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June 16, 2002
REVIEWS: When things get too much
It seems to me that since the cold war suddenly ended in 1989 all hell has been let loose. Unrestrained capitalism and consumerism has catapulted us into a mind-numbing materialism, where the rich get richer and the poor poorer; while morality in public and private life has been tossed into the garbage can. Moreover to add to the confusion, the unthinkable is frequently articulated unrigorously by mediocrities intent on furthering their self image and careers rather than clearing our confusion. Luckily, those who can afford them can resort to the so-called ‘happiness’ pill to keep them on an even keel.
Not surprisingly the contemporary novel has found it difficult to keep up, document and interpret these tumultuous times. The past decade has seen a divide as some authors retreat into the age old feelings and relationships type novel while the more adventurous produce characters which sway around in the treacherous oceans of current ideas. Jonathan Franzen’s new novel (his third) ambitiously attempts to bridge this divide and has created a great stir especially in the US for so doing. Everybody was talking about this novel there especially when he declared his work was too ‘high art’ to be discussed on Oprah Winfrey’s book programme.
So how has Franzen seemingly done the impossible? Well, for me the first hundred or so pages were pretty ordinary. A pretty ordinary couple bicker and fuss in their early years of retirement in their empty nest, mid-West appallingly ordinary town. Their middle child has a predictable campus experience when his valiant attempt to fend off a politically incorrect student involvement turns into a torrid drugs and sex charged four-day encounter.
Grrr I thought, what’s all the fuss about? But then the novel goes into orbit. The disgraced son takes up a ludicrous job in the bankrupted and economically ruined Lithuania where Franzen gloatingly describes the ghastly failure of post-Communism capitalism . The elder son tries to avoid owning up to his depressive state and to his relentlessly dominant wife. While the daughter after an early seduction by a dull creature in her father’s office goes from strength to strength as a workaholic ‘glamour’ chef.
Their dreary parents go on a hilarious sunset cruise. Life on board the Nordic Pleasurelines ship is gloriously delineated as high farce. Franzen wonderfully catches the absurd reality of so many retirees reaching for the stars in their early old age but he is poignant too as Alzheimer’s begins to take its deadly toll of the husband.
The wife, however, is indomitable and maddening, clinging on to her three children with a degree of emotional blackmail that everybody of a certain age will surely recognize. Her wheedling for a final family Christmas permeate the book and when it finally takes place, painfully and miserably we are at last back in pre-cold war territory — vulnerable, needy people stretching out to each other just as we used to before the beastly nineties tried to make us self-sufficient and independent, popping our happiness pills when things get too much.
Writer’s email: thenewliz@hotmail.com
The corrections
By Jonathan Franzen
Fourth Estate
Website:
www.4thestate.co.uk/
ISBN 1-84115-789-9
576pp. £17.99
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