Bear with me. People have opinions about Jonathan Franzen. These opinions are rarely mild. There’s something about his personality and the way he negotiates his public image that invites discussion. I thought I had an opinion about Jonathan Franzen but the more I think about it, the more I realize he is not part of my literary vocabulary. If I never read another book of his again, my life would not come to an end. I loved The Corrections. That seems like a contradiction. I thought The Corrections was a great story, meandering and sweeping and engaging. But I’ve only read it once. I loved it but have never felt compelled to pick the book up again so maybe I don’t love The Corrections. Maybe I just really like it. I am excited to read Franzen’s forthcoming novel, Freedom, which I will be enjoying with The Rumpus Book Club. On Facebook, I think, I saw someone (Kyle Minor?) observe that people seem to enjoy taking down successful, ambitious people in reference to a lot of the recent commentary in various outlets about the VQR “situation.” I do not necessarily disagree. Successful, ambitious people are easy targets because we see them plainly and we have opinions about what they do and how we would do what they do and whether or not they deserve to those things they do and the privileges they enjoy because of how well or the public perception of how well they do the things they do.
Freedom received a glowing review in the New York Times. I did not read the review. I suppose I should but I don’t care enough. I know I’m going to read the book, regardless of what the Times has to say about it. Jodi Picoult had an opinion about that glowing review. Jodi Picoult writes books, often dealing with contemporary themes. I have read The Pact. It was engaging, if not a bit predictable. I’ve also read My Sister’s Keeper which was about as good as the movie, enjoyable but not life altering. Is her writing talent relevant here? Perhaps.
The older I get the more accepting yet less tolerant and patient I become. I love popular culture. I enjoy blockbuster movies that are formulaic advertisements for beautiful people where meaningful dialogue is discouraged and the plot is generally forwarded through the murder of key characters or large explosions. I enjoy trash television and reality television and mass market paperbacks. I’m excited that Tyra Banks is “writing” a book. I don’t think entertainment for the masses is the harbinger of doom for our culture and the sophisticates among us. I don’t know why we always treat popular culture and artistic or literary endeavors as binaries, as an either versus an or, as if to choose one, we must forsake the other.
I love the word sophisticate.
Sometimes, I get tired of opinions. Sometimes, I do not care what you think. I do not care what I think. I do not care what Michiko Kakutani thinks. I do not care what Jodi Picoult thinks.
Jonathan Franzen received a rave review in The New York Times. That is a big deal. Most writers dream of such a thing. You can judge it and and say you wouldn’t care and that’s fine. I would get a copy of a New York Times review tattooed on my face. I care. Please don’t hold me to that. Jodi Picoult cares. She is a novelist with eighteen books to her name. Her books have been made into movies that have debuted in theaters across the country and on Lifetime, that latter accolade which only improves her standing in my heart. Picoult’s books aren’t quite “chick lit” but they aren’t considered literary fiction. You can buy her book while checking out in a grocery store. We should all be so lucky. Upon reading the Franzen review, Picoult took to Twitter. That’s what we do these days. We purge our righteous anger in 140 characters or less. Sometimes all we need is that small, contained (or is it constrained?) medium to vent our frustration. She wrote, “NYT raved about Franzen’s new book. Is anyone shocked? Would love to see the NYT rave about authors who aren’t white male literary darlings.” People picked up on this random, fairly innocuous statement and it quickly became a Statement and then Picoult said other things and Jennifer Weiner (whose books I rather enjoy) said some things and soon this became about race, gender and the white men taking over the world. People reacted. There was a defense of literary fiction, as if one were needed. There was some statistical analysis demonstrating that over the past two years, white men have been practically discriminated against in the New York Times Best Book category. Poor guys. These things snowball. They become completely removed from what they began as. (Lincoln Michel has a good discussion of the kerfuffle here.)
I don’t know that Jodi Picoult was railing against white male literary darlings as much as she was expressing disappointment. I think Jodi Picoult dared to show that she cares very much about whether or not her books will be not only reviewed but critically adored by the New York Times. Disaffection is all the rage. We are not supposed to care because accolades are not important. It is the writing that is important. It is the craft that is important. And yet, accolades are not important until they are. They matter to me. If I had written as many commercially successful books as Picoult with nary a positive mention in the NYT, I’d be pretty pissed off. When her books have been reviewed by the Times, those reviews have rarely been… kind. That said, I cannot say those reviews have been wrong. Of course, Picoult can always console herself by regularly appearing on the Times bestseller list. Financial acclaim has its own rewards that critical acclaim will never pay.
I don’t know what literary fiction is but I do. I read a Tom Clancy novel and I know I am not reading great literature. I know his 527th book reveling in the glory of American military might will not leave its mark. That book will not be remembered. Not every book that is remembered is literary nor is every literary book remembered but I’m sure there is some kind of correlation between longevity and that literary quality that gets a book reviewed by The New York Times. I think Jodi Picoult is like most writers in that she wants to be remembered. She wants to feel like she writes books that matter. I think she believes the stories she tells about middle class families and the painful dramas in their lives are as important as the books Franzen or any of the elite literati write about middle class families and the painful dramas in their lives. I do not know what makes a book important. I do know I enjoyed The Corrections more than either of the Picoult books I have read even though I have never revisited the book. I imagine it’s hard to write a book that matters when you’re churning out one or two six hundred page novels a year. At the same time, Picoult is laughing all the way to the bank. On a balance sheet, I’m certain a publisher would point to Picoult’s books as books that matter even though in the grand scheme of things, I have to wonder why any of this matters.
Tags: jodi picoult, jonathan franzen, the new york times
Franzen is rich and famous because that’s the way God wants it. If you are not rich and famous it’s because God hates you.
In the midst of all the other noise about Freedom, I enjoyed the hell out of this.
George Lakoff would say you are speaking from a ‘conservative framework’, Uncle Sam.
Me too! Thank you Roxane!
no comment
Man, I’m really pissed a literary author is getting mainstream attention. “Freedom” makes anger!
Good post and thanks for the link!
The more I think about this whole thing the weirder I find the fact that Picoult and people on her “side” seem to be describing Franzen as some kind of dense underground snob fiction instead of, you know, a popular best selling author whose work is decidedly readable for the general public. You would think that the Times reviewing Franzen was the equivalent of them reviewing a small art-house film instead of Eat Pray Love. But isn’t Franzen more like a simply well executed and interesting commercial Hollywood film (Inception?) than a small art-house film?
Something is off in the perspective during this discussion.
There’s an app for that.
Money and love. Can only have one. Can’t stop yearning for the other.
I think it might be because a lot of people in the literary snob crowd (but maybe not the dense undergound snob fiction crowd) appreciate Franzen because he is thought to be “literary”. So he sort of of straddles that line between commercial and serious. Kind of like the way Arcade Fire or Radiohead can sell out two nights at the Garden but still get the respect of the indie crowd because they are trying to make Important music and people appreciate that. It’s like Delillo. There’s nothing really difficult about his work and Underworld and White Noise were bestsellers but he is appreciated by the literary snob crowd because he isn’t making pop fiction or whatever you want to call it. He is writing big sentences and trying to make big points, unlike John Grisham or whomever.
“Thirty-Something” is a closer metaphor but it’s extinct… though I’d bet it’s a big influence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirtysomething_%28TV_series%29
I think this is part of the conflict. Like people are getting upset (maybe esp. those in the small press community?) because it seems like he is getting press as some sort of underground literary dude, like Oh here’s Time Magazine and who’s this guy on the cover oh it’s a novelist I’ve never heard of him Time must really be on the cutting edge of literature here etc. etc. and (subconsciously? explicitly?) the people who are getting upset are the people who read actually lesser known authors and think that these authors deserve the press or even don’t care about the press and just think it’s ridiculous to be implying that Franzen is some sort of unknown dude. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe people just don’t like him, I don’t know.
wait, did I just say exactly the same thing you did, Lincoln? hmm/ugh
Right, that’s what I’m saying. He is like Christopher Nolan or as you point out Radiohead or Arcade Fire. Would these same people get mad that Radiohead’s new album gets better reviews than Nickelbacks? Or that Inception gets more coverage than Saw 18, right?
I’m just saying, you can’t be like “The Times doesn’t review books people actually read or like!” when talking about a popular author like Franzen.
I tried to read The Corrections and I know I should have finished it so I could appreciate it, but really hated it from the guy making love to the couch to the poop being thrown. I’d put Eugenides Middlesex up against The Corrections any day of the week.
Surely there are better directors than Christopher Nolan to compare Jonathan Franzen with. Is Franzen really that bad? I’ve never read anything by Franzen. But Christopher Nolan sucks. He makes movies that people who don’t really watch movies think are awesome.
I love Christopher Nolan movies.
And I love Ke$ha’s song “Tik Tok.” OMG SO GOOD.
But I don’t take it seriously.
Well then you’re just better than the rest of us, Hank. I mean, really, what is the point of saying something like that. People like what they like. Why on earth do you care?
I think there would be (probably are) Nickelback fans angry about Radiohead getting better reviews. They would see it as a slight against a band they think makes really good music–music you can blast in your car and sing along to (I don’t really know Nickelback’s songs so this could be wrong) but the snobbish critics’ circle gives Radiohead great reviews because it makes them look smart.
I think Arcade Fire is an especially interesting phenomenon. On the one hand I’ve heard indie snobs dismiss them as this watered-down U2 band that’s way too commercial even though they are still on a true indie label (Merge Records). And I’ve heard other people call them a snobbish indie band when their songs are so accessible they hit the top of the Billboard charts.
Maybe it really is just success that we all hate.
Franzen’s work is comforting. The only time he will ever be ‘underground’ is when he’s dead.
Don DeLillo would have never been on the cover of Time Magazine because he doesn’t knit blankets like Franzen does.
Franzen is giving the people (meaning the 5,10,15% (?) of the country who live like his characters do, but whom for some reason, signify the entirety of America, hence the “Franzen writes about the way we live now” mantra) exactly what they want, and what they want is to be told that their lives are interesting. Anything less than that and he would still be a fringe author. That’s what all that mid-90s sturm and drang was about; Franzen coming to terms with wanting to be rich and famous. He knew what he had to do in order to achieve solid middlebrowness, he just didn’t want to do it at first.
Roxane, you always have the most profound and honest things to say. I couldn’t agree with you more, even though I am a straight, white male. You rock.
This is such a great post, Roxane.
Frazen’s novels take a decade of his life to write. There’s nothing fake about that. He works harder than most at actualizing a (our) condition, trying to make it art. He seems to be doing the job of being a novelist, which is getting harder and harder to do in this world. I get the sense he’d do it despite the deserved reviews. But taking him down (or trying) seems to be the undertaking of someone who needs a big target to hit anything.
I want to be reasonable and I do more or less agree but God I hate Franzen’s sentences so much. He can be the biggest success in the world, this is neutral to me most days, but his sentences are like forks prodding my brain.
Idk, Roxanne. If I knew why I cared about anything, I probably wouldn’t anymore.
Oh, and goner, re: “Maybe it really is just success that we all hate” — maybe it’s not success so much as ambiguity. We can all list off musicians, writers, directors, etc., etc., etc., that have made it big through being a hack, so maybe when someone gets big that isn’t an hack, it really just throws off our sense of balance?
Honestly, I don’t think anyone on the VQR staff (and I know them all) wanted to “bring down” Ted Genoways. It’s a good thing to have a successful boss, usually. The problem with Genoways seems to have little to do with his success and much to do with his management style. Many questions the staff has raised remain unanswered. I hope the university’s investigation will give us more answers, but I’m pretty skeptical that the full story will ever come out.
Ok can you imagine Picoult or Weiner saying no thanks to Oprah? They are more than happy to be popular authors. It’s the deal they signed up for. They are indebted to agents and publicists. Fifteen years later they want to let the writing stand for itself?
I’ve got this bizarro image of Roxane reading Clancy and I just don’t believe it. Popular fiction is gendered, that’s the deal. Tom Clancy isn’t complaining about any book reviews.
These folks are trying to capitalize on the hype. It may sell them more books or get another movie deal but it won’t bring critical acclaim. When Markus attacked Franzen in Harpers he couched it in terms of easy reads and difficult reads. But it read like a personal attack, and Franzen took the high road: he has never responded to it, so he won’t reply to this either.
Despite the pissiness of the essay, I think Markus splitting books into easy and difficult is helpful. It is what Franzen is best at. Reading his books can be enlightening and enjoyable but reading them doesn’t feel like work. As writers, I’m sure we can appreciate how much work it takes to get the prose to the point where it feels effortless. You can’t really do that and also churn the stuff out. It’s a subtle art and deserving of accolades.
Weiner and Picoult, no matter what they set out to do, they have benefitted from an atmosphere and marketing strategy of “women’s fiction”. Fifteen years ago there were women editors and agents acquiring work by, for, and about women.
It was so much the rage that I would bet you.there are 100 books as good as The Corrections that were never given a chance. But nobody really cares about un
…unpublished authors. White males can’t cry foul and claim sexism in publishing. It’s just capitalism, baby.
Franzen is rich and famous because that’s the way God wants it. If you are not rich and famous it’s because God hates you.
In the midst of all the other noise about Freedom, I enjoyed the hell out of this.
this was all over the place and didn’t make a lot of sense.
George Lakoff would say you are speaking from a ‘conservative framework’, Uncle Sam.
Made sense to me
Me too! Thank you Roxane!
Seconded.
Except for the Genoways aside in the comments thread.
That didn’t make much sense in regards to the Franzen post. Although it was interesting.
no comment
Man, I’m really pissed a literary author is getting mainstream attention. “Freedom” makes anger!
Good post and thanks for the link!
The more I think about this whole thing the weirder I find the fact that Picoult and people on her “side” seem to be describing Franzen as some kind of dense underground snob fiction instead of, you know, a popular best selling author whose work is decidedly readable for the general public. You would think that the Times reviewing Franzen was the equivalent of them reviewing a small art-house film instead of Eat Pray Love. But isn’t Franzen more like a simply well executed and interesting commercial Hollywood film (Inception?) than a small art-house film?
Something is off in the perspective during this discussion.
There’s an app for that.
Money and love. Can only have one. Can’t stop yearning for the other.
Me three! Especially: “I would get a copy of a New York Times review tattooed on my face.”
I think it might be because a lot of people in the literary snob crowd (but maybe not the dense undergound snob fiction crowd) appreciate Franzen because he is thought to be “literary”. So he sort of of straddles that line between commercial and serious. Kind of like the way Arcade Fire or Radiohead can sell out two nights at the Garden but still get the respect of the indie crowd because they are trying to make Important music and people appreciate that. It’s like Delillo. There’s nothing really difficult about his work and Underworld and White Noise were bestsellers but he is appreciated by the literary snob crowd because he isn’t making pop fiction or whatever you want to call it. He is writing big sentences and trying to make big points, unlike John Grisham or whomever.
“Thirty-Something” is a closer metaphor but it’s extinct… though I’d bet it’s a big influence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirtysomething_%28TV_series%29
I think this is part of the conflict. Like people are getting upset (maybe esp. those in the small press community?) because it seems like he is getting press as some sort of underground literary dude, like Oh here’s Time Magazine and who’s this guy on the cover oh it’s a novelist I’ve never heard of him Time must really be on the cutting edge of literature here etc. etc. and (subconsciously? explicitly?) the people who are getting upset are the people who read actually lesser known authors and think that these authors deserve the press or even don’t care about the press and just think it’s ridiculous to be implying that Franzen is some sort of unknown dude. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe people just don’t like him, I don’t know.
wait, did I just say exactly the same thing you did, Lincoln? hmm/ugh
Right, that’s what I’m saying. He is like Christopher Nolan or as you point out Radiohead or Arcade Fire. Would these same people get mad that Radiohead’s new album gets better reviews than Nickelbacks? Or that Inception gets more coverage than Saw 18, right?
I’m just saying, you can’t be like “The Times doesn’t review books people actually read or like!” when talking about a popular author like Franzen.
I tried to read The Corrections and I know I should have finished it so I could appreciate it, but really hated it from the guy making love to the couch to the poop being thrown. I’d put Eugenides Middlesex up against The Corrections any day of the week.
Surely there are better directors than Christopher Nolan to compare Jonathan Franzen with. Is Franzen really that bad? I’ve never read anything by Franzen. But Christopher Nolan sucks. He makes movies that people who don’t really watch movies think are awesome.
I love Christopher Nolan movies.
And I love Ke$ha’s song “Tik Tok.” OMG SO GOOD.
But I don’t take it seriously.
Well then you’re just better than the rest of us, Hank. I mean, really, what is the point of saying something like that. People like what they like. Why on earth do you care?
I think there would be (probably are) Nickelback fans angry about Radiohead getting better reviews. They would see it as a slight against a band they think makes really good music–music you can blast in your car and sing along to (I don’t really know Nickelback’s songs so this could be wrong) but the snobbish critics’ circle gives Radiohead great reviews because it makes them look smart.
I think Arcade Fire is an especially interesting phenomenon. On the one hand I’ve heard indie snobs dismiss them as this watered-down U2 band that’s way too commercial even though they are still on a true indie label (Merge Records). And I’ve heard other people call them a snobbish indie band when their songs are so accessible they hit the top of the Billboard charts.
Maybe it really is just success that we all hate.
Franzen’s work is comforting. The only time he will ever be ‘underground’ is when he’s dead.
Don DeLillo would have never been on the cover of Time Magazine because he doesn’t knit blankets like Franzen does.
Franzen is giving the people (meaning the 5,10,15% (?) of the country who live like his characters do, but whom for some reason, signify the entirety of America, hence the “Franzen writes about the way we live now” mantra) exactly what they want, and what they want is to be told that their lives are interesting. Anything less than that and he would still be a fringe author. That’s what all that mid-90s sturm and drang was about; Franzen coming to terms with wanting to be rich and famous. He knew what he had to do in order to achieve solid middlebrowness, he just didn’t want to do it at first.
Roxane, you always have the most profound and honest things to say. I couldn’t agree with you more, even though I am a straight, white male. You rock.
Jodi Picoult: “…historically the books that have persevered in our culture and in our memories and our hearts were not the literary fiction of the day, but the popular fiction of the day. Think about Jane Austen. Think about Charles Dickens. Think about Shakespeare. They were popular authors. They were writing for the masses.”
The bestselling book of the 19th century was The Mysteries of Paris, by Eugene Sue.
In England, Dickens was vastly outsold by G.W.R. Reynolds, who sought to emulate Sue with The Mysteries of London and then The Mysteries of the Court of the Prince of Wales.
But let’s look at the bestsellers of the 20th century. We can get to Picoult’s confusion re Quantity vs Quality another time.
Beginning in 1900, it’s hard to find anything too familiar among the bestsellers for some while, and such writers as Edith Wharton, Henry James, even Ernest Hemingway never top the charts. Some may recall 1902’s top seller, The Virginian, by Owen Wister, but I’m not sure too many revisit The Rosary by Florence Barclay (1910) or The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter, though soon Booth Tarkington shows up (and he has the rare defender) and in 1920 the bestselling novel there is The Man of the Forest by the perennial writer of Westerns, Zane Grey. (Best known for Riders of the Purple Sage. Is he much read now? I don’t know and won’t guess.)
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis appears, then, uh, Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton and 1924’s So Big by Edna Ferber. Lewis reappears with Elmer Gantry in 1927 (Later made into a film starring Burt Lancaster. The title character is a Jimmy Swaggart-style evangelist who is — surprise! — not at all a nice guy.)
Cimarron by Edna Ferber topped all bestsellers in 1930, followed by The Good Earth–Pearl S. Buck (who was in time given a Nobel Prize because I guess her work was “uplifting.”)
Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen was the bestselling novel of both 1933 and 1934. Anyone have a clue what that was all about?
Forever Amber was huge in 1945, and somehow no one could resist The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas in 1948.
Tom Carson in the Village Voice once stuck up for James Jones, whose From Here to Eternity topped the list in 1951. Jones also wrote The Thin Red Line. I think he also wrote Some Came Running, made into a film with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. Hemingway was jealous of James Jones. Norman Mailer was as well.
The critic Dwight McDonald famously went after James Gould Cozzens, whose By Love Possessed was the bestselling book (and I think won a Pulitzer) in 1957. Dwight McDonald coined the term “middlebrow.”
(Mickey Spillane was selling like crazy during the early 50s, but maybe only in paperback. Mass market paperbacks were still a new thing. [Though reprints of William Faulkner, Steinbeck and others — as “American classics” greatly helped people remember their names.])
In the 1960s the bestselling authors and titles begin to sound more familiar — Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold–John Le Carre, Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. John Updike must have been lurking around by then as well. Saul Bellow. Herman Wouk, whoever he was.
In 1970 there was Love Story by Erich Segal, which of was the #1 bestseller and then a hugely successful movie with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw. Are both of these artifacts as bad as some say? Does anyone read that novel now? (Or watch the DVD?)
1976–Trinity by Leon Uris. 1978–Chesapeake by James Michener. 1981–Noble House by James Clavell. 1985–The Mammoth Hunters by Jean Auel. Still being read?
Then in the 80s Stephen King tops the bestseller list a couple times, Tom Clancy two years in a row, 1991 has the manufactured “sequel” to Gone With the Wind by whoever Alexandra Ripley was supposed to be… and then rest of the 20th century was dominated, year after year, by John Grisham.
It’s not unusual for the purveyor of popular entertainment who feels critically despised to turn to the argument that Quantity equals Quality. It’s not enough to be richly rewarded. Don Simpson, the loud half of the producers Simpson & Bruckheimer, who brought us the movies Flashdance, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Days of Thunder and Bad Boys, bullied everyone, spent millions of dollars on prostitutes and cocaine, and was constantly tormented by his films’ bad reviews. He even at one point considered trying to systematically ruin, through use of private detectives, anyone who wrote somethinng which caused him pain.
Jackie Collins, Harold Robbins, Mickey Spillane, Danielle Steel, Jacqueline Susann — all bestselling authors of relatively lowbrow or “subliterary” fiction — all were tormented by the bad reviews. Even the reviews had no effect whatsoever on sales. But they would on talk shows proclaim, “A million readers can’t be wrong” or variations on this theme.
But Quantity doesn’t equal Quality. The Big Mac is just not — and is not meant to be — anything more than what it is. The Big Mac, the Quarterpounder, the Whopper with Cheese… they should not be ashamed.
Jodi Picoult writes novels about such things as the teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome who just happens to be an incredible crimefighter. This is a pretty stupid premise, but so what? Why is she so envious of Jonathan Franzen, who serves for the most part a different demographic of readers?
I’ve only read his novel The Twenty-Seventh City, so I’m not qualified to talk about his other fiction. My vague impression is that he somewhat fills the place of the late John Updike, writing about the suburbs and so on. I own The Corrections but haven’t got around to reading it for the last year. I’m not really very interested. It doesn’t look very entertaining to me. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ll give it a chance. I got a remaindered copy for a buck.
Meanwhile, females buy 70% of all hardcover books. Superagent Nat Sobel says that the young male coming-of-age novel is impossible to sell and that male writers should write thrillers. I don’t believe this is as universally true as he makes it sound but we’ll see.
The pendulum needed to swing, and it swung. These sorts of things always overcorrect for a while.
This is such a great post, Roxane.
Frazen’s novels take a decade of his life to write. There’s nothing fake about that. He works harder than most at actualizing a (our) condition, trying to make it art. He seems to be doing the job of being a novelist, which is getting harder and harder to do in this world. I get the sense he’d do it despite the deserved reviews. But taking him down (or trying) seems to be the undertaking of someone who needs a big target to hit anything.
I want to be reasonable and I do more or less agree but God I hate Franzen’s sentences so much. He can be the biggest success in the world, this is neutral to me most days, but his sentences are like forks prodding my brain.
Idk, Roxanne. If I knew why I cared about anything, I probably wouldn’t anymore.
Oh, and goner, re: “Maybe it really is just success that we all hate” — maybe it’s not success so much as ambiguity. We can all list off musicians, writers, directors, etc., etc., etc., that have made it big through being a hack, so maybe when someone gets big that isn’t an hack, it really just throws off our sense of balance?
Honestly, I don’t think anyone on the VQR staff (and I know them all) wanted to “bring down” Ted Genoways. It’s a good thing to have a successful boss, usually. The problem with Genoways seems to have little to do with his success and much to do with his management style. Many questions the staff has raised remain unanswered. I hope the university’s investigation will give us more answers, but I’m pretty skeptical that the full story will ever come out.
Ok can you imagine Picoult or Weiner saying no thanks to Oprah? They are more than happy to be popular authors. It’s the deal they signed up for. They are indebted to agents and publicists. Fifteen years later they want to let the writing stand for itself?
I’ve got this bizarro image of Roxane reading Clancy and I just don’t believe it. Popular fiction is gendered, that’s the deal. Tom Clancy isn’t complaining about any book reviews.
These folks are trying to capitalize on the hype. It may sell them more books or get another movie deal but it won’t bring critical acclaim. When Markus attacked Franzen in Harpers he couched it in terms of easy reads and difficult reads. But it read like a personal attack, and Franzen took the high road: he has never responded to it, so he won’t reply to this either.
Despite the pissiness of the essay, I think Markus splitting books into easy and difficult is helpful. It is what Franzen is best at. Reading his books can be enlightening and enjoyable but reading them doesn’t feel like work. As writers, I’m sure we can appreciate how much work it takes to get the prose to the point where it feels effortless. You can’t really do that and also churn the stuff out. It’s a subtle art and deserving of accolades.
Weiner and Picoult, no matter what they set out to do, they have benefitted from an atmosphere and marketing strategy of “women’s fiction”. Fifteen years ago there were women editors and agents acquiring work by, for, and about women.
It was so much the rage that I would bet you.there are 100 books as good as The Corrections that were never given a chance. But nobody really cares about un
…unpublished authors. White males can’t cry foul and claim sexism in publishing. It’s just capitalism, baby.
Awesome historical panorama of cultural-cache-envy. But Franzen is not at all like Updike, at least what I’ve read of each. More Foucault references, more satire, more cultural critique, more paranoia, more idea-driven. Updike is caught and made eloquent by the fuzziness of shapes and edges of things. For Franzen those things are all signifiers from the get-go.
That’s funny; this list was all too familiar to me, as a major part of my graduate thesis involved a massive study of best-sellers since 1900. And I found the same thing you did, by and large: people mostly read disposable crap and they’ve always mostly read disposable crap. (And I don’t look down on anyone who reads it, but I say let’s call it what it is and for me, my life is too short and there are too many good books for me to want to waste my time with it. Just me personally. I agree with Roxane that who cares what people want to read?)
Picoult is full of it; yeah, sure, Dickens was popular but so were a million other dudes writing penny dreadfuls that faded into obscurity and out of print forever ago. Dickens stands out among junk like Hemingway does the last century. And WTF is Picoult talking about taking about Shakespeare as an author? Nobody was reading Shakespeare during his time. People went to SEE plays, they didn’t sit around and read them. Or anything at all back then, mostly.
It’s not a good argument , the whole “the classics are always what’s got mass appeal” but people always try to make it. Just doesn’t hold up.
this was all over the place and didn’t make a lot of sense.
Made sense to me
Hank, no one’s saying Nolan is fucking Fellini. But you make it sound like he’s Jerry Bruckheimer or something. Is this some new hipster thing, this Nolan is the worst ever OMG meme? Cuz I don’t get it. And why be such a dick about it, too? I like Nolan. (And I’ve seen an ass-shit-ton of films, trust me.)
Seconded.
Except for the Genoways aside in the comments thread.
That didn’t make much sense in regards to the Franzen post. Although it was interesting.
Me three! Especially: “I would get a copy of a New York Times review tattooed on my face.”
Hm, well I liked “Memento,” but I guess when you really think about it, “Rashomon” was the original “Memento” in some ways. Eh, never mind, I don’ t feel like talking about precursors…
Ambiguity can be loathsome. I feel that it depends on the ambiguity, though. There are songs by The Killers that I really like, but their lyrics are so ambiguous that any intellectual could assign his or her own meaning to, god forbid, publish a piece of writing.
Here’s another example of how a person that is smarter than a person producing some form of entertainment can actually demonize the idea of ambiguity.
http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/2010/03/aase-bergs-with-deer-and-lady-gagas-bad_28.html
Ambiguity can be a positive or a negative.
I guess I think comparing a tacky ambiguous pop musician to Aase Berg is severely negative.
See, it is the badness of the argument that truly leads me to believe this is more personal than political for Picoult.
Agreed.
Jodi Picoult: “…historically the books that have persevered in our culture and in our memories and our hearts were not the literary fiction of the day, but the popular fiction of the day. Think about Jane Austen. Think about Charles Dickens. Think about Shakespeare. They were popular authors. They were writing for the masses.”
The bestselling book of the 19th century was The Mysteries of Paris, by Eugene Sue.
In England, Dickens was vastly outsold by G.W.R. Reynolds, who sought to emulate Sue with The Mysteries of London and then The Mysteries of the Court of the Prince of Wales.
But let’s look at the bestsellers of the 20th century. We can get to Picoult’s confusion re Quantity vs Quality another time.
Beginning in 1900, it’s hard to find anything too familiar among the bestsellers for some while, and such writers as Edith Wharton, Henry James, even Ernest Hemingway never top the charts. Some may recall 1902’s top seller, The Virginian, by Owen Wister, but I’m not sure too many revisit The Rosary by Florence Barclay (1910) or The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter, though soon Booth Tarkington shows up (and he has the rare defender) and in 1920 the bestselling novel there is The Man of the Forest by the perennial writer of Westerns, Zane Grey. (Best known for Riders of the Purple Sage. Is he much read now? I don’t know and won’t guess.)
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis appears, then, uh, Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton and 1924’s So Big by Edna Ferber. Lewis reappears with Elmer Gantry in 1927 (Later made into a film starring Burt Lancaster. The title character is a Jimmy Swaggart-style evangelist who is — surprise! — not at all a nice guy.)
Cimarron by Edna Ferber topped all bestsellers in 1930, followed by The Good Earth–Pearl S. Buck (who was in time given a Nobel Prize because I guess her work was “uplifting.”)
Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen was the bestselling novel of both 1933 and 1934. Anyone have a clue what that was all about?
Forever Amber was huge in 1945, and somehow no one could resist The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas in 1948.
Tom Carson in the Village Voice once stuck up for James Jones, whose From Here to Eternity topped the list in 1951. Jones also wrote The Thin Red Line. I think he also wrote Some Came Running, made into a film with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. Hemingway was jealous of James Jones. Norman Mailer was as well.
The critic Dwight McDonald famously went after James Gould Cozzens, whose By Love Possessed was the bestselling book (and I think won a Pulitzer) in 1957. Dwight McDonald coined the term “middlebrow.”
(Mickey Spillane was selling like crazy during the early 50s, but maybe only in paperback. Mass market paperbacks were still a new thing. [Though reprints of William Faulkner, Steinbeck and others — as “American classics” greatly helped people remember their names.])
In the 1960s the bestselling authors and titles begin to sound more familiar — Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold–John Le Carre, Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. John Updike must have been lurking around by then as well. Saul Bellow. Herman Wouk, whoever he was.
In 1970 there was Love Story by Erich Segal, which of was the #1 bestseller and then a hugely successful movie with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw. Are both of these artifacts as bad as some say? Does anyone read that novel now? (Or watch the DVD?)
1976–Trinity by Leon Uris. 1978–Chesapeake by James Michener. 1981–Noble House by James Clavell. 1985–The Mammoth Hunters by Jean Auel. Still being read?
Then in the 80s Stephen King tops the bestseller list a couple times, Tom Clancy two years in a row, 1991 has the manufactured “sequel” to Gone With the Wind by whoever Alexandra Ripley was supposed to be… and then rest of the 20th century was dominated, year after year, by John Grisham.
It’s not unusual for the purveyor of popular entertainment who feels critically despised to turn to the argument that Quantity equals Quality. It’s not enough to be richly rewarded. Don Simpson, the loud half of the producers Simpson & Bruckheimer, who brought us the movies Flashdance, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Days of Thunder and Bad Boys, bullied everyone, spent millions of dollars on prostitutes and cocaine, and was constantly tormented by his films’ bad reviews. He even at one point considered trying to systematically ruin, through use of private detectives, anyone who wrote somethinng which caused him pain.
Jackie Collins, Harold Robbins, Mickey Spillane, Danielle Steel, Jacqueline Susann — all bestselling authors of relatively lowbrow or “subliterary” fiction — all were tormented by the bad reviews. Even the reviews had no effect whatsoever on sales. But they would on talk shows proclaim, “A million readers can’t be wrong” or variations on this theme.
But Quantity doesn’t equal Quality. The Big Mac is just not — and is not meant to be — anything more than what it is. The Big Mac, the Quarterpounder, the Whopper with Cheese… they should not be ashamed.
Jodi Picoult writes novels about such things as the teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome who just happens to be an incredible crimefighter. This is a pretty stupid premise, but so what? Why is she so envious of Jonathan Franzen, who serves for the most part a different demographic of readers?
I’ve only read his novel The Twenty-Seventh City, so I’m not qualified to talk about his other fiction. My vague impression is that he somewhat fills the place of the late John Updike, writing about the suburbs and so on. I own The Corrections but haven’t got around to reading it for the last year. I’m not really very interested. It doesn’t look very entertaining to me. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ll give it a chance. I got a remaindered copy for a buck.
Meanwhile, females buy 70% of all hardcover books. Superagent Nat Sobel says that the young male coming-of-age novel is impossible to sell and that male writers should write thrillers. I don’t believe this is as universally true as he makes it sound but we’ll see.
The pendulum needed to swing, and it swung. These sorts of things always overcorrect for a while.
I agree. Might as well get angry at the I-Ching. If you depend on it, then you must live with its answers.
Awesome historical panorama of cultural-cache-envy. But Franzen is not at all like Updike, at least what I’ve read of each. More Foucault references, more satire, more cultural critique, more paranoia, more idea-driven. Updike is caught and made eloquent by the fuzziness of shapes and edges of things. For Franzen those things are all signifiers from the get-go.
That’s funny; this list was all too familiar to me, as a major part of my graduate thesis involved a massive study of best-sellers since 1900. And I found the same thing you did, by and large: people mostly read disposable crap and they’ve always mostly read disposable crap. (And I don’t look down on anyone who reads it, but I say let’s call it what it is and for me, my life is too short and there are too many good books for me to want to waste my time with it. Just me personally. I agree with Roxane that who cares what people want to read?)
Picoult is full of it; yeah, sure, Dickens was popular but so were a million other dudes writing penny dreadfuls that faded into obscurity and out of print forever ago. Dickens stands out among junk like Hemingway does the last century. And WTF is Picoult talking about taking about Shakespeare as an author? Nobody was reading Shakespeare during his time. People went to SEE plays, they didn’t sit around and read them. Or anything at all back then, mostly.
It’s not a good argument , the whole “the classics are always what’s got mass appeal” but people always try to make it. Just doesn’t hold up.
Hank, no one’s saying Nolan is fucking Fellini. But you make it sound like he’s Jerry Bruckheimer or something. Is this some new hipster thing, this Nolan is the worst ever OMG meme? Cuz I don’t get it. And why be such a dick about it, too? I like Nolan. (And I’ve seen an ass-shit-ton of films, trust me.)
Hm, well I liked “Memento,” but I guess when you really think about it, “Rashomon” was the original “Memento” in some ways. Eh, never mind, I don’ t feel like talking about precursors…
Ambiguity can be loathsome. I feel that it depends on the ambiguity, though. There are songs by The Killers that I really like, but their lyrics are so ambiguous that any intellectual could assign his or her own meaning to, god forbid, publish a piece of writing.
Here’s another example of how a person that is smarter than a person producing some form of entertainment can actually demonize the idea of ambiguity.
http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/2010/03/aase-bergs-with-deer-and-lady-gagas-bad_28.html
Ambiguity can be a positive or a negative.
I guess I think comparing a tacky ambiguous pop musician to Aase Berg is severely negative.
See, it is the badness of the argument that truly leads me to believe this is more personal than political for Picoult.
Agreed.
I agree. Might as well get angry at the I-Ching. If you depend on it, then you must live with its answers.
Totally. By the way, this piece was great, Roxane. Thanks.
Totally. By the way, this piece was great, Roxane. Thanks.
I agree that Picoult’s argument is rather weak. However, if another more “*respected” author were to make the same argument would everyone be so likely to rip the argument to shreds and analyze it six ways to Sunday? No, I really don’t think so. And in a way that proves her point.
*by respected I mean a writer of literary fiction that is universally admired by most “lit snobs”
What argument?
The problem with Picoult’s “argument” is that she said a bunch of different sometimes contradictory things. (After going on about how massively popular authors don’t get the reviews that lesser known but critically popular authors do, she responded on twitter by saying that she just wanted some lesser known authors to get more press. I think she meant lesser known commercial authors, but the entire original argument was that authors should basically get reviews for being popular!)
Anyway, no I don’t think many people would hold back from attacking the argument that commercial mass market authors should get more favorable reviews than literary authors merely because they are popular.
What I mean is that she didn’t actually make any coherent arguments and certainly didn’t even attempt to back up any of her claims. As such, it came off like a bunch of sour grapes.
If a respected literary author made a similar incoherent set of whining tweets, I think they’d be attacked too.
Wait, people still use the term “literary fiction” as something other than a pejorative? (As I’ve said before, “literary fiction” is little more than readerly wishful thinking…)
Yes, people still use the term literary fiction.
They also still use the words arrogant, pretentious, asshole, and genius…
You might be right… Who knows?
Anyway, I gotta run get in the carpool line.
Roxane,
I enjoyed the article. One of the best pieces I’ve read since Picoult sent those tweets.
Thanks, Mandy!
I agree that Picoult’s argument is rather weak. However, if another more “*respected” author were to make the same argument would everyone be so likely to rip the argument to shreds and analyze it six ways to Sunday? No, I really don’t think so. And in a way that proves her point.
*by respected I mean a writer of literary fiction that is universally admired by most “lit snobs”
What argument?
The problem with Picoult’s “argument” is that she said a bunch of different sometimes contradictory things. (After going on about how massively popular authors don’t get the reviews that lesser known but critically popular authors do, she responded on twitter by saying that she just wanted some lesser known authors to get more press. I think she meant lesser known commercial authors, but the entire original argument was that authors should basically get reviews for being popular!)
Anyway, no I don’t think many people would hold back from attacking the argument that commercial mass market authors should get more favorable reviews than literary authors merely because they are popular.
What I mean is that she didn’t actually make any coherent arguments and certainly didn’t even attempt to back up any of her claims. As such, it came off like a bunch of sour grapes.
If a respected literary author made a similar incoherent set of whining tweets, I think they’d be attacked too.
Mandy, what I mean is that using “literary fiction” as a non-ironic (or non-pejorative) descriptor seems utterly useless, since it primarily serves to broadcast one’s anxieties about the cultural status of one’s reading material, or maybe to suggest that one imagines oneself writing for an audience of graduate students and/or (fingers crossed!) book clubs. It is a term for agents and bookstores to decide how to market a book. It is the sort of term beloved of such organizations as AWP, because then its members — which I have been in the past, and probably will be again in the future — can congratulate themselves on the cultural significance of their works, especially if said works — like mine — possess little commercial potential. (And as Serious Writers we all imagine ourselves producing culturally significant work, yes?) It is a conservative term that seeks to grant certain sanctioned works exclusivity. It is also, c. 2010, a wildly floating signifier. Anyway, all peace.
Wait, people still use the term “literary fiction” as something other than a pejorative? (As I’ve said before, “literary fiction” is little more than readerly wishful thinking…)
jeez dude,
I think ‘literary’ is a bit more useful and lasting than all that. I mean go about it however you want, but
I think the point is that literary exists outside the market. Writers of literary works are proud of the term. It’s the market and the marketeers who are skitish about it. Yes, literary writers would love to make a dollar and reach a broad audience but it’s not the primary motivating factor. Unfortunately, you can’t say that about the gatekeepers and the multinationals who bought all the presses, and who only want a return on investment.
Yes, people still use the term literary fiction.
They also still use the words arrogant, pretentious, asshole, and genius…
You might be right… Who knows?
Anyway, I gotta run get in the carpool line.
Roxane,
I enjoyed the article. One of the best pieces I’ve read since Picoult sent those tweets.
Thanks, Mandy!
I understand your point. Just as I understood it after I clicked on the links in your original comment before I wrote my reply.
I disagree, but I am kind of sorry I implied you might be an a-hole.
Mandy, what I mean is that using “literary fiction” as a non-ironic (or non-pejorative) descriptor seems utterly useless, since it primarily serves to broadcast one’s anxieties about the cultural status of one’s reading material, or maybe to suggest that one imagines oneself writing for an audience of graduate students and/or (fingers crossed!) book clubs. It is a term for agents and bookstores to decide how to market a book. It is the sort of term beloved of such organizations as AWP, because then its members — which I have been in the past, and probably will be again in the future — can congratulate themselves on the cultural significance of their works, especially if said works — like mine — possess little commercial potential. (And as Serious Writers we all imagine ourselves producing culturally significant work, yes?) It is a conservative term that seeks to grant certain sanctioned works exclusivity. It is also, c. 2010, a wildly floating signifier. Anyway, all peace.
jeez dude,
I think ‘literary’ is a bit more useful and lasting than all that. I mean go about it however you want, but
I think the point is that literary exists outside the market. Writers of literary works are proud of the term. It’s the market and the marketeers who are skitish about it. Yes, literary writers would love to make a dollar and reach a broad audience but it’s not the primary motivating factor. Unfortunately, you can’t say that about the gatekeepers and the multinationals who bought all the presses, and who only want a return on investment.
I understand your point. Just as I understood it after I clicked on the links in your original comment before I wrote my reply.
I disagree, but I am kind of sorry I implied you might be an a-hole.
Good analogy, Lincoln. I agree. The Picoult reaction seems silly.
I also can’t help but be reminded of the time Nicholas Sparks dismissed Cormac McCarthy as a hack. It seems the vitriol originates from the more commercially successful writers in these cases.
Good analogy, Lincoln. I agree. The Picoult reaction seems silly.
I also can’t help but be reminded of the time Nicholas Sparks dismissed Cormac McCarthy as a hack. It seems the vitriol originates from the more commercially successful writers in these cases.
I wrote about this “feud” in the Huffington Post when it just started…… Roxanne is dead on with this little essay, though. I loved it. Just loved it. And I, too, would have a rave review of my novel tattooed somewhere on my body…..:)
PS meant to post this, too, if anyone is interested…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-solod-warren/when-is-a-literary-feud-n_b_695386.html
I wrote about this “feud” in the Huffington Post when it just started…… Roxanne is dead on with this little essay, though. I loved it. Just loved it. And I, too, would have a rave review of my novel tattooed somewhere on my body…..:)
PS meant to post this, too, if anyone is interested…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-solod-warren/when-is-a-literary-feud-n_b_695386.html
I don’t know why we always treat popular culture and artistic or literary endeavors as binaries, as an either versus an or, as if to choose one, we must forsake the other.
Amen, lady. Amen.
Great article.
Main Street is good
I don’t know why we always treat popular culture and artistic or literary endeavors as binaries, as an either versus an or, as if to choose one, we must forsake the other.
Amen, lady. Amen.
Great article.
Main Street is good
Late entry.
Franzen received a glowing review in the NYT, but Ron Charles’s review in the Washington Post seems fairer (to Franzen and to readers) and more astute (to me). He ultimately recommends the book–“In dialogue that conveys each palpitation of the heart, every wince of the conscience, and especially in those elegantly extended phrases of narration, Franzen conveys his psychological acuity in a fugue of erudition, pathos and irony that is simply fantastic”–but spends about 40% of the review wondering why in the world Franzen would deviate from being “America’s best answer to Martin Amis” to “bully us into accepting [his themes] with knife-to-the-throat insistence.”
Maybe Franzen disdained Kakutani’s “rave” in the Times because he prefers a serious review from an engaged reader who wants to rave, but can’t bring himself to.
Forgot the link, sorry.
Late entry.
Franzen received a glowing review in the NYT, but Ron Charles’s review in the Washington Post seems fairer (to Franzen and to readers) and more astute (to me). He ultimately recommends the book–“In dialogue that conveys each palpitation of the heart, every wince of the conscience, and especially in those elegantly extended phrases of narration, Franzen conveys his psychological acuity in a fugue of erudition, pathos and irony that is simply fantastic”–but spends about 40% of the review wondering why in the world Franzen would deviate from being “America’s best answer to Martin Amis” to “bully us into accepting [his themes] with knife-to-the-throat insistence.”
Maybe Franzen disdained Kakutani’s “rave” in the Times because he prefers a serious review from an engaged reader who wants to rave, but can’t bring himself to.
Forgot the link, sorry.
Whatever Picoult feels and however valid her points are, she shouldn’t be invoking Jane Austen as a “popular novelist” because the facts are against her, as demonstrated also on The Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lev-raphael/was-jane-austen-a-popular_b_705583.html
Whatever Picoult feels and however valid her points are, she shouldn’t be invoking Jane Austen as a “popular novelist” because the facts are against her, as demonstrated also on The Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lev-raphael/was-jane-austen-a-popular_b_705583.html
Peter, I haven’t read Freedom, so I can’t tell if one of its reviews is more or less ‘fair and astute’ than some other. Charles’s review reveals his mixed feelings – “brilliant, maddening novel” – , which evidence of weighing sometimes indicates a “serious” discussion. But, to me, it’s not such a trustworthily “astute” review.
One small example of analytic bad faith on Charles’s part is his misuse of the term “satire”. The Corrections is not a “satire”. All satires are – or try to be – comical about stupidity and moral weakness, but everything that puts failure in a painfully humorous way is not satirical. In The Corrections, the mess of the three grown children is not garish or exaggerated; albeit in often gorgeous prose, the narrative is as naturalistic – maybe literal is a better word – as, say, that of Light Years is. To me, anyway, there was nothing fantastic or garish about the portrayals in that novel, which caricaturing is essential to satire. I think Charles was simply saying that the excruciation in the book was funny, and turned lazily to “satire” to say so.
Charles also uses “satire” to characterize a subplot in Freedom: “the worn-out satire of Republicans and the Iraq war”. Maybe this subplot is ‘satirical’ – but has the Legacy Misunderburnishment Tour already succeeded at a Reagan-Legacy level of mass delusion?? Anything could be handled in a “worn-out” way, but it sounds like Charles is already tired of hearing about the neo-cons and their Stupid War – an critical agenda that would make a review of a book hostile to “Halliburtonesque” misadventure difficult (for me!) to take seriously.
Charles turns to reviewspeak boilerplate (“sprawling epic”) and whining snark (the motif of “freedom” invites a “frat house drinking game”) – again, lazy ostentation.
This sentence stopped me dead: “But how many readers, even the long-suffering readers of literary fiction, will settle for linguistic brilliance as sufficient compensation for what is sometimes a misanthropic slog?” Well, anyone who enjoyed reading Beckett’s novels, or Blood Meridian, will more than “settle for” a “misanthropic slog” + “linguistic brilliance”, right? And if such a “slog” is the writer’s ambition, why ask “how many readers”? – except to be part of the populism that Franzen “disdains”? On Franzen’s terms, that rhetorical question sounds like a recommendation – but not a “serious” one!
One thing reviewers due that slays me when I notice it is when critics batter the work in front of them by comparing it to a previous ‘masterpiece’ of that artist: ‘L’Avventura sucks.’ ‘Blow-up sucks, which is a shame, because L’Avventura was a master-work.’ ‘The Passenger sucks, which is a surprise after the greatness of Blow-up.’ – with that critic nowhere acknowledging evolution or re-thinking in their taste. I think: none of those reactions was really to the movie the critic was talking about; they’re all memos put out by Career Management. Charles’s review of Freedom stinks of this kind of calculation, to me.
—
Peter, have you yet read Freedom? If so, what did you think of it?
Of course Charles does all that. Did you watch the video he posted? He even wishes he could be a Times critic and fake pouts, which places him alongside Kakutani as…that. But you misunderstood me, or I understated my point: between the two reviews, he managed to write the saner one (“fairer and more astute [than hers]”–I haven’t read the Tanenhaus one beyond the first paragraph and don’t care) without stepping away from the mainstream critics and readers Franzen’s always courted, whether he pretends to despise them or really does. (I disregarded Charles’s past-work nostalgia for The Corrections since I don’t share it.) That sort seems more desirable, under the circumstances, than a rave, which by now Franzen’s obligated to disdain as long as he can do so safely. I haven’t read Freedom and don’t have anything to say about it.
Peter, I haven’t read Freedom, so I can’t tell if one of its reviews is more or less ‘fair and astute’ than some other. Charles’s review reveals his mixed feelings – “brilliant, maddening novel” – , which evidence of weighing sometimes indicates a “serious” discussion. But, to me, it’s not such a trustworthily “astute” review.
One small example of analytic bad faith on Charles’s part is his misuse of the term “satire”. The Corrections is not a “satire”. All satires are – or try to be – comical about stupidity and moral weakness, but everything that puts failure in a painfully humorous way is not satirical. In The Corrections, the mess of the three grown children is not garish or exaggerated; albeit in often gorgeous prose, the narrative is as naturalistic – maybe literal is a better word – as, say, that of Light Years is. To me, anyway, there was nothing fantastic or garish about the portrayals in that novel, which caricaturing is essential to satire. I think Charles was simply saying that the excruciation in the book was funny, and turned lazily to “satire” to say so.
Charles also uses “satire” to characterize a subplot in Freedom: “the worn-out satire of Republicans and the Iraq war”. Maybe this subplot is ‘satirical’ – but has the Legacy Misunderburnishment Tour already succeeded at a Reagan-Legacy level of mass delusion?? Anything could be handled in a “worn-out” way, but it sounds like Charles is already tired of hearing about the neo-cons and their Stupid War – an critical agenda that would make a review of a book hostile to “Halliburtonesque” misadventure difficult (for me!) to take seriously.
Charles turns to reviewspeak boilerplate (“sprawling epic”) and whining snark (the motif of “freedom” invites a “frat house drinking game”) – again, lazy ostentation.
This sentence stopped me dead: “But how many readers, even the long-suffering readers of literary fiction, will settle for linguistic brilliance as sufficient compensation for what is sometimes a misanthropic slog?” Well, anyone who enjoyed reading Beckett’s novels, or Blood Meridian, will more than “settle for” a “misanthropic slog” + “linguistic brilliance”, right? And if such a “slog” is the writer’s ambition, why ask “how many readers”? – except to be part of the populism that Franzen “disdains”? On Franzen’s terms, that rhetorical question sounds like a recommendation – but not a “serious” one!
One thing reviewers due that slays me when I notice it is when critics batter the work in front of them by comparing it to a previous ‘masterpiece’ of that artist: ‘L’Avventura sucks.’ ‘Blow-up sucks, which is a shame, because L’Avventura was a master-work.’ ‘The Passenger sucks, which is a surprise after the greatness of Blow-up.’ – with that critic nowhere acknowledging evolution or re-thinking in their taste. I think: none of those reactions was really to the movie the critic was talking about; they’re all memos put out by Career Management. Charles’s review of Freedom stinks of this kind of calculation, to me.
—
Peter, have you yet read Freedom? If so, what did you think of it?
Of course Charles does all that. Did you watch the video he posted? He even wishes he could be a Times critic and fake pouts, which places him alongside Kakutani as…that. But you misunderstood me, or I understated my point: between the two reviews, he managed to write the saner one (“fairer and more astute [than hers]”–I haven’t read the Tanenhaus one beyond the first paragraph and don’t care) without stepping away from the mainstream critics and readers Franzen’s always courted, whether he pretends to despise them or really does. (I disregarded Charles’s past-work nostalgia for The Corrections since I don’t share it.) That sort seems more desirable, under the circumstances, than a rave, which by now Franzen’s obligated to disdain as long as he can do so safely. I haven’t read Freedom and don’t have anything to say about it.