least better at her job than Walter is at his. Which I suspect is why she had to die, the literary fate of far too many interesting women.

In Franzen's THE CORRECTIONS, mom Edith, Patty's analogue in Franzen's family mythology, discovers after forty or so years of marriage that life without her husband is better than life with him, and daughter Denise discovers she loves being a chef more than she likes being to married to one, and that sex with her boss's wife is much better than sex with him. How did Franzen go from these often disagreeable but always fascinating women to the insipid female doormats in FREEDOM? Perhaps because his world view has changed from a Marxist-tinged critique of capitalism and consumer culture to a deeply pessimistic sociobiological view of the human species. in FREEDOM, Franzen isn't wondering whether or not we use our freedom wisely, but if we have any, or whether we're merely evolutionary automata with the probably catastrophic agenda of reproducing our own species at all costs. From this perspective, Patty makes sense. She's one of those socially monogamous birds who mates with the less attractive yet responsible male (Walter) who will help her raise her nestlings, but sneaks off at the first opportunity to have sex with the stronger more colorful male (Richard) who is too busy having sex with lots of chicks to settle down. Makes me wonder if the reason Patty's so in love with her son Joey is that there's something she isn't telling Walter and Franzen isn't telling us about Joey's actual paternity. But even sociobiology can't explain why Joey is so attracted to Connie, who couldn't survive on her own long enough to raise a hamster.

At this point in his career, Franzen doesn't seem to like women any better than Tolstoy did, perhaps placing most of the blame for the destruction of his beloved songbirds on the reproductive agendas of human females. I know just how he feels. But this avian alienation of Franzen's affections presents him with a perhaps insurmountable novelistic problem: how to engage human readers in the plight of a non-verbal species? Franzen hasn't solved it in FREEDOM, whose women annoy and whose men fail to engage my emotions. But there are moments that bring me around to loving FREEDOM. These come when Franzen writes about what he really cares about, which isn't Patty:

"It was the season of migration, of flight and song and sex...Terns came up from one subarctic to the other, swifts took airborne naps and never landed, song-filled thrushes waited for a southern wind and then flew nonstop for twelve hours.... High-rises and power lines and wind turbines and cellphone towers and road traffic mowed down millions of migrants, but millionis more made it through, many of them returning to the very same trees they'd nested in the year before... and there, if they were male, began to sing. Each year, they arrived to find more of their former homes paved over for parking lots or highways... Migrants exhausted by their five-thousand-mile journey competed with earlier arrivals for the remaining scraps of territory; they searched in vain for a mate, they gave up on nesting.... they were killed for sport by free-roaming cats."

FREEDOM's worth reading in spite of its flaws because Franzen has had the courage to write a big readable naturalistic novel with a social agenda, the kind of novel Sinclair Lewis used to write, a style of writing that's so out of style that I for one am extremely grateful that a writer as talented as Franzen is trying to keep it alive.
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Mar 23, 2013 Miriam rated it liked it

Shelves: 2013, best-of-2013

I really hate the star system for these kinds of books.

I'm not sure how to review this book. It's not the great American novel, but I see the potential. Franzen is no slouch but the novel suffered from too much observation (if astute) and not enough edge. It's like Franzen can recognize the issues but is to close to comment on them effectively (usefully?). I recognized myself and my generation but was neither affirmed (not a bad thing) or challenged. ...more

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Nov 02, 2010 Beth rated it it was ok

Ho-hum. What is all the fuss about? This book is a slog -- I kept waiting for it to get better. There were a few interesting sections, but not many. Patty, Walter and Richard are three of the most boring characters you could ever hope to meet. Save yourself the trouble and reread a classic, any classic.

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Jan 25, 2011 Barbara rated it it was ok

Shelves: my-kindle-books, book-club, contemporary-fiction

I'm giving two stars, only because I do not enjoy reading this many pages. The last two chapters were the best, and, even though I was glad to finally end this read, I wanted to find out what happened Patty and Walter. This was my Book Club's choice. ...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Debra added it

Shelves: audiobooks

Because of all the hype, I wanted to read this book. Now, I am thinking that it needs to be washed from my brain. Disagreeable characters, all of whom need hit upside their heads, meandering plots that seems to be modeled on drunken rants.... I am completely puzzled why anyone would gush over this book.

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