Fantastic Franzen
I love Jonathan Franzen so much that I am writing an all-encompassing review for the ones I have read. The review I would give for all of his books is this: you are immediately and totally engrossed in the plot and characters and by the end you see that he is an unusually talented author because he has painted a picture on a grander scale. I can’t remember who said this, perhaps a professor or a reporter back in the day, but I have heard him referred to as “The Mark Twain of our time.” It makes sense. Like a camera, he starts zoomed in and slowly pans out. By the time you get to the end you see a theme (social, political, religious, etc) that is so perfect, you HATE him. He writes on a micro and macro level. I think he only writes a book every 5 years (or that used to be the case) and it shows because they are so seamless and perfect.
The Corrections
This is where I was introduced to Franzen. I read this in my Dysfunctional Families in Literature class in undergrad. That should tell you all you need to know about this novel right there. Troy Dyer says in Reality Bites— “You want me to get a job on the line for the next 20 years until I‘m granted leave with my gold plated watch and my balls full of tumors because I surrendered the one thing that meant shit to me?” The patriarch in The Corrections surrendered whatever that is, but he doesn’t seem to know what’s wrong. This book looks at that era, what everyone was aiming for in our country at that time, and then you see the fallout and dysfunction….
Freedom
Franzen is very intelligent. He has his finger on the pulse of society and writes about things before you even realize it’s a thing. Because it isn’t yet entirely. I discovered that when I read this book. I don’t exactly know why but I think about the Bush Administration when I think back to this book, and that one of the characters did not want to procreate, ever, because she was saving the planet. This book came out before some of those ideologies were commonplace, so you’ll need to take the year it was written into context to see what I mean.
Purity
I loved this book, but it was darker than the others in my opinion. Two things cross my mind when I remember back to reading this book: Wikileaks and my former creepy boss.
Crossroads
My dad bought this one for my birthday when it was released, and of course it’s good, but it is my least favorite. I’m not sure why. It’s worth reading, but it didn’t land like the others, at least that was my experience. Again, it’s about a time period, like the Corrections. I guess I would say that Freedom and Purity were sort of predictive of the future and calling out the present, whereas Crosswords and the Corrections are looking back.
You cannot go wrong with Franzen.