what passes for thinking right now
I'm about 2/3 of the way through Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom. I don't think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, but like The Corrections, it's very readable and engaging. I don't know, these sorts of character studies framed in family dysfunction never really interest me that much, unless they're completely psycho, like Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children*. Maybe my own family was so grotesque that it takes a lot to really make me sit up and take notice. I mean, I know I read The Corrections, but it made absolutely no impression on me whatsoever. I don't remember one thing about it. Freedom might have had the same fate, but some of the characters try to engage in political analysis and activism, and that has sort of caught my attention, at least on a meta level.
After reading Ian McEwen's latest this summer -- Solar -- I'm thinking there's a trend afoot: novels about the Looming Catastrophe. It's probably been afoot for a while and I haven't noticed, and a sample size of two isn't exactly compelling evidence. Still, there are some common threads. One thing that the Franzen and McEwen books both have in common are some perfectly unattractive -- even repulsive -- middle-class male characters who end up for one reason or another, trying to save the world from the Looming Catastrophe (global warming in McEwan and overpopulation in Franzen).
Novels about do-gooders, whether the characters be sincere or hypocritical, sort of make me cringe. It's hard for me to understand why these are good characters to tell stories about. Either they will Learn Their Lesson (TM) or they won't, but in either case, the flailing impotence of their attempts is painful to watch because I keep waiting for the Moral to arrive. The point. Both Franzen and McEwen threaten with the possibility of moralism and as I read, I kept waiting to be disappointed by such stupidity. I still haven't really figured out the point to Solar, and maybe it exists solely as a character study. It's a pretty interesting one, centering an a completely unlikeable character, a Nobel Prize winning physicist who has the personality of an alcoholic womanizing game show host. But why encase the character study in an lecture about exploration of global warning? Does that make the novel more serious or more worthy? Does that somehow raise the stakes in a way that makes the book intrinsically more important? I don't think so. I don't think so, even if the Moral never arrives.**
There is something essentially cynical in both novels, I think, in the way they tie the failure of the possibility of political/social redemption to such deeply flawed characters. It's like the desire to do the right thing for it's own sake just can't even be imagined anymore, at least not by major novelists. Only jackasses try to do the right thing, for completely the wrong reasons, and are doomed to failure as a result.
Like life, I guess. Or the Obama administration. At any rate, the net effect is quite depressing and disempowering both.
Maybe I need to try some Jodi Picoult next.
*I read this for the first time earlier this summer, based on an essay by Franzen in the NYTimes. Easily the most disturbing and thought-provoking book I've read in years. So yeah, consider this a recommendation, but only if you are willing to read a book without feeling all happy all the time while you're doing it. In fact, if you want to feel at least vaguely repulsed and disturbed while reading, with occasional eruptions of being completely upset and devastated, then this is the book for you.
**Which it may yet in Franzen. I haven't finished it yet, and the book is ripe with the potential for Life Lessons.
After reading Ian McEwen's latest this summer -- Solar -- I'm thinking there's a trend afoot: novels about the Looming Catastrophe. It's probably been afoot for a while and I haven't noticed, and a sample size of two isn't exactly compelling evidence. Still, there are some common threads. One thing that the Franzen and McEwen books both have in common are some perfectly unattractive -- even repulsive -- middle-class male characters who end up for one reason or another, trying to save the world from the Looming Catastrophe (global warming in McEwan and overpopulation in Franzen).
Novels about do-gooders, whether the characters be sincere or hypocritical, sort of make me cringe. It's hard for me to understand why these are good characters to tell stories about. Either they will Learn Their Lesson (TM) or they won't, but in either case, the flailing impotence of their attempts is painful to watch because I keep waiting for the Moral to arrive. The point. Both Franzen and McEwen threaten with the possibility of moralism and as I read, I kept waiting to be disappointed by such stupidity. I still haven't really figured out the point to Solar, and maybe it exists solely as a character study. It's a pretty interesting one, centering an a completely unlikeable character, a Nobel Prize winning physicist who has the personality of an alcoholic womanizing game show host. But why encase the character study in an lecture about exploration of global warning? Does that make the novel more serious or more worthy? Does that somehow raise the stakes in a way that makes the book intrinsically more important? I don't think so. I don't think so, even if the Moral never arrives.**
There is something essentially cynical in both novels, I think, in the way they tie the failure of the possibility of political/social redemption to such deeply flawed characters. It's like the desire to do the right thing for it's own sake just can't even be imagined anymore, at least not by major novelists. Only jackasses try to do the right thing, for completely the wrong reasons, and are doomed to failure as a result.
Like life, I guess. Or the Obama administration. At any rate, the net effect is quite depressing and disempowering both.
Maybe I need to try some Jodi Picoult next.
*I read this for the first time earlier this summer, based on an essay by Franzen in the NYTimes. Easily the most disturbing and thought-provoking book I've read in years. So yeah, consider this a recommendation, but only if you are willing to read a book without feeling all happy all the time while you're doing it. In fact, if you want to feel at least vaguely repulsed and disturbed while reading, with occasional eruptions of being completely upset and devastated, then this is the book for you.
**Which it may yet in Franzen. I haven't finished it yet, and the book is ripe with the potential for Life Lessons.