Have you read this book? Do we agree that it is timelessly good?

[Regan]

I believe Freedom, along with The Corrections, will be remembered, as timeless in so far as Franzen's characters are convincing without being characitures of contemporary Americans. As a New Zealander looking from afar at the anxieties and travails of the peoples and institutions of the US Franzen's books, for me, wrap these contradictions in human from. Perhaps overwrought in places but ulimately a chronicle of time and place.

[David]

The farther I read the better I understood the characters and the better I liked them. Its a great book. Left me feeling that I'll never find another novel as great.

[Regan]

[Lynne]

Lori wrote: "Honestly, I could not even finish this book. Loved his first endeavor. Even the first two-thirds of the book moved along pretty well - great characters and interactions. However, once I hit the ..."

EXACTLY! nothing "timeless" about it except all the mindless publicity before it's release. I was left unimpressed and bored.

[[deleted user]]

Lynne wrote: "EXACTLY! nothing "timeless" about it except all the mindless publicity before it's release. I was left unimpressed and bored. "

Why?

[Regan]

It's a shame you didn't finish it...

[Ginger]

I agree with Lynne.

[Jim]

I think for a contemporary reader, FREEDOM is a great read that has insight into modern life and some of the ways a character or situation is described is very funny but poignant at the same time.

I love Dante's INFERNO and really like where there is a glossary or explanation of who and why Dante includes certain characters in certain circles of Hell.

I'm sure that future readers will have to have some type of companion explanation of what Franzen is alluding to in various scenes as well but I don't believe the book will be timeless as so really few of anything end up being timeless whether it's books, music, movies and even buildings.

[Regan]

Interesting thought Jim; how will future readers find Fredom and Franzen...might it be something like us reading Updike or Steinbeck today? Fascinating to ponder, I guess it may depend in part on where the US gets to as a society.

[Madhuri]

Loved this book, specially Franzen's feel for words, very often I found myself re reading the sentences. The main protagonists Walter and Patty Berglund, ordinary middle class folks, like the vast majority of people in the western world. It is timeless book, in the sense it gives a glimpse of 21st century USA, the infamy of Iraq war and Bush years.

[Clark]

I like all of the characters in this novel and would like to meet each at a separate time but the same place, a dark alley comes to mind, how would they begin the conversation, meeting a stranger?

[Rachel]

Don wrote: "Two other Franzen-like novels that come to mind: Then We Came to the End (very, very funny, but also touching in its own way) and Matrimony (Joshua Henkin) (a fun-to-read literary love story; very ..."

Thanks for the suggestions, Don! For me, other things still taste good (to continue Sally's metaphor), but Franzen's approach is so interesting to me that I'd love to explore novels with a similar approach.

[Teresa]

I really enjoyed this book. I don't know if I would go so far as to call it timeless. The character's were so flawed, it was like watching an accident and you couldn't pull your eyes away.

[Dennis]

I read many comments, not every last one I admit, and I did not find A SINGLE SOLITARY INSTANCE where one of the commentors mentioned the name of one of the FREEDOM characters. "The wife" "the husband" "the son" "the girlfriend" "the rock star"... if these characters were so darned good/well-drawn, it looks like someone would refer to them using a given name. No one ever calls Toto "the dog." So my opinion is that FREEDOM is not timeless.

[[deleted user]]

Dennis wrote: "No one ever calls Toto 'the dog.' "

Allow me to point out that Toto is so familiar with people because of a film adaptation. Just because we can't remember every character's name, doesn't mean the novel isn't timeless. I personally don't think it's timeless, but I'm forced to defend the novel against your logic.

If you've read Lolita, you'll no doubt remember Dolores and Humbert. But sometimes I struggle to remember Dolores' mother's name, or her teacher's name.

Or if you've read Ulysses, perhaps you remember Leopold, Stephen and Molly, but can you remember the name of the man being buried at the funeral? I can't, and I've read and studied the novel.

Or better yet, can you name Achilles' best friend? Or the king of Troy? Or Hector and Paris' other brother? Or the King of Sparta?

I'm merely illustrating that just because the names are not immediately memorable doesn't mean the characters aren't memorable. Plus, in another misstep, just because characters aren't memorable doesn't mean the novel won't be timeless. I mean, I can't remember anybody from the Aeneid save for Aeneas, and it's one of the greatest works of literature to ever grace the Earth.

[Monty J]

Not timelessly good, but a necessary read to see what the fuss and Krazny's whoops were about. Franzen's concerned with the global socio-political landscape, as am I, and I wanted to see how he handled it. Since globalization has made America more vulnerable to terrorism, we are forced think way beyond our hometowns. I deeply respect him for taking that on and doing a credible job.

I didn't become emotionally engaged with the characters, even though I was philosophically in synch with some of them and wanted to. I wanted the villains to be exposed and vanquished and the hero to suffer more and be a bit more rewarded and acknowledged.

If the rest of the book had been rendered as strongly as the last ten pages it would have been a great book.

[[deleted user]]

Wordist wrote: "Not timelessly good, but a necessary read to see what the fuss and Krazny's whoops were about. Franzen's concerned with the global socio-political landscape, as am I, and I wanted to see how he han..."

Probably the most measured and reasonable criticism of the book I've read. Although, I don't know about the claim regarding globalization and terrorism. It's not like terrorism didn't exist before globalization.

[Michael]

macgregor wrote: "Or better yet, can you name Achilles' best friend? Or the king of Troy? Or Hector and Paris' other brother? Or the King of Sparta?"

Patroclus
Priam
(blank)
Menelaus

Come on, you got to know a few of those!

[Michael]

Dennis wrote: "I did not find A SINGLE SOLITARY INSTANCE where one of the commentors mentioned the name of one of the FREEDOM characters. "The wife" "the husband" "the son" "the girlfriend" "the rock star"... if these characters were so darned good/well-drawn, it looks like someone would refer to them using a given name..."

Great point, Dennis! I liked Freedom, but I did notice that when I was reading it, even VERY late in the book, I sometimes got the rock star's name mixed up with the husband's -- two simple names and I had to work to keep them distinct in my mind even then. I cannot remember either one of them right now. They were interchangeable.... and I think you're right in pinpointing that as showing a weakness in the book. The characters are not memorable. It's just funny and clever and, on those levels, a heckuva lot more interesting to read than 99% of modern fiction. Which is unbelievably mediocre, IMO. An endless flood of the same basic self-pitying crapola. Or, in those rare cases when not self-pitying, self-glorifying.... limited in a different way. The writers seem to know so little... why is that? Franzen is better in that regard. He tries for more, and he often succeeds, I think.

[[deleted user]]

Michael wrote: "
Patroclus
Priam
(blank)
Menelaus

Come on, you..."

My point was that memorable characters doesn't mean memorable name. I understand where Dennis is coming from, but I totally remember the personalities of the three main characters. I remember two out of three names, too.

[glenda]

Oh, my... This book, to me, represents a lot of hours I will never get back. I really can't figure out why some people like it so much! I found the wife self important and full of excuses, and the husband a whiner who enjoyed his misery. The only one who had any personality at all was the best friend, at least he knew he was a jerk and was upfront about it.

[Ruthmgon]

It seems like people either love or hate this book. I fall into the second group. I agree with not having to like the characters in a novel, and I also only finished this because I read it in a book group. Luckily our book group read some Edith Wharton after this and her mastery was apparent immediately.(The Custom of the Country) I did not like any of the characters in that novel either, but I loved the book. Here in Wharton's novel we have a social commentary, with flawed characters and sad upper middle class lives, unfaithful to each other and the novel is as far and away better than Franzen's.


Despite opinions being mostly subjective, I was relieved to find that others found it tedious in this thread, because I felt this way too and am never certain if I just don't connect with a writer because of my mood at the time I read them. I have no interest in reading other books by this author because of this novel.

[Michael]

macgregor wrote:"My point was that memorable characters doesn't mean memorable name. I understand where Dennis is coming from, but I totally reme..."

I know, I did get your point. Plus I just finished rereading the Odyssey, so those names were front and center for me. Nonetheless, I think you're not quite right on this. Pip.... Levin..... the Countess Olenska..... Hester Prynne. I'll never forget those names.

Just as an fyi, those dissatisfied with Franzen might give the Odyssey a try. The Stanley Lombardo translation is up-to-the-minute, makes for easy and very enjoyable reading. I loved this reread, probably more than my original school-required reading. It's fantastic, and will surely prompt some questioning about why modern writing can't be this much fun and engaging.

[Mary]

One of the best I've ever read and then the next one you should read is John Dalton's Inverted Forest.

[Grant]

This book is like a road accident. Horrible. A mess. But I could not look away. And once I was past it, had trouble shaking the uneasiness and awfulness of it from my memory.

[Cyndy]

I read it about a year ago. It was fairly good until he tried to end it. I found them all so rigidly hypocritical about their environmental causes. For people who were supposed to be so sophiticated and intelligent, they had no clue on how to relate to their family. Thought it was really over-rated by the media, but big surprise there.

[Alan]

I think whether the reader likes or even empathizes with these characters (I could do neither) is important, but the essential questions to ask about them are: Do these people bear any resemblance to real people? Is this how men and women really behave? Are they really representative of American Society today? I think that Franzen set out to apotheosize America today--has he done so? I dont think so and I certainly hope not.

[Peggy]

I just don't get it. First The Corrections and now Freedom. I don't buy the hype. And can't for the life of me figure out why the world thinks this guy is the greatest American novelist of all time. To compare him to Updike or Roth or DeLillo or even Cheever is pure madness! Freedom is nothing but a soap opera and Franzen has just done a brilliant job of self-promotion. Where I got off in Freedom was in one of the scenes where Joey and Connie are having phone sex. There's a scatological image there that harkens back to one in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. And then it occurred to me, Franzen thinks he's Pynchon!! How wrong he is!

[Alan]

I agree with all you said, Peggy...and when he writes of a man whose penis talks to him he sounds like Mailer, and when he writes of adolescent sexuality, like Roth (there the comparison ends). Franzens best book, in my opinion, was The 27th City, a very clever tale of an East Indian woman who, as mayor of St Louis, becomes a dictator.

[Vedrana]

Lori wrote: " Even the first two-thirds of the book moved along pretty well - great characters and interactions. However, once I hit the ..."

I would say first 1/3, or 1/2 at most. Franzen knows how to start a novel, but it is only a part of the job.

[Amy]

Ick. Read this for book group - went in thinking that it would be a good read based on all of the reviews I had read. What a disappointment. I agree, I never did care what happened to any of the characters, and kept waiting for some kind of development or connection. In my opinion, Franzen has been told one too many times that he's an amazing author. I had to purchase this book in hardcover, and ALWAYS keep those on my bookshelves. This one went into the donation bin after I finished!!

[John]

I understand your reaction to "Freedom", I too was very moved by it. It was a long time before I found another novel even remotely as compelling. However, I do not feel that it is timeless. I think it will stand as an iconic novel for a specific demographic of a specific generation: The middle class educated children born in the late 60's to late 70's. - If you do not belong to that demographic, then I stand corrected.

If you're looking for another great book, you could try "Barney's Version" by Mordecai Richler, or "The Tender Bar" by J.R. Moehringer. However, one thing Franzen does extremely well for a male author is write female roles. The above recommendations may be less unisex and more specifically male oriented. I can't say, as I am a dude. Hope you find another good book soon, it sucks feeling parched in a sea of literature.

[Steve]

It's timeless, alright. A timeless example of a bad novel. Franzen is ludicrously overrated

[Jean]

Not timelessly good, not that good at all. See my Nov. 17, 2012 review. The freedom I mostly observed in this book was freedom from editing. way too long and needlessly wordy.

[Tema]

Freedom was a book that was trial of a reader's patience! I cared so little about the self-indulgent characters that at a place in the book when one of the characters was on a bridge I prayed that he would jump and end my misery!

[Ronald]

My review of this book got deleted by the woman who started the Big Book Challenge, but soem of you might like it:

Franzen Freedom in Free Verse

Patty, you pirouetted freely on the floor
Of a baller gym trying to escape the still-hot embers
Of free love freely robbed from you
Honeybee rapes the flower,
Robs the honeysuckle of that which

Heaven gave, and though depraved
Men who claim your fealty, family
Fails to carry swords for girls
Carries water for criminals
With bigger dicks and wallets

Walter, frozen like a shallow pond
In Iron Ranging winter raging
Through your backwoods blood, the
Booze and smokes of the Bemidji men
Who tie the women down with drink and

Servitude. The weight of constant winter
Silent spring traps you in a world of must
Until you find a free spirit free love freely
Given in sattvic smiles saturated with
Sex and satisfaction. Shiva sweeps in

Swollen roadbeds slippery tar and loosened
Gravel thrown from truckbeds full to
Breaking broken coal soot whiskey
Fly Lalitha, fly love free for though
You came to this overpopulated

Planet poised to choke on smoke
City soaked with human sorrow
You found freedom, love to borrow
Wresting Walter from his chains
Of filial obligation now you’re gone

Children live, triangulated
Joey individuated
Wrapped in teen lust, still a boy
Coupled free of Mom and Dad
Grab that prize! Trash her later

Make connection, take that contract
Find a way to cop free stash and
Money by the hundred thousand
Find the stench of rotting blood
Turns you back, pay ill with good

Rock star Richard
Fluid rake
Will you take
Her mistake
Thrown like waste
In the face
Of the chick
Who would stick
To the pick
Your guitar
Travels far
From the heart
Of your Walt
Though you love him
You betray him
With your radar cock
you slay him
Sets him free
To love and lose
And grieve

Yet another, a girl who might redeem
Brokenness, the wretched weight of empty
Space between the fibers raveling.
Free from guttering smoky flame
Of family’s woven wick, Jessica,

Your mother’s calling,
Calling
Calling
You are my mirror. Cast the light
Where I fail, hebete presence, to shine.
Hurl spears for me. Then salve
The wounds I caused. Put the pieces of Patty

Back together. Walter’s birds, however fragile,
Can not rise or sing with their savior
Limned on a cross with
Anger
Pain
Loss
Betrayal
Richard
Lalitha
Patty

Free to be who we aren’t
Freedom’s never free
For the cost is the loss
Of who we

[Tema]

Lovely!

[Fred]

I won't weigh into the 'did it live up to the hype' hysteria, but I enjoyed this novel. In fact, with the exception of The Twenty-Seventh City, I've enjoyed all of Franzen's work. And now, thanks to Gabi, I'm planning to check out Don Delillo. Always excited to read something new to me!

[Pablo]

DeLillo is a great american writer, his prose is unforgettable, he's just "magical" and really fine to me. Another writer that I really adore in the same vein, and I think superior to Franzen but a little bit underestimated these days where he's no longer alive, is John Updike and his Rabbit books are particularly great.

I also feel Philip Roth's American Pastoral plays on a very similar league.

[Ronald]

I was taking an American Lit class, in which I read a bunch of really nasty reviews of Rabbit. I'm sorta embarrassed, being a Jewish novelist, not to be able to comment on Roth.

[Pablo]

I know Updike has a fame of being a little bit mysoginistic which takes to the sometime common confusion between the characters and the author. Janice, Rabbit's Wife, is as despicable as Rabbit it is. What Updike does (and he does it beautifully) is giving them a beautiful consciousness.

They're failed but rich human souls. As for Roth, and I consider this judgment limited since I'm spanish, I think he's a hell of a writer.

From his underrated books (take the Professor of Desire) to the awarded ones, he's proven again that he can draw amazing characters and great social observations.

Franzen owes a lot to them, though maybe some of this is more noticeable in The Correction than in Freedom.

[Matthew]

Gabi, I completely agree that Franzen can't compare to Delillo. And I'm not even a huge fan of Delillo!

[Psagen]

I agree with a previous comment about how with so many books published each year and coming in the future that a book would need to be really special to be considered timeless. Does this book qualify? I doubt it. Actually The Corrections impressed me much more than this book and I don't consider that book timeless either.

[Yusuf]

The mixed reactions to this piece have really puzzled me. I don't always tear through books, but I sure tore through this one, and it inspired me about the power and reach of great writing. A year later, I keep rethinking key scenes (like the MC's environmentalist rant in West Virginia). Just astonishing stuff.

[Pablo]

The ending lines are beautiful and just powerful. I like that Richard redeems himself, that Walter forgives Patty and specially, I like how Patty gets "back" into his family. I found the structure of the book a devilish and beautiful trick of point of views.

[scooby]

Nelly wrote: "Deb wrote: "I've personally never minded if characters in a book are immoral or unlikeable, since their badness or unlikeability are sometimes very much the point of the book. What I loved about F..."

i have to side with nelly and deb on this issue. with regards to the timelessness of the novel, it is certainly a possibility. it offers an accurate snapshot or time-capsule characterizing major problems in the world today such as overpopulation and destruction of ecosystems.

[Holly]

I would have to disagree--I was not thrilled with the book. I think I'm just not a fan of Franzen's stories in general (although this one was less depressing than The Corrections)--when speaking to a friend about it, he phrased it well, saying that Franzen "hates his characters." I do feel that Franzen focuses on bringing out the worst in humanity and highlighting the most depressing aspects of life. I like his rich detail and his clearly well-thought-out characters, but there is a heaviness and horribleness that permeates his books that just doesn't work for me personally.

[Yusuf]

Holly wrote: "I would have to disagree--I was not thrilled with the book. I think I'm just not a fan of Franzen's stories in general (although this one was less depressing than The Corrections)--when speaking t..." I think the fact that I identified with most of them so strongly took them out of the "horrible" category... they all had their reasons. That's what makes life such a complex business.

[Dona]

I really loved this book for its insight, humor and characters that reeked of humanity. It's Gatsby but with more likable characters and humor. I also thought the narration--{Patty's autobiography outlined by a third person narrator was very effective and added humor when possible.)

[M]

I don't think this is timelessly good.

Context
Jonathan Franzen is one of my favorite authors, so I'm not saying this or any of his other works are bad. I have read most of his work.

Explanation
Freedom is one of my favorite books. This is one of the best books in literary fiction for readers who have lived through this time period or readers who are seeking explanations about what people were like. But without that, I think the timelessness is questionable. Franzen is very timely, though. He is the best author to capture the American psyche right now.

This is just my opinion and reaction to your topic. Thanks for posing a compelling topic!