Jonathan Franzen seems to have always known what kind of writer he wanted to be when he grew up. His underrated first book,
The Twenty-Seventh City, published before he was thirty, managed to synthesize the warring impulses of postwar fiction - toward black comedy and intimate lyricism, toward domestic realism and busy narrative, toward the personal and the political - in a language of aphoristic wit, journalistic specificity, and lapidary precision.
The Twenty-Seventh City was a little bit of everything, without seeming like the average of anything.
Notwithstanding his subsequent (and public) hemming and hawing about the social vs. the domestic, the difficult vs. the hospitable, art vs. entertainment, Franzen's ambitions have proven remarkably stable since then. Every seven or eight years, he brings out another dense and dazzling slab of pages - another panorama of American life viewed through the prism of the individual conscience. With 2001's
The Corrections, he would seem to have perfected his method. It won the National Book Award, pissed off
Oprah, and sold a million billion copies. Our
recent poll of authors and editors singled it out as
the best novel of the last decade.
What could it possibly mean, then, to say that
Freedom, his long-awaited follow-up, finds Franzen maturing? Surely not that he is more confident at 50 than at 40. (It's hard to think of a novel more confident than
The Corrections.) Nor that
Freedom is more or less expansive, or that it represents, in the canned phraseology of newspaper reviews, any kind of "stunning departure" in substance or in sensibility. Rather, the novelty of this novel - the richest reward it offers us for our patience - is the deepening of the author's moral imagination. One thinks of flavors ripening over a slow boil, of instruments changing as they age. To put it another way, in
Freedom, Franzen's blues are bluer. The ironies are stronger, the pain more mysterious, and the characters more given to change.
Like its predecessors,
Freedom can be read as a species of family novel. Unlike them, it is, at heart, a love story...though Franzen cannily muddles the terms of the genre. The lovers in question are Patty and Walter Berglund, parents of two and members in good standing of the urban gentry of St. Paul, Minnesota. But it is not at all clear initially that Patty loves Walter - or, at any rate, how Patty loves Walter, or how well Walter knows Patty. It is, moreover, not at all clear that we should care. A bravura overture, "
Good Neighbors," introduces us to the Berglunds through the eyes of their fellow gentrifiers, offering a mordant catalogue of the foibles of "the Whole Foods generation." The satire is delicious, but also offputting. We come to agree with community sentiment, expressed in the free indirect third-person Franzen favors: "There had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds."
Immediately afterward, however,
Freedom takes a sharp turn: it plunges us into Patty's point-of-view. Seeing through her eyes Walter - and their son, Joey, and Walter's best friend, the charismatic rock musician Richard Katz - we are shaken from our comfortable judgments. And then, in long, subsequent sections that follow, we move into Richard's head, and Walter's, and Joey's, and back to Patty's, each time having to adjust our understanding of this core quartet, the married couple and the manchildren who come between them. Franzen has played this inside-outside game before;
The Corrections shuffled us serially among the Lamberts. Here, though, the sharper disjunctions between the various perspectives make the stereoscopic effect at once deeper and more unsettling. Between the outward and inward lives of these characters is a chasm we begin to wonder if we will ever bridge. Which is, of course, exactly the chasm Walter and Patty will have to bridge.
First, though, we hopscotch through time. We explore the Berglunds' formative years (their meeting at college, Patty's rape, Walter's alcoholic father); the flickering, destabilizing presence of Richard in their lives; their move to post-September 11 Washington, D.C.; Joey's and Walter's entanglements with the conservative powers of that city; and the slow dissolution of the Berglund marriage under the familiar Franzen formula of depression, anger, and explosive sex.
If this sounds heavy, it should be pointed out that Franzen is one of our funniest writers. His sense of humor, too, constitutes an inside-outside game. When Patty, years later, "envies and pities the younger Patty standing there in the Fen City Co-op and innocently believing that she'd reached the bottom," we are both the wiser, older self (how bad can things really be, in the Fen City Co-Op?) and the "innocent" younger one. Franzen has a wonderful way of boiling down this kind of perspectival comedy even further, into a little bouillon cube of diction: "Joey was staggered by the quantity of hardcover books and by the obviously top quality of the multicultural swag that Jonathan's father had collected during distinguished foreign residencies." "Multicultural swag" is funny - we catch the superficiality of Joey's hosts, and a flicker of glib self-awareness in Joey. A lesser novelist might have stopped there. But the agrammatical "obviously top quality," tucked away nearby, is funnier. For all his efforts at savoir-faire, Joey is also ingenuous, in ways he can't quite see.
For Franzen, as for the Buddhists, understanding, whatever pieties it may traduce, is the supreme act of compassion. And to understand people in all of their contradictions is, perforce, to be ironic. To speak of the "likeability" of Freedom's characters is thus to miss the moral project completely. Joey is a product of his generation; as another character observes, there is "something Reaganite" about him. But because the novel cares enough about him to inhabit his consciousness fully, we care about him, too. We are laughing at once with him and at him. And with and at ourselves.
Such anthropological laughter is a constant in
Freedom. The novel picks up and probes everything it comes into contact with, managing in the process to take apart a goodly portion of what currently constitutes American life. It's not that Franzen "knows a thousand different things," as
James Wood has
suggested the contemporary American novelist seeks to - he's no
Tom Wolfe, thank heavens. But he is curious about everything: Volvo maintenance, phone sex, alt-country, iPods, college life,
Leo Strauss, NCAA women's basketball...
Franzen's curiosity - his wish to welcome the world into his book - at times becomes overly antic, in a way that sits less easily against
Freedom's midlife sobriety than it did in
The Corrections' atmosphere of oxygenated adolescence. Joey's excursion in South America as a would-be war profiteer is like a less compelling version of Chip Lambert's sojourn in Estonia. And the coal-company conspiracy that envelops environmentally-minded Walter in the middle of the book is far less effective, as political commentary, than the tensions within Walter's own family. One thing Franzen does not seem to know particularly well is Washington, D.C., and there is an opacity to Walter here that we don't feel with Walter elsewhere, or with Joey, Richard, or Patty. (It is surely worth mentioning that Franzen writes more persuasively and attentively about the inner life of women than any male American novelist since
Henry James.) But Franzen has the wisdom not to strand Walter inside the Beltway.
Against the urban densities where the Berglunds have chosen to make their lives,
Freedom keeps returning to a family cabin in the Minnesota woods where they seek respite. And it is a mark of Franzen's growth as a novelist that he keeps letting them find it - letting them breathe. Here, for example, is Walter, late in the novel, but early in his life:
Seventeen years in cramped quarters with his family had given him a thirst for solitude whose unquenchability he was discovering only now. To hear nothing but wind, birdsong, insects, fish jumping, branches squeaking, birch leaves scraping as they tumbled against each other: he kept stopping to savor this unsilent silence as he scraped paint from the house's outer walls.
And here is Patty, twenty years later and 300 pages earlier, just before her life falls apart in earnest:
She took
War and Peace out to the grassy knoll, with the vague ancient motive of impressing Richard with her literacy, but she was mired in a military section and kept reading the same page over and over. A melodious bird that Walter had despaired of teaching her the proper name of, a veery or a vireo, grew accustomed to her presence and began to sing in a tree directly above her. Its song was like an idee fixe that it couldn't get out of its little head.
In the delicate mirroring of these passages, Franzen insists on nothing. Instead, he lets meaning, the elusive thing, emerge through momentum, like widening circles from a pond-tossed rock. The songbird's repetition echoes Patty's, and its idee fixe is really hers: the "vague ancient" impulse to sleep with Richard. Moreover, the grassy openness of the place Patty calls "Nameless Lake" speaks of a freedom neither Patty nor Walter can find in the "cramped" confines of the nuclear family, or of the society of which it is a microcosm. Freedom, in its intertwining personal and political aspects, is
Freedom's explicit concern. It should be noted, though, that the bird the novel keeps coming back to (and that graces its cover), is a blue one, allied not so much with freedom as with happiness. Franzen's real quarry here is the vexed relationship between the two. In the space of the Minnesota woods, the Berglunds are - like Richard on the road or Joey off at college - free, but alone.
Ultimately, in these and other moments that call to each other across time and across the space of the novel, Franzen also allows the patient reader to see what Walter and Patty cannot: that they are made for each other. I cede the floor to
James Baldwin:
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
It is the surprising grace - in every sense - with which Franzen evokes Patty and Walter's love that marks
Freedom as the work of a master. Readers looking for the pleasures of
The Corrections will find all of them here, in force. But they are also likely to come away from this novel moved in harder-to-fathom ways - and grateful for it. Which is to express the hope that, amid the general childishness of the cultural scene he skewers so lovingly, Jonathan Franzen and his audience may be growing up together.
Growing up in Scotland, I knew several farmers who pronounced with Delphic confidence on the weather. On a clear December day they would forecast a blizzard; in the middle of rain they would claim a drought was coming. 
I loved this book as much as anyone else, and it’s one of my favorites to be sure, but I don’t agree it is the #1 example of exceptional writing of the decade. And, after reviewing your entire list, I have to ask, why didn’t Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ even make a showing? I mean, did you read it?
I agree with d. Good novel and all, but an underwhelming choice for #1.
No.
Didn’t see that coming. I’m glad I read the book, but it wouldn’t have even made the top ten.
Are you fucking kidding me?!
Yes, it’s all an elaborate ruse.
I kinda saw this coming. While the list was being dribbled out I kept wondering when I’d see _The Corrections_ pop up. And here it is. Probably my favorite book of the decade.
I wouldn’t have thought to include short story collections on my very own personal best-of list, but maybe that’s why _Oblivion_ didn’t do as well. Or, to be completely honest, maybe _Oblivion_ wasn’t 100% awesome. Because it wasn’t. It was good, but not even _Brief Interviews_ good.
As for Mr. J. S-F… I thought his first book (_Everything Is Illuminated_) was much better than _Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close_. But that’s just me.
Finally, regarding _Tree of Smoke_ (which I’m currently reading); maybe it’s just too new? Too recent? I’m about 100p into it and so far it doesn’t crack my top 10 list, but maybe it gets way better or something.
So not! I’d be willing to see this on the list but number 1? No way. It’s a good book (I guess–personally, I prefer Franzen’s essays) but not at the top. On the other hand, it is silly, as Lydia mentions, to assign merit numerically. Compelling–and I was glad to be a part of it–but I need to remember that part too.
Keep in mind that this #1 slot goes to the book with the most votes. Everyone picked their 5 favorites, in no particular order. This just means that the most people had The Corrections on their list. Whether it was anyone’s favorite, #1 book, we can’t know.
You made the right choice. There has been a backlash against the book, really more against Franzen personally than the novel itself. It’s true that he handled the whole Oprah thing in a way that made him look like something of an ass, and some of the non-fiction stuff he’s written since has been, at best, ill-advised. But the novel itself is just simply remarkable and deserves its place at the top of your list. Considering said backlash, a brave choice.
Margot, since everybody else seems to want to use the comments to grind their ax against Jonathan Franzen, I will point out that you’ve written the best piece of the 20 on the list, in my opinion. Beautifully written and summing up much of the excitement that surrounded the book, a book by an author, who, at the time, wasn’t considered a master.
I was working at an independent bookstore when The Corrections was released, and I’d just started to think of fiction as something more than a diversion. This was the first book that I remember being excited about in advance. A storm is an apt metaphor, I suppose.
(As an aside, I remember seeing the galley in the back office in the owner/buyer’s pile. Attached was a note from the sales rep. It said, “I know you don’t think you can sell Franzen, but don’t overlook this one.” Things have changed, haven’t they?)
Ugh. Disappointing number one. Maybe try a different system in 2019?
Oh come on.
“People who were listening” to what, the marketing copy in the New York Times? This was the most pre-hyped novel I’ve ever seen, and the biggest disappointment.
First page, thrid paragraph: “Ringing throughout the house was an alarm bell that no one but Alfred and Enid could hear directly. It was the alarm bell of anxiety.”
That’s not writing, that’s posing. No one with taste above the level of a high-school poetry class could continue reading past these two sentences. The Corrections is crap.
Well, yes it was hyped, but think back to when it came out. It was published on September 1, 2001.
I read my review copy in the days immediately following 9/11. Despite the competition for my attention from real world events, I finished it. But because of its association in my mind with 9/11–an acute visceral association–I could never bring myself to re-read it.
Strange to say, when fall rolls around I tend to pick up and re-read Moby Dick, if only a few chapters.
In other news, the Academy Award for Best Picture doesn’t always go to the best picture! Usually I’m happy if the winner is in my top fifty. The Corrections is on my list of top fifty fiction books of the decade, somewhere in the middle, but more importantly, it’s funny. If you’re going to single out an American book, it might as well be one with good jokes.
I’m still more interested in the list of also-rans, since this seems likely to turn up a higher proportion of oddball picks.
This is an excellent novel and a worthy pick. Works like The Corrections make me stand up and cheer for the future of literature. It’s not perfectly written but it takes taste “above the level of high school poetry” to appreciate this novel’s important place in contemporary literature. Good choice.
The Corrections #1? Ahead of The Cloud Atlas and 2666? No way. Sorry. Corrections is well written and mildly diverting, but it’s really just a family soap opera. You have other books on your list far more daring and well written.
Enough with the lisiting and the besting. Unless you’ve read them all, you’re just burping in a whirlwind of presumptuous narcissism.
Cynthia writes, in part: “you’re just burping in a whirlwind of presumptuous narcissism.” Seems like a pretty good description of Franzen and the novel. And you don’t have to read every novel to recognize the deficiencies of any one of them. Logic fail.
This is a funny choice, because it’s so safe and predictable.
This is a deserving choice, but I’m a little surprised, because it somehow seemed to have become cool to dislike this book (probably because of Franzen’s public persona).
The biggest miss on the list in my view is Wallace’s Oblivion. This book is hugely underrated right now, but I think people will look back on it as a genuine step beyond Infinite Jest (whereas Brief Interviews was more of the, admittedly brilliant, same). Everything depends on The Pale King of course – it’s too early to understand the shape of Wallace’s career, but for the best writer of his generation not to appear on this list is a shame. Especially when Pastoralia, from a similarly-minded, very talented, but manifestly lesser writer than Wallace, is so high up on the list.
… The backlash is funny. Great book.
Interesting how the DFW fans continue to beat the drum. And he’ll always be free from backlash a la lil Kurt Cobain as it’s not good to criticize the departed.
Great list no matter what the muckrakers say. Anything that gets the conversation started is worthwhile. The publishing business is suffering.
I decided to read The Corrections because I had heard it was “serious” in some sense — seriously literary, I suppose. I thought it would be hard to read. Not hard, but tedious, for me. The commenter above who calls it a family soap opera was not far off the mark. Words that I’d use to describe The Corrections (and I carry no feelings of vitriol for Franzen — I can separate my opinions about the Oprah brouhaha from his work) include funny, peculiar, unpleasant, interesting, and at times memorable. But not great literature, and certainly not something I’d put on this list.
I was pleased to see the short story collection, which I loved.
The real problem with Franzen’s book is that its themes and topics are so trite. Oy! My family is so crazy! You should see! Compare with the themes of 2666 and The Cloud Atlas (and others), and there’s just no comparison. It’s like comparing an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Gravity’s Rainbow. And by the way, I’m not a DFW fan and hardly consider him beyond reproach.
I loved this book!
I thought “The Corrections” was a good book. Not the greatest ever–the voyage to Eastern Europe at the end was more adventure shlock than anything, to me–but if I were going to write up my own list I’m sure it would make my top 5, too, so I won’t much argue.
And then I’m just going to throw this out there: DFW, way overrated. Although I’m very sad he killed himself, I’m even more sad that his death is creating a cult of worship around him, as if his imaginitive powers were anywhere near those of a Roberto Bolano or David Mitchell.
I do have to ask, however: how did Margaret Atwood not make this list between The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake? Is there a greater novelist alive today than Margaret Atwood?
I’m a little late to this conversation, but I think a lot of the language used to deride Franzen’s book is very interesting. I read it and found it interesting, although not my favorite by a long shot. And I loved Cloud Atlas, for one. But to claim that Cloud Atlas is better because it deals with quote unquote major themes, while The Corrections is simply a “soap opera” is insulting. The idea that the family novel is lesser has been around for a long time, used to discredit much of the literature written by women, and, ironically, is what Franzen was trying to distance himself from when he turned down Oprah.
I think that the other line of inquiry going on here, about conventional novels vs. those that push the envelope of the genre, is very interesting. But to say that Franzen’s themes are somehow lowbrow or pedestrian is silly.
The CLoud Atlas and 2666 are not better books simply because they pursue grander themes than The Corrections, though that is one reason they are both better books. Remember, we’re talking about the best book of the millennium, not just books we happen to like or don’t like. In that contest, a certain amount of conceptual daring counts for a lot, if the execution is also well done. There’s nothing original about writing about a messed up family. Franzen isn’t trying anything different or difficult. He’s just doing a good job at telling a very conventional story. Stephen King does the same.
And it’s certainly not inherently lowbrow artistically to write about family life. One can write very deep, surprising novels about family life. I hope one day Franzen gets around to writing such a book.