Smaller than Life (A Review of Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom")

The Atlantic ^ | October 2010 | B.R. Myers

[mojito]

One opens a new novel and is promptly introduced to some dull minor characters. Tiring of them, one skims ahead to meet the leads, only to realize: those minor characters are the leads. A common experience for even the occasional reader of contemporary fiction, it never fails to make the heart sink. The problem is not only one of craft or execution. Characters are now conceived as if the whole point of literature were to create plausible likenesses of the folks next door. They have their little worries, but so what? Do writers really believe that every unhappy family is special? If so, Tolstoy has a lot to answer for—including Freedom, Jonathan Franzen’s latest. A suburban comedy-drama about the relationship between cookie-baking Patty, who describes herself as “relatively dumber” than her siblings; red-faced husband Walter, “whose most salient quality … was his niceness”; and Walter’s womanizing college friend, Richard, who plays in an indie band called Walnut Surprise, the novel is a 576-page monument to insignificance.

[mojito]

He doesn't like it.

B.R. Myers recently wrote a very interesting book on the political ideology of North Korea, called The Cleanest Race.

This review is well worth reading for a number of rather surprising reasons, especially considering that it was published in the Atlantic.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks mojito.

A suburban comedy-drama about the relationship between cookie-baking Patty, who describes herself as "relatively dumber" than her siblings; red-faced husband Walter, "whose most salient quality … was his niceness"; and Walter’s womanizing college friend, Richard, who plays in an indie band called Walnut Surprise, the novel is a 576-page monument to insignificance.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, after all, it is a novel. Probably be made into a movie and win a prize or two in literature.