So this is the latest Jonathan Franzen novel, and what I can say about it is that it’s definitely a Jonathan Franzen novel. I think all of his novels are definitely Jonathan Franzen novel, but he’s one of those writers who generates a lot of preconceived notions (some fair; some not), but he’s been pretty consistent. I highly recommend that anyone who likes Jonathan Franzen, anyone who doesn’t like Jonathan Franzen but is willing to be have that idea challenged, and anyone who likes Jonathan Franzen but won’t announce it in public because he’s one of those writers to read his nonfiction, especially How to be Alone. I find his writing to be much more interesting, humble, and thoughtful as a consequence. That said, he’d admit his first novel struggles a lot, and I don’t know if he’d admit it but I think Freedom and Purity struggle a lot. I still think The Corrections is a nearly pitch-perfect novel, and there’s enough seed of imperfection in a few moments of that novel to add a necessary amount of wildness to an otherwise heavily controlled narrative.
This novel has some of that same idea to it. It’s mostly very heavily controlled, very thoughtful, serious, and a little, but not quite enough looseness to make also as nearly perfect as The Corrections. If the Corrections was partly about how to break through the outward stories we tell ourselves to deal with our disappointing realities and being more willing to live with imperfection and frailty, if it means honesty, then this novel is more about learning to live with our choices. Along with this, to live with our choices and realize that sometimes we got bad information going in, sometimes we created that bad information, and other times we had no control of the choices we made, but still having to live in the consequences and realities of them.
We meet the Hildebrandts in the opening of the novel. This is a fairly regular white Christian family in the exurbs of Chicago. Russ, the father, is a junior ministers at a pretty nondescript Protestant church and he’s trying to decide whether to have an affair. He’s just met Jenny, a widowed single mother, and she’s new to the parish. He’s been taking her to a “disadvantaged” Black neighborhood where Russ’s patience veers a little to close to self-righteousness and Jenny’s fear is read as defensiveness, but there’s clearly some kind of connection. Russ is long-married with four children, and well, he’s a minister so this is an issue. Even just the temptation itself is an issue. Yeah it’s the 70s and all, but the sin itself needs to be justified if it were to happen. We are getting our first foray into how this novel is narrated, with a close third-person narration acting almost as if first-person. Russ is not fully telling himself the truth about his feelings, and he knows, as we will learn, that he shapes his understanding of things around him in ways to avoid some cold truths and realities, like any of us. Throughout the novel we get these little moments, where different versions of events clash, and we’re the only ones who see beyond the competing narratives. It’s not a primary trope, ala Rashomon, but it’s present and consistent through. We move on to our other characters soon thereafter, spending large chunks of time with each before we move on. We get Perry, the teenage son who is brilliant and doesn’t know yet that he’s battling the early stages of mental illness. He’s self-medicating (and making a little money) regardless. We meet Becky, a senior in high school who is conflicted because she thinks Tanner and she would be perfect for each other, but he has a girlfriend, he has his faith, and she’s not sure what she wants or what’s right. Clem is thinking of quitting school and letting the draft board have at him. If he needs to force the issue by sending them a letter, he will. He’s maybe quitting school because he might be dropping to a B-average, which is anathema for him. Why are his grades slipping? He’s been sleeping with his girlfriend so much he can’t study. He also feels guilty to be a privileged white college student while someone with less privilege maybe dies in Vietnam. Lastly, we have Marian, married to Russ for almost 30 years, and crippled by a moral failing at a young age (one we probably won’t judge her too much for) as well as a family legacy of mental illness that she’s convinced she’s doomed her children to.
Like other Jonathan Franzen novels we move to the recent and far past as we need to in order to better understand our present. There’s also a central event that we get competing versions of that shapes the moment in this family’s life we’re witnessing. My only complaint is that it feels so tightly controlled, but it’s imminently readable, the characters are well-rendered, and it’s actually asking some serious and important questions, even if at times it feels a little more 2021 than 1970.
(photo: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4301390419)