Franzen: s/d

bought Freedom yesterday and already totally sucked in

by a powerful computer

purity was fun to read. dude writes beach books, not great american novels. i want to read freedom and the corrections now. SIGH

yea otm

worked for me as a pip coming of age/maturing story also

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/06/stop-sending-jonathan-franzen-novels/

the "powerful computer" bit must be based on his own experience. You can't make that kind of stuff up.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/t-magazine/jonathan-franzen-rachel-kushner-interview.html

Kushner attempts to frame F as a comic writer, which doesn't negate the uninspired writing in Purity...

(I don't understand the appeal of Kushner...Flamethrowers seemed like a graduate school effort...)

between that and the nell zink piece 'acclaimed female writers sort of tiptoe around the question of whether they think jonathan franzen is all that good' is getting to be a genre

? Kushner pretty much says she loves him in that article

idk maybe i'm reading too much into this

the book, which is filled with great comedy. (For the record, I would consider Jon principally a comic writer.)

flamethrowers sucked

the backlash against franzen seems over the top to me even though he seems totally worthless. somewhat interested in the corrections but there is so much i am more interested in

flamethrowers sucked

― Treeship,

hallelujah

you guys are so wrong

itt waterface complains about treeship's lack of positivity

i liked this!

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/carbon-capture

see, i can say nice things...

for all his problems, i was really moved by Freedom, and i'm still thinking about it a month after finishing it. poor Walter. it helped that I visualized him as Walter Becker from Steely Dan

O rily

I thought "Flamethrowers" was fantastic but couldn't finish "Freedom," the first and last Franzen I will ever try to read

for all his problems, i was really moved by Freedom, and i'm still thinking about it a month after finishing it. poor Walter. it helped that I visualized him as Walter Becker from Steely Dan

― flappy bird, Thursday, October 29, 2015 6:17 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i did this too. it wasn't enough.

The last book that made you cry?

Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom.” That ending really got me. He would be one of the writers mentioned under the title favorite novelist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/books/review/nathan-lane-by-the-book.html?hpw&rref=books&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

He would be one of the writers mentioned under the title favorite novelist

let's just stare at this sentence for a bit

iirc the ending of freedom:

the wife humiliates herself and risks her life to earn the forgiveness of the husband because she was fucking his friend who was just a less abhorrent human being

the husband was fucking the only non-white character of note in the book, whose whole role in the book was to want to fuck this just totally abhorrent and physically repulsive man, and to conveniently die such that abhorrent man can move on with his life

the husband does not need to humiliate himself or risk his life to earn the wifes forgiveness for any of this because hey thats franzentown

also the reason pace franzen that she wanted to fuck the other dude was that husband was too gentle and respectful of her status as rape survivor to fuck her properly

yeah the tears are fucking flowing right here

now im reliving the enraging experience of having read 'freedom' by acclaimed novelist jonny franzen

the other day i was thinking about how weird how much he seems to care about where his characters did their undergraduate degrees. like how important and 'telling' that is in his construction

/He would be one of the writers mentioned under the title favorite novelist/

let's just stare at this sentence for a bit

LOL Franzen 2016:

Have you ever considered writing a book about race?

I have thought about it, but—this is an embarrassing confession—I don’t have very many black friends. I have never been in love with a black woman. I feel like if I had, I might dare.

[I adjust the microphone, which he stares at for a moment.] Good, good, good. The mic. Got the mic pointed toward me. I am doing all the talking here. [Pauses.]

You were saying you have never been in love with a black woman.

Right. Didn’t marry into a black family. I write about characters, and I have to love the character to write about the character. If you have not had direct firsthand experience of loving a category of person—a person of a different race, a profoundly religious person, things that are real stark differences between people—I think it is very hard to dare, or necessarily even want, to write fully from the inside of a person.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/interrogation/2016/07/a_conversation_with_novelist_jonathan_franzen.html

"I feel it’s really dangerous, if you are a liberal white American, to presume that your good intentions are enough to embark on a work of imagination about black America."

Franzen pretty otm here in my opinion

well, yeah, if the reason you are writing something is because you have good intentions, than definitely try not to do that. unless you are an amazing writer. than it probably wouldn't be that dangerous. it just might not be great. and i am thankful that franzen is not writing about race. his next novel should really be about a white novelist who writes a lot of e-mails and then goes bird-watching.

- Do stupid comments on social media get to you? What about a long and thoughtful review? Do you engage with that sort of thing?

- No. I don’t even read positive reviews unless they are absolutely certified by eight different people to not contain one thing that could upset me.

- Really?

- Yes.

as much as franzen has said a lot of dumb stuff - and his comments are worded really badly, i can kind of sympathise with the tendency for a white writer to avoid trying to write about other races or other experiences besides his/her own. isn't it kind of arrogant for a white male writer to assume he can talk freely from the mouth of a character from any background you choose?

i mean, the onus is more on society to promote and talk about writers from different backgrounds than it is for existing successful white male writers to lead the way by writing about characters they so far haven't written about. i don't know why we would expect them to do that or even want them to.

also, writing fiction is really really difficult - creating things is really really difficult. if a writer hasn't done xyz thing it's probably because they can't.

well he says he doesn't do much research on stuff he's not that interested in. and i think it shows. every time i read him i just picture a guy at home writing.

a great writer can make me forget about the guy at home writing. and a good writer can and should write about whatever they want. or write in any voice that they want. which is hard work to get right.

i've never read his books, but i agree with all of that, i'm just not sure that writing about other identities is a prerequisite for achieving those things. the written word is p powerful in many directions with many possibilities.

a good writer can and should write about whatever they want. or write in any voice that they want. which is hard work to get right

again, i agree. but whatever they want is not the same as what others feel they should.

Anyone who can avoid being written about by Franzen should feel grateful.

amen.

most white american writers don't even bother. cuz they know they would suck at writing about anyone not like them or from their tiny world. journalists who write fiction (like crime fiction) don't seem to think its a big deal. probably because they have met more than 4 people in their work as journalists.

mostly people just take a tip from t.v. and have everyone talk and act the same no matter who they are. which is the safest bet if you don't know how to create living breathing fictional characters who differ from each other in substantial ways.

p sure many, many of the authors i've read you mention on the reading threads don't write about people who aren't the same race as them, and that doesn't make them bad writers. you can write about what you don't know without it being another race.

i wanna be really clear. there isn't anything that anyone HAS to write about. but i also don't think that anything should be "dangerous" to write about. even if its a misguided polemic on race written by an outsider. it will live and die on its own merits. i also think that there are a LOT of current white american fiction writers who write what they know and it often turns out that they don't know that much. or know much about people. most of the (white) writers i love know a lot about people. inside and out. if people is their thing. and not the process of terraforming distant planets. sometimes that is their thing. and knowing something inside and out is one way a minor writer can become a major one.

can we talk about his choice of jeans

i wanna be really clear. there isn't anything that anyone HAS to write about. but i also don't think that anything should be "dangerous" to write about. even if its a misguided polemic on race written by an outsider. it will live and die on its own merits. i also think that there are a LOT of current white american fiction writers who write what they know and it often turns out that they don't know that much. or know much about people. most of the (white) writers i love know a lot about people. inside and out. if people is their thing. and not the process of terraforming distant planets. sometimes that is their thing. and knowing something inside and out is one way a minor writer can become a major one.

fair enough. i guess i think even within an ostensibly narrow frame a writer can achieve a lot. even when writing about people they might feel they know, they discover things they don't know. a lot of writing seems to be based on this idea. like if you took a synopsis it would be easy to dismiss but the discoveries within are more than the subject might suggest. there are interesting things in every life.

i feel like "write what you don't know" is as valuable or maybe moreso than "write what you know" - i'm not sure fiction writing is ever done from a position of knowledge and comfort and confidence, but i don't know.

you can totally be narrow and achieve a lot but you have to be really talented and compelling and interesting and you should know that narrow space you live in like the back of your hand.

write what you don't know is definitely valuable. that's why i like sci-fi. i wish all the normal nerds of lit fic would read more sci-fi.

i just like being in good hands. reading those ferrante books was so cool because i was in such good hands. she totally owns her world. no hesitancy. no fraidy-cat self-consciousness. it's law. not a tentative stab at some vaguely interesting insight about some vaguely interesting subject that someone read about in the new yorker or the new york times.

i might even go so far as to say that i don't trust a writer who says there is something dangerous to write about. but i am glad that he's not planning to go all tom wolfe on the race issue...

i wish all the normal nerds of lit fic would read more sci-fi.

this seems like a weird thing to say, i feel like all the major lit fic people now have read a lot of SF and have that as part of their world, while this is less true of last century's big white novelists like Roth/Bellow/Updike

maybe they didn't read the right sci-fi books...

i don't think people should be looking at the U.S. for fiction now anyway. ain't no ferrantes around these parts as far as i can see. i'm not really the best judge though. since i'm usually hanging out with the out of print moldy figs.

I think it is telling, though, that franzen basically isn't interested in black people or their experiences. He doesnt need to write about them, and im sure hed do a shoddy job if he did, but it seems as though he gives not 1 shit.

It's a pretty shocking revelation, a bombshell even.

Indeed. Though the idea that you can only write about what you have loved explains why franzen can write so much about himself and people just like him.

blink·ered
ˈbliNGkərd
adjective
(of a horse) wearing blinders.
having or showing a limited outlook.
"a small-minded, blinkered approach"
synonyms: narrow-minded, inward-looking, parochial, provincial, insular, small-minded, close-minded, shortsighted; hidebound, illiberal, inflexible, entrenched, prejudiced

which is different than being in a narrow space. zane grey and the ventures were really cool. so were p.g. wodehouse and j.j. cale.