FREEDOM - Jonathan Franzen

These are tough days to be a liberal. We just take ourselves too seriously and so when the inevitable waves of criticism come we get confused, fight back for awhile, and then go off into a corner and pout. How can all those nasty republicans and nutwing tea partiers not understand what we all know to be true? Don't these people read papers? Don't they value logic and facts?

When we come into power, we lose our sense of humor. When John Stewart skewered George W. Bush back in the good old days of a republican administration, we got the joke and laughed uproariously. But when he skewers Obama, we feel angry and betrayed. When The New Yorker published its infamous cover before the last election of the Obamas dressed like Muslims fist bumping each other, we were outraged. We got the joke, sort of, but knew that all those stupid conservatives out there weren't smart enough to see satire when it hit them in the face. No wonder our detractors say we are elitist. They say it because we are.

The current political climate is a good one for reading Jonathan Franzen's new book. It focuses in on all those themes that are keystones for liberals and anathema for conservatives: Environmentalism, Corporate Greed, Conservative Insensitivity, and of course, Freedom versus Liberty. And just like in real life, none of those themes and conflicts get resolved. Every one ends up selling out.

Briefly, it is the rambling story of Patty and Walter Berglund, their life long rock and roller college chum and iconoclast, Richard Katz, and their son Joey. There are other characters, much too numerous to mention here, who have the same significance as single episode crew members on the USS Enterprise. They help move the plot and give the main characters someone to play against, but that is all.

Patty is the main character here, mostly because her therapeutic autobiography supplies the reader with all the essential history to understand the tensions that energize the plot. A misunderstood daughter of liberal wealth. A teenaged rape victim. A basketball star at the U. of Minnesota. A desperate housewife and all that implies. And a cloying mother of a rebellious son. Patty is all those things.

Walter is the hero. A passionate environmentalist. A sell out to the 3M corporation. A disillusioned father. A betrayed husband. A monumental rationalizer. A victim of circumstances he helps create. That is Walter.

Richard is the brooding third side of this improbable love triangle. A talented guitarist. A slave to his selfishness. A person with impulse control issues. A collosal womanizer. An object of love for both Walter and Patty. Richard is the soul of this novel.

The intricacy of the plot is worthy of Joyce Carol Oates. It meanders from the suburbs of the twin cities, back to college days and before, to Washington D.C., to the mountain destroying coal mines of West Virginia, to the gulf war, to South America, and back to Minnesota. The characters fall in and out of LIKE with one another and at the end everything, except the state of the country and the world, seems to be working out.

It is a very topical novel. Most of the action takes place during Bush II and eventually ends up with the Obama administration. Bush II doesn't come off very well; the jury in the book, as well as in real life, is still out on Obama.

My reaction to the whole thing has been keeping me up nights ever since I finished it about a week ago. It was impossible to put down and I finished the 562 pages in two glorious days. It was also the first book I've read since Underworld that I felt compelled to underline.

The main reason the book has been keeping me up nights is because I feel a little guilty about liking it so much. It really isn't a work of art in the sense that DeLillo's tour de force is. It is more like journalism and I always feel like I've cheated myself somehow when I read something that isn't ART. I loved Stieg Larson's trilogy, but I'm a little ashamed to let people see me reading it. I also love John Irving and Pat Conroy, but after reading something by those guys I feel the same sheepishness I feel after eating a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

Then I get angry at my reaction and the similarly snobbish reactions of elitist reviewers for The Atlantic or The New Yorker. I mean what exactly is wrong with a compelling story? Why does a book have to be hard to read in order to be great? Why is journalism (my snobbish put down word for non-art) any less worthy than art?

I think I have an answer, at least for me. I saw Frida the other night, a wonderful movie about the love of Diego Rivera and Frida with Trotsky thrown in for good measure. I thought it was obvious (not to mention one of the points of the movie) that Frida's tortured canvases were art, while Rivera's magnificent murals were merely journalism. Hamlet said one should hold a mirror up to nature, but an artist, I think, does more than that. Frida took reality and deconstructed it, threw it up in the metaphorical air, rearranged it, and made us look at it in completely new ways.

Underworld is a greater artistic achievement than Freedom because it does the same thing. It reinvents the way stories are told by playing with chronology, point-of-view, and even questioning reality itself. Freedom never approaches that and therefore only reaffirms what we already know to be true. There are no new insights. But the reaffirmations are wonderful and I loved every one of them.

I have two paintings (posters actually) by Ray Knaub hanging in my home. One is a commision he did for the Georgetown railroad showing the train going over a bridge suspended over a gorge. It is a wonderful piece constructed on an epic scale. The other is a still life of three pots, the background all awash in shades of amber. It plays with realism a little and ends up being a painting not about three pots, but about all pots and all southwestern art. I love it.

I'll stop rambling now. Freedom is a wonderful book. The three main characters are unforgettable. The insights about conservatism, capitalism, liberalism, and the nature of the artist are compelling and true. Read this wonderful book.

Let me end with the essential conundrum of the novel:

What was over was over. His delight in the world had died, and there was no point in anything. To communicate with his wife, as Jessica was urging, would have meant letting go of his last moments with Lalitha, and he had a right not to do this. He had a right, in such an unjust universe, to be unfair to his wife, and he had a right to let the little Hoffbauers call in vain for their Bobby, because there was no point in anything.

In The Magus, Conchis tries to explain to Nicholas that Freedom was the RIGHT to do all and the prohibition not to do all. Freedom examines the same paradox.