First Book Review: Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen

No, I haven't read it. But Publisher's Weekly just came out with their starred review of Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom, which won't be out until the last day of August. The Corrections has built up such a reputation by fans of Franzen's fiction that it seems almost impossible that another Franzen novel will live up expectations, but, as PW says: ..."the first question facing Franzen’s feverishly awaited follow-up is whether it can find its own voice in its predecessor’s shadow. In short: yes, it does, and in a big way." 

Still, another novel about a family...hasn't he already covered this ground? It's like seeing movie remade by the same director originally released only ten years earlier. But, as PW goes on to say, "Franzen pits his excavation of the cracks in the nuclear family’s facade against a backdrop of all-American faults and fissures, but where the book stands apart is that, no longer content merely to record the breakdown, Franzen tries to account for his often stridently unlikable characters and find where they (and we) went wrong, arriving at—incredibly—genuine hope."

Sounds good, I'll give you that. And Liz is interested in reading it as well. Way interested. So this all to say that a copy of Freedom will be gracing our shelves by the end of the summer.

There is a lot of anticipation in the publishing/book seller world for this book. UK trade magazine The Bookseller says Freedom is the "one to watch" this September. "This is probably the most eagerly awaited literary novel this autumn." UK's The Guardian says, "Bookshops pin hopes on Jonathan Franzen's return with Freedom."

2010 Book Preview

Yeah, I know it's already April, and many of the titles listed in The Millions' most anticipated books of 2010 are already out. But now's a good chance to catch up on those major releases that came out in January and February that you missed. And to see what's still to come.

Doing some Internet research for author website links (I've just redone all my links -- Look, just to the right there. Yes, that's it. Those.), what caught my eye was a new novel due in August from Jonathan Franzen called Freedom. Nine years after The Corrections, one of my favorite books from the last ten years. I wasn't impressed by his lastest story published in the New Yorker, Good Neighbors, supposedly an excerpt from Freedom. Too much tell, almost no show--more a synopsis of a novel then a short story. Regardless, few writers elicit my can't-wait-to-read dar.

Also in 2010, lots more newly translated material from Robert Bolaño. Four new books out this year, including Monsieur Pain (January), Antwerp (April), The Return (July), and The Insufferable Gaucho (August). While the New Yorker still can't get enough of postumous Bolaño -- see William Burns, from last February -- they're also questioning how much is too much of a good thing by calling attention to the backlash. I'm still working my way through 2666. The part about the crimes. So I'll stay out of it, thanks all the same.

Interested in knowing what other books are on the horizon? Check out this list at amazon.

The Culture of Books

As much as I love reading books, I love buying books. And browsing for books. And looking at them, and, yes, smelling them. New books, anyway. Used books have their appeal as well. My father's a used book dealer. Summers, he would come home late Saturday mornings after hitting yard sales and book sales to go through his boxes of new used books. If any were musty, he would set them outside, fanned, so that they could air out in the Cape Cod afternoon.

I often went with him on his hunts for good used books. To church basements and strangers' driveways. I poked through the flats of paperbacks and hardcovers, editions both first and book club. I looked for comic books and movie tie-in books early on, then later, novels and books on filmmaking and photography. Accompanying my father on these mornings made me realize that he lived and worked in a milieu that he loved. And whether he meant to do it or not, he passed down his love of books to me.

All this brings me to last weekend when Liz and I drove up to Portland, ME to look around. It was a quiet Sunday, but I found two bookstores open. While Liz was off to neighboring yarn shops, I browsed around in Longfellow Books, a progressive independent store that sold mostly new books, but also carried a selection of used books. There I bought a book I've had my eye on for a few months, Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country, which is a revision and re-imagining of three of his earlier connected novels, Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone, that take place "...on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century." The book won the National Book Award last year. I've already got a big book in my queue (2666), but I'm a sucker for epic books and lost (or found) classics.



After Longfellow's, I found a book store called Yes Books, selling used and rare books. The store was all narrow, tall stacks of used paperbacks and hardcovers. I immediately found the fiction section and poured over half the hardcovers and all of the paperbacks.

During my book searches I release internal radar which branches outward from somewhere behind my eyes, parsing all spines in view for that perfect combination of longing, condition, history, and edition. Some used bookstores and book sales give off the spent karma of the picked-through, the deserted, the Oprah-certified bestsellered. Then there are those that exude a promise of editions long out of print, of classics ready to be found, of barely used books for over half the original cover price. As I scanned the Yes Books' stacks, I felt I was getting close to finding at least one book to buy. I kept seeing interesting books that I would have bought if I hadn't already owned them. Plus some close calls and runners up. I finally found two titles worthy of my interest, both monetary and literary.

First, something I had recently just heard of called Desperate Characters, by Paula Fox. Published originally in 1970, this was the reprint from '99, with a back cover pull-quote from David Foster Wallace, and a new introduction by Jonathan Franzen. A lost classic, introduced by one of my favorite novelists...be still my heart. The description heralds it as, "...one of the most dazzling examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature..." Which war? Doesn't matter. I'm there, first in line, tickets bought online months ago.


The second book I had eyed when it came out in 2008, a paperback original called Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski. Graphic novel-worthy cover illustration, promising a silly premise done up in serious blood-red splatterpunk. "A hot shot of adrenaline straight to the neural plexus," shouts a blurb on the back cover. Okay, I'll bite. I always like a spot of fictional blood lust. Modern-day noir riffs in the corporate workplace. I can relate.


I'm sated. For now. I doubt I'll finish this new round of books before another round makes it through the door. But so what? Reading's not always the point.