A couple of months ago, after Harvey Pekar's death, I blogged about my admiration for Pekar and I mentioned in passing that Pekar was one of the very few writers who gave an accurate representation of working class life. I felt that the blind spot of our most celebrated novelists was their shoddy portrayal of working class people and their tin ear for blue collar dialogue. In my post on the Iraq War memoir House to House I banged on about the same theme and mentioned Amis, Barnes and Rushdie as writers who just don't get working class people because they are private school boys who come from wealthy backgrounds. I think this is more of a problem in the UK than the US because of greater social mobility; however it still seems to be an issue - my buddy John McFetridge sent me this review from the Toronto Star of Jonathan's Franzen's new novel Freedom. In particular this paragraph struck him: "... the novel’s working class characters, including young Joey’s wife Carol and her mother Connie, read as parodies of the American lumpen proletariat. The women are strong, a little slutty and adverse to self-analysis and other intellectual pursuits; the men are a mob of gun totin’, flag lovin’, liberal hatin’ yokels standing in the way of progress."...
Now I liked Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, but I'm not in the mood for another patronising take on blue collar life. These things are not good for my blood pressure as my wife will tell you after we watched Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. (I had to get a quiet corner and reread Jim Webb's Born Fighting until I calmed down.) So before I lay out my cash...if anyone has read Freedom I'd really appreciate their take on this issue.
97 comments:
I've read it. I'm still sorting out my own thoughts about it, though, because it's got to be the most hyped book on the planet right now. Frankly, the working class neighbors are pretty minor characters, and one thing that struck me is that it limits itself to a pretty small substrata of American society. Dices, slices and skewers that class very nicely, but for me, it came across as a bit insular, especially for a book with such a big agenda. I wouldn't say that the working class came in for a harder time than any other portion of society. He is not what I would call compassionate towards his characters.
It's an effortless read, though, and I think you'll probably want to read it at some point. There's a lot of good stuff in it. Maybe your wife can teach you some calming yoga postures.
Seana
Well I'm only at page 70 of Tony Blair's book so I'm not going to have to make a decision on this before the weekend.
Blair's book (as many have said) is very strange. Its written in a mid Atlantic slangy chatty style which is none the less very readable. The structure is interesting, jumping forward and backwards in time, and there isn't a whole of ideological verbiage which is good. However he wears his heart on his sleeve a little too much for my taste: there's an embarassing scene I just read where his wife hugs him and rocks him like a baby (shudders). It was probably a mistake on my part to buy the US edition which I am convinced is a little different from the UK edition - there's a long preface all about America which I'm sure isnt in the UK book and there are many sections in parenthesis explaining what a by election is and who Tony Benn was that must have been put in by the editors at Knopf.
Still so far so good. Probably the most readable PM's memoir I've read since Churchill's My Early Life.
I didn't have a problem with the family in MILLION DOLLAR BABY. Maybe it's because I grew up on the northern outskirts of Appalachia and know families like that. i didn't take it as indicative of an entire group of people, because I also knew of other families of similar financial and social circumstances who were completely different.
Dana
Its the pattern that bugged me. Have you ever seen those other families positively shown in a positive light in a Hollywood movie? Ever?
I hated Million Dollar Baby for almost the same reason. the last movie I remember with a sympathetic look at the white working poor was Coal Miner's Daughter.
Alex
To be honest I dont remember a whole lot about Coal Miner's Daughter. Tommy Lee Jones driving round in a jeep and a cute scene where they drive out to some rural radio station and beg their way onto the air.
Oh and a really nice rendition of Blue Moon of Kentucky at some point.
And of course Coal Miner's Daughter is about someone who "gets out" of the working class, the only thing Hollywood (and now literature, it seems) can imagine anyone wanting to do.
That's my issue with the way the working class is always portrayed, the goal is always to get out as if it's life in prison or something and only the 'special' ones can manage it.
I think it's funny that Arianna Huffington is leading the charge to save the middle class. In my gloomier moods I think that's too late because the foundation - the working class - has already been defeated.
Oh well, at least there are still cops in the movies and in books, the only working class characters with any dignity.
I'm guessing that the stranger a politician's memoir is, the more likely it is that one can read the truth between the lines.
The one detail that stood out to me about the next door neighbors in Franzen's book was that they decide to remodel and add a Great Room. Now normally I would havee thought, What the hell is a Great Room? but I just happened to recently watch an episode of Clean House (my subtititute for actually cleaning my own), where the cluttersome family said that they would like their clutter filled space to be turned into one. Although a Great Room has echoes of a medieval hall, it's apparently really just an oversized rec room with delusions of grandeur. I think Franzen does puncture such social aspirations, but then, I think he punctures everybody's aspirations and motivations.
His is not an Anne Frankish sort of view of humanity. He is dubious of everybody's motivations, including his own, I'd say.
What I think is different from England is that people who might now be upper middle class can easily have middle class or lower middle class backgrounds. Working class might have some resonance in the more industrially oriented states, but until recently, a college education was the real class divider for many, many people. I think Franzen came from the kind of middle class background where some of your friends parents might be lawyers and doctors, and some might be factory workers, and no one would have examined that too much. As in my growing up, it mattered less where you'd been than where you were going, and that depended more on what your parents believed was possible for your future than thier actual income levels.
Just saw your comment, John, and just to play devil's advocate for a moment, didn't both you and Adrian to some extent 'escape' your working class backgrounds, for all your continuing allegiance to it? And isn't higher education the necessary factor in this?
A long time ago one of my teachers recommended Norman Podheretz's Making It as a great example of this kind of educational striving that separates a person from their first community.
Well, I can't speak for Adrian but I can say that my goal in spending ten years as a part-time university student wasn't to escape my working-class life. I had his naive idea that it might help me learn how to write (and I never would have taken the final three non-electives to gradute but my wife reallywanted me to;).
Now, why did I want to write? Or really, why did I want to get paid to tell stories?
It'll probably sound cheesy and pretentious, but I really did feel that the kind of characters I write about are rarely in literature and I wanted to tell their stories. Or, I wanted to flesh them out a little more than the caricatures Adrian complains about.
Fair enough, John, and it doesn't sound pretentious.
However, I do think that in America upward mobility is a true aspiration of the working class. I don't know exactly where I fit in this story but I know that my dad's parents had fierce desire to get everybody off the farm and education was the means to do it. I think my mom's parents had some of this same drive for their daughters as well, but the real, drag yourself up by the bootstraps upward urge was my grandfather's journey from being a child in poverty to becoming a lawyer by going to night school to do it. I don't think they were all that unusual in their drives and goals, but I do think education is separating. Not from your family, particularly, but from your community, I think pretty decisively. I don't for a moment mean to imply that it's because the other people are stupid. It's just that education of whatever sort provides its own frame that excludes previous thinking. I suppose the same would apply to induction into a cult.
It's just that education of whatever sort provides its own frame that excludes previous thinking.
Wow, I'd love it if they'd put that in the brochures. I guess that's why my wife had to take those liberal arts classes as part of her engineering degree ;)
I think in our current culture there's no seperation between poverty and working-class and that's where we trip up.
I guess the question about upward mobility is how far is enough, and how big a role does socialization play in what we consider enough? And, of course, as the working class has been destroyed I can understand why no one wants to be a part of it.
But the big thing for me isn't that people want to move up from the workig class, I get that, it's the portrayal of the working class in our media. I remember when I was on campus and people were worried about funding cuts they were using the slogan, "If you think education is expensive try ignorance." I mean it's funny that they could be saying something so dumb and not realize it but it's also not funny, you know?
Seana
I think you make a fair point. Why did I want to go to Uni. Why did I want to become a lawyer? I think it must have been because I wanted what those people in that part of the middle class had.
But on the other hand when I started writing stories and novels I utterly rejected this notion that all working class people were or had to be stupid.
I remember some asshole in the Detroit Free Press or somewhere complaining about Michael Forsythe because he's listening to an audio book version of War and Peace? Working class people dont read War and Peace - they watch TV, didn't I know that?
V annoying.
Right. I think the snickering attitude about the working class has become a shadow side of liberal values. I think it's kind of the same thing as ridiculing people with southern accents. At the root, I think it's a devaluing of people's life experience as if it counted for nothing simply because it isn't backed by money or status.
John
I think you're right. The game is so heavily rigged now that working class people whether in NJ or Kentucky will always be seen as the vulgar enemy, something to react against or escape from.
Did you ever see Working Girl? They were such an opportunity in that film to really explore a culture and what it felt like to "escape" from it but Mike Nichols chose to take the easy route by making Alec Baldwin etc. ignorant comic foils.
I've been reading a book in increments at Readings Book Shop (I just cant pay 28 dollars for a thin paperback) called Another Bullshit Night In Suck City which is a really interesting and thoughtful look at the issues of class in and around Boston.
Michael Forsythe is Jude the Obscure, but with guns.
I think it would be great if class allegiances and education weren't contradictory. There's really no reason why they should be mutually exclusive, but they are portrayed as if they are.
Seana
I know this is a hobby horse of mine but the index on the Tony Blair book is shockingly bad. Tony Blair lived in Australia until he was five apparently (who knew?) and early in his career he gave an important speech at Rupert Murdoch's leadership conference in Oz, two of his best friends were Australians one of whom became the Premier of WA - none of these references are mentioned in the index which only refs Australia twice. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy work from Knopf.
Well, I'm closer geographically to Knopf, so I'll tell them...
Kidding. I heard from our main buyer today that Random House is a bit disappointed. Why? Steig Larsson sales are slowing down--a tad.
Jesus.
I just find it depressing that a major newspaper in my native land used adverse where the correct word would have been averse.
I mean, no one caught this? The writer? The assigning editor? The copy editor? The slot? The proofreader? The online editor?
The Toronto Star apparently cares as much about literate writing as Knopf cares about careful indexing.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
Excellent catch.
Didn't Hemingway start with the Toronto Star? I mean, its got a rep.
I was just back at the Blair book and I found another Australia reference which isn't in the index.
Blair thanks the legendary Sonny Mehta at the start of the book but really someone at Knopf fucked up big time here.
Good spotting, Peter. And while we're on that paragraph, Connie doesn't strike me as part of the lumpen proletariat. Connie strikes me as a bit of a freak. Or a salutary lesson in the manner of Aesop: Namely,guys, be careful what you wish for.
Knopf and other institutions once had reps for caring about what they publised, too. What you have to understand is that the sort of precision that ensures accuracy and literacy does not matter at newspapers any longer. The hope, if anyone in management devotes a moment of thought to the matter, is that the writers won't make enough mistakes that the readers will notice.
From what you say about publishers, the situation is similar there.
==========================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Well, when it comes to fucking things up, perhaps it was karma.
Blair thanks the legendary Sonny Mehta at the start of the book but really someone at Knopf fucked up big time here.
Sucking up to celebrities and putting out a sloppy product. Sounds thoughly typical of American media to me.
Has the legendary Sonny Mehta ever been linked to the beautiful Gong Li?
Peter
Yup that was a dead adjective. My bad.
PublisHed, not published in my comment above, of course! Even my blog comments get more careful editing than the Toronto Star.
Seana
And speaking of fucking things up.
The word fucking appears in Blair's book thusly: "f***ing" which shows a fine sensitivity for the delicacy of American readers. I'm itching to find out if they did that in the British version of the book. I suspect not, just as they probably dont feel the need to explain what a by election is.
And since I'm going all expletive crazy today whats with all the bullshits on Mad Men? Three seasons and nobody says "shit" and now we're getting one per episode. Did they watching Breaking Bad and suddenly realise what they could get away with on that channel?
Yeah, Americans are odd about swearing and drinking. I could well understand an American needing the term by-election explained, but one would hope such explanations do not appear in UK editions.
Funny, but Jonathan Franzen's editors did not put those asterisks in.
As to Mad Men, the phrase that struck me as anachronistic was "You're shitting me." I don't think they are all that sensitive to the vernacular of the period on that show. The sentiment is usually spot on, but the wording can be jarring.
Seana, Richard Price's first novel, The Wanderers, published in 1974 and set in 1962, includes the following.
"Are you shitting me?"
"Would I shit my faovrite turd?"
So if Mad Men is guilty of anachronism, so was Price.
I could be wrong. But I think Price was probably also a bit anachronistic. He lay on the otherside of a cultural watershed. I'd believe any dirty joke that was told, but I don't believe that obscenity sounded quite like that. My friends tell me that Deadwood uses profanity that wouldn't have been there to express to modern ears the profanity that was. Maybe that's the decision here as well. It is the same network, after all. I understand the impulse, but I find it a bit dubious.
Could be. "You're shitting me" does strike me as newish, not even the sort of thing I said, and I swore all the time as a child.
My friends tell me that Deadwood uses profanity that wouldn't have been there to express to modern ears the profanity that was. Maybe that's the decision here as well.
That reminds me of James Ellroy's comment about Curtis Hanson's decision not to have any of the detectives in the movie version of L.A. Confidential wear hats even though detectives at the time the story is set would all have worn hats. Ellroy said Hanson thought hats would have been too distracting for a 1990s audience, and he appeared to approve of the decision.
==========================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Seana, Peter
I just got to page 114 of Blair's book and encountered my first "bulls***." He's afraid to say the word bullshit? Does he honestly think the kind of people who will read his memoir are going to be upset at seeing the word bullshit in print. Strange.
I didn't, but my dad did, and though, I can believe he might have censored some of his expressions with his kids, I kind of think something like this would have slipped out.
I remember having a massive row with a lecturer at uni about whether the act of attending university changed one's class.
I argued that it didn't and whether I was right or not didn't matter as he was an awful prick and the rest of the class joyfully backed me up.
Seana: Jude the Obscure is the only book in my life I did not finish. The woman (Sue?) irritated me so much I literally threw the book out of my office window.
I thought Gone, Baby, Gone was an excellent portrayal of the 'working class'.
I haven't read the book, but am assured it's a pretty good adaptation
Looks like Blogger may be destroying comments again. Here, returning after a brief appearance, is the post I made a few minutes ago:
Adrian, are you reading a U.S. edition of the book? There was recently a small uproar my paper when an article about a comic artist was illustrated with a page of his work that included a dialogue balloon that contained the word "motherfucker."
Having here condemned the Toronto Star, I have to commend it (or was it the Globe and Mail?) for once including the word "bullshit" in a sports column I happened to be reading on a visit it to Toronto.
Well, you're probably better off on the Jude the Obscure front, Rob, because it is very depressing, to put it mildly. Still, his impulses toward education were very memorable.
You're right, Lehane is good on working class pride. By the way, a long delayed sequel to Gone, Baby Gone is out this fall, called Moonlight Mile.
Adrian, the half-assed swearing sounds about right for Blair. He doesn't know who his audience is, I think.
I don't think going to college changes your class, but I do think it has the potential to change your outlook on a lot of things and that can be alienating from (and to) your home base.
Rob
I had to read it for school but I still didnt finish it. It all ends in tears apparently.
Peter
I am reading the US version. I'm itching to know if the UK version also begins with the gushing preface about Blair's love for America. I can only imagine howls of mocking laughter if thats how the UK version starts too.
Wait, I thought Jude the Obscure ending with someone saying, "Hey, kids! Let's put on a show!"
Or was that "Tess of the d'Urbervilles"?
Just had a great idea for a comedy team that generates big laughs over friction between the happy guy and the morose guy. I'll call them Laurel and Hardy.
Hello everyone.
I really appreciate this website, I'll be back soon!
Tell me what you think of my writings regarding hypnosis!
Why is every working class character in American fiction in Boston?
Is it because that way they're really Irish?
Peter
We had to read five Thomas Hardy novels in school. I'll never forget Far From The Madding Crowd because its the one with the happy ending. None of us could believe it and we all felt that we must be missing the last page when the train crashes or the sheep die or everyone offs themselves.
John
Why is it that in every Hollywood movie the hero's girlfriend works in an art gallery?
Adrian, the girlfriends work in art galleries because they've already covered every woman who teaches kindergarden.
Turns out I was wrong about the "you're shitting me" comment. As for some reason I feel compelled to read the Slate running commentary on Mad Men I discovered this:
As for Don's use of the phrase "shitting on," our senior words correspondent Jesse Sheidlower (a Slate contributor and editor at the OED) wrote in to assure me that the usage was gaining favor in America in the mid-'60s—he has a corporate memo from 1963 to prove it.
Seana, that's good to know, (for when I get there anyway).
Adrian, five TH novels in school looks very much like carelessness on the part of the English coordinator.
I have read at least two for fun, one for school (which I may already have read anyhow I think) and one for university (Mayor of C.) Chose to read Jude, but NO ONE reads bloody Jude for fun. I'd rather go to rehab...!
Lovely lecturer I had at uni said of Tess that ' the gods had had their sport with Tess, and so had Thomas Hardy' of the finale. Read with wry smile.
The discussion in the post about depiction of working class characters in contemporary Hollywood fillum was very fine, thank you.
Have some feelings about the upward mobility issues myself - father left school at fourteen and intensely disliked me pretending polite interest in something he recommended, but then not reading it. It can work the other way, the parents push the ladder up for you sometimes.
What do we think about Mystic River, then? Good Will Hunting obviously won't get a guernsey here - too cliched? or no?
Gen
I exaggerate. We actually did three TH novels in high school: Jude, The Woodlanders and the Return of the Native. On my own I read Far From the Madding Crowd and Tess. Masochistic streak obviously.
I havent seen Mystic River. I cant watch anything with abducted or murdered children in it. I'll never see The Lovely Bones either.
Well, fair enough too. I agree it's a tasteless and completely unnecessary topic.
Now I'm trying to remember who WAS murdered...thought it was a teenager actually...IMDB here I come. My main memory is Sean Penn as a working class man - he was pretty damn effective I thought.
So, now that this has been picked by Oprah for her book club, I wonder if this issue will come up.
I know, I know, I kid.
I have to say I'm intrigued to see what will happen with this show. Franzen's view of life is ironic and Oprah's, to the best of my knowledge, is not, so I really wonder where the common ground of discussion will be.
Oprah knows her audience, though, and she knows you can never lose by telling them how superior they are to everyone else (oh, of course, they know they aren't really superior to anyone, they just try so darn hard to be good people).
That same review that pointed out how the working class characters were treated also said, "Franzen’s major characters share a trait in common: They are all, in one form or another, relentlessly self-defining. They analyze themselves and others, they question their own motives and they are relentlessly self-conscious. And they talk. They talk and they argue then they talk some more, rehashing the same points and arguments until the reader may want to scream at them to shut up."
Oprah will never tell them to shut up.
"And they talk. They talk and they argue then they talk some more, rehashing the same points and arguments until the reader may want to scream at them to shut up"
So Franzen is unlikely to be published any time soon by Hard Case Crime?
==========================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I don't know about that, Peter, Charles managed to get Stephen King to write one and he kept it short.
I think he threatened to break King's legs if he wrote long.
For all that, I found it a pretty effortless read. And I'm very curious to read what others have to say about it because I think it's got a lot of strengths and at least some real flaws. One thing that really strikes me though is that it is actually about a very small slice of the great American demographic, the part that in an earlier period might have been defined as Yuppies. That's fine, he knows his stuff, but I am very curious how it's come to be seen as in the Great American Novel line, as I have to say that most Americans would not find themselves reflected there. Although most people who could afford the price of the hardback could, so maybe that's that question answered.
Also, I'll make a big generalization and say that Oprah's audience has in general little or no sense of irony about itself, which is why I think they are going to have some trouble understanding what he's doing with this one.
Like I said, it's going to be an interesting discussion.
John, Peter, Seana
Look, I know I'm going to read this book when it comes out in trade paper. At some point you just want a long, juicy, intelligent novel to get stuck into and if there's a spot of lesbo action in there great (this I think is the philosophy behind Black Swan too). I have been let down in the past by books like The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Motherless in Brooklyn but I DID like The Corrections, so we'll see. If Franzen is the best our generation can produce so be it...
"... most Americans would not find themselves reflected there. Although most people who could afford the price of the hardback could..."
I find it interesting that the e-book is available today from B&N for twelve bucks (it's even cheaper from Kobo in Canada, $10.50 but I don't see it for the Kindle) and Amazon is selling the hardcover for $14.00. There isn't an American paperback yet, is there?
What will happen to publishing if books don't have that year-long grace period where only people with enough money can read them?
(man, I'm snarky today and I don't really have an excuse, sorry)
No American paperback for awhile.
Snarky's okay, but there have always been libraries. Although maybe not for so much longer.
It might be interesting to compare what Oprah's club has to say and what the Salon club is saying.
That first comment is pure gold.
By the way, I think I'm #197 on the waiting list at the library. I may buy the e-book.
That Salon club link doesn't work, but I'll find it.
Hmm. That's an odd article. I wouldn't say that Franzen is trying to make his characters likeable. Interesting, yes, but likeable?
seana
heres the link
http://letters.salon.com/books/feature/2010/09/16/salon_reading_club_likeability_comment/view/?show=all
not too impressed by the guy who says Britcoms dont have likable characters wereas US ones do. Seinfeld is head and shoulders above any feeble Britcom over the last fifty years. Everyone thinks its all about The OFfice etc. but it was on BBC 2 actually most Britcoms for BBC 1 and ITV are utter rubbish.
That's funny. I find Brit Com characters very likeable. But likeabilty isn't really the be all end all of comedy is it? I wouldn't call the Seinfeld crew likeable. As with Franzen's book, it's more a question of whether you recognize something of yourself in a group of really rather self-serving people.
The likeable characters stuff is from part two of the discussion, did you see part one?
"... this brilliant champagne tumbler of a book..."
That right there is why people don't read books anymore, we're all scared we'll end up talking to someone who says things like that.
John
What a wanker.
Well, if they had a champagne tumbler, I'd stick around.
I have to say that there is this great pressure to 'get on board' with this book and go with all the claims for it, and this makes me uncomfortable. I would rather have read it without all the current media hype around it as 'just a book', but I had to and wanted to review it for our newsletter, so there was no choice about that. Also, I guess it's okay to claim him as a friend, so of course I'm thrilled that the book is doing so well, but let's just say that it is not an unmediated experience.
John
Yeah, you mean this complete asshole:
Reading along through this brilliant champagne tumbler of a book, I began to sense a mental dissonance in the way people are talking about it. The situation is a mirror image of my MFA workshops. As we discussed people's work we could mention the 'show versus tell' conundrum, notice instances of 'image patterning', praise a nice description or a sense of place...
Seana
I like to think Franzen would run a country mile from someone who started spouting about conundrums and mental dissonance and MFA workshops.
No, I think he would stay to take mental notes on their conversation for future works, and then go out birdwatching.
Adrian, he's just the beginning.
But he does give us a real clue into how to be succesful when he praises the book for being so "smart," and says about the main character that, "we all know this woman." This would be the woman that started the likeable discussion.
So, we can all feel smart, and even superior, when we read this.
Espcially if we've been through an MFA program.
Wasn't there an article last week saying that MFA programs were the death of the novel? Or has it been two weeks since the last time someone dragged that out?
Really I'm just bitter because Jonothon Dee isn't a bestseller.
Franzen is also a fan of Dee's latest "The Privileges". Maybe he'll take it up a bit on tour.
Talk it up, I meant.
That would be great, Seana. I haven't read it yet.
I think Dee should get more credit for inspiring Mad Men for both The Liberty Campaign and Palladio.
I haven't read him at all, though I've heard about him for years. Pretty pathetic, right?
The likeable characters stuff is from part two of the discussion, did you see part one?
"... this brilliant champagne tumbler of a book..."
That right there is why people don't read books anymore, we're all scared we'll end up talking to someone who says things like that.
I always expected any nugget from Franzen's ouevre would be complex, full-bodied, yet rich with undertones, a sort of Brunello da Montalcino 1988 of a book.
What a pud.
==========================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
What aggravates me is that the politicians running for office, never mention the working class, only the middle class.
And Arianna Huffington, too, mentions only the middle class, as do most pundits, columnists, etc.
Much of the middle class has been pushed into the working class during this economic crisis, where lower-wage jobs are what is available, after layoffs from higher-paid jobs.
And much of the working class is being pushed into poverty, losing jobs, health care, homes, etc.
My father was from an Irish working-class family. He went to a city college, read philosophy and became an avid reader on every topic. He always respected his working-class relatives and friends and brought us up to also respect workers.
And, also, as I mentioned above, I can't get into Jane Austen's books nor many other "dead" English authors because of class issues, I think. I just don't relate to the characters.
All,
I finished "Freedom" yesterday. I meant to just join the discussion here and post a quick comment, but I found that the book had such a profound impact on me that I ended up writing a pseudo review of the book (link below). Hope you enjoy my take on the book (which contains ZERO spoilers). Feel free to comment there too. There is even an non-sucking-up "Dead I Well May Be" reference there.
Didactic Freedom by Joshua Millburn
Take care,
Josh
That was a really nice review, Josh. I was afraid from the title it was going to be a slam. I have read the book and I do know Mr. Franzen to some degree, and I am not kidding you when I say that I think you might very well be his ideal reader.
Seana,
Thanks for the comment and for reading my review. If I'm Franzen's ideal reader, then I'm glad I stumbled across the book (as I certainly enjoyed it).
I just read B.R. Myers review of "Freedom" (per your comment on my review) and WOW! it's scathing. It even seems a tad hateful. Even DeLillo catches some serious shrapnel towards the end. The byline—"Jonathan Franzen’s juvenile prose creates a world in which nothing important can happen"—pretty much sums up what kind of review it will be. And, yes, the novel's prose was easy to digest, but I think it aided the pace and added to its overall appeal for me.
Thanks,
Josh
Joshua
I'm avoiding all reviews until I actually read the book which I will do in about two weeks when I have to take a flight.
(Incidentally I have comment moderation on on posts over 40 days old to cut down on the spam which is why your comment didnt immediately appear)
Adrian,
I totally understand avoiding reviews until you've read the book. Mine is much less a review and is much more a reflection on life, and it doesn't have any character descriptions, plot, or spoilers, just a few out of context quotes. Either way, enjoy Freedom; I'm sure you will.
Josh
Adrian et al.,
Any thoughts on Franzen's "ten serious rules to abide by for writers"? (viz. In February 2010, Franzen was asked by The Guardian to contribute what he believed were ten serious rules to abide by for aspiring writers.
Franzen's rules ran as follows:
1. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
2. Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
3. Never use the word "then" as a conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
4. Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
5. When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
6. The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than " The Metamorphosis ".
7. You see more sitting still than chasing after.
8. It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction (the TIME magazine cover story detailed how Franzen physically disables the Net portal on his writing laptop).
9. Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10. You have to love before you can be relentless.
I thought they were interesting and a few of them were valid points. Thoughts?
Josh
I'm a little disappointed by them, to be quite frank about it. I'm surprised he let himself be corraled into making such a list.
My rule number one would be, don't ask a writer for their opinion on what makes for good writing. Nine times out of ten, they don't know how it happens themselves.
Or, as Yogi Berra is said to have said once when asked to explain how one hits a baseball, then hemming and hawing and failing to find the right words, "Ah, just watch me do it."
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Precisely.
I agree with Peter's comment and it's a great addition to the list, but then it's then part of the "list," which seems to be the problem. I don't think all lists are bad and sometimes can be a valuable (for certain things). Most of the tips in the above mentioned list seem banal to me, but some the technical aspects are a good reality check at times.
Josh
I was thinking about this a little and I think I'd like to amend my statement. For one thing, I think this is probably Franzen's attempt to be accomodating. One of my friends was telling me yesterday that when he toured after The Corrections, his answers were quite a bit more, shall we say, terse.
But I also think that there is something to be said for a fan to take an author's what to do/what not to do list's to heart. It's sort of like making yourself an apprentice to try and do what they say. I think it takes you to the next step of the journey to try it out, and that finding your own voice comes out of that process of realizing what doesn't.
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