Jonathan Franzen Book Club

Martin Cizmar: What do you object to about Franzen?

Lizzy Acker: Before I started reading this book, it was a vague objection to his existence. This middle-aged, white-male author who writes big books with obnoxious titles, and the whole thing with the bird watching and trying to take down the Audubon society.

Martin: Well, in fairness, he was trying to prop up the Audubon society against cat lovers, which in this town are killing all of our birds. He actually raised my awareness about that and that’s something I’m grateful to him for. 

Lizzy: Well I’m for birds and against cats. We can agree on that.

Martin: So we’ve already agreed. Cats are the problem.

Lizzy: My feelings about him [before reading him] were nebulous. I felt like I probably didn’t like him.

Martin: You felt didn’t like him because he was old and white and wrote books that got critical acclaim?

Lizzy: There are plenty of middle-aged white guys that write books I like.

Martin: Because he wrote about middle-class ennui?

Lizzy: Perhaps.

Martin: He does, but I felt like I knew all of the characters, I knew those people.

Lizzy: I think that’s not true. My main objection to the way female characters are written is his frequent use of the word "pretty" and the idea that this character is so beautiful and she doesn’t know how beautiful she is and this makes her more beautiful and unattainable. And she’s so young.

Martin: I was startled by how sexualized the female characters where at all times.

Lizzy: Even the mothers—only as worthy as they are fuckable.

Martin: Especially the mothers. But their interest in sex isn’t presented as a moral failing, and it doesn’t seem like any of them are judged unfuckable.

Lizzy: No. They’re all so beautiful. I’m saying their worth is how much they’re fuckable. That’s what they’re worth. All of the female characters are described as pretty. Including the moms, which is totally fine. There’s only one point where a woman is ugly. Tom’s mom is on steroids, she’s so hideous he can barely stand to look at her, as if we’d judge our mothers on physical attractiveness. Our own mothers.

Martin: This is a valid point. You’ve accurately identified a weakness. But I thought all the characters were compelling, interesting people—I think the thing he does really well that I really like about him—he creates backstories where while the characters are in no way likeable, you can easily empathize. He hasn’t written a character that I can’t empathize with, which is a wonderful quality in a writer, to write about all these horrible people but make us like them or at least understand all of them.

Lizzy: I would say almost none of them except the mothers were truly horrible people. The only characters I couldn’t identify with Anabel and Andreas’ mom Katya.

Martin: Katya had a mental illness. She felt trapped and she had a mental illness. She wasn’t unlikeable.

Lizzy: I disagree. But I think some of those characters should have been less likeable. Andreas’ character was very difficult to understand. He’s were written as if he was a hero. But he’s also a pedophile. We’re supposed to feel like his love for Annagret is more pure. The name of the fucking book is Purity.

Martin: The name of the book is Purity, but that’s also a characters name.

Lizzy: That’s a stupid name for the book.

Martin: That is a terrible name for the book. But I found all of the characters relatable and empathetic. I felt like he did a really good job explaining what part of their life had made all of them to be be in this state that made them kind of a horrible person in a way that is not totally their fault. I think that all of his works, you kind of understand why all of the people do the things that they do. Even if the reason is they are mentally ill.

Lizzy: If I were to look at this book as a character study of the many characters in this books, I don’t think he failed at those character studies. Where it didn’t work was that connecting them was overwrought and obvious. They were interesting on their own. The character I most had issue with was Pip, because she didn’t seem real. I really do think Jonathan Franzen doesn’t know anyone who’s like 22 years old. She really seems like a middle-aged man’s idea of what an 22 year-old girl is like in how she would interact with the world. Especially her student loans. Obama has programs! You can’t go bankrupt!

Martin: You don’t know those people who have terrible lives because of their student loans?

Lizzy: Me! And I know lots of those people.

Martin: She had a $130,000 loan.

Lizzy: You don’t have to pay it back right now. She’s 22 years old. There’s a difference between a 32 year old feeling burdened by loans and a 22 year old—she’s right out of college.

Martin: You don’t remember when that first bill comes? You’re like, shit.

Lizzy: The notion that this compelled her to do all this stuff doesn’t seem real to me. It was held over her head.

Martin: She was motivated by different things. First, finding her father. Student loans, I don’t think were a real motivation—I think it was a red herring, something she told her mom. What are the odds you find your father and he has a spare $200,000 laying around to give you?

Lizzy: That’s what I’m saying. I’m not sure that the fabric that was meant to pull these characters together made much sense. And the book was so long. Too long to not have a real plot besides will Pip find her father.

Martin: I thought there were plenty of things that kept me interested. Plenty of mic drops in and out of chapters. I don’t think it was poorly constructed. You said you enjoyed reading every sentence.

Lizzy: It was readable. I didn’t enjoy it. There are books that are really unreadable. And Jonathan Franzen is a capable fiction writer. I find half his female characters too beautiful, and the other half were mothers that were just awful.

Martin: By backing up to the he-doesn’t-know-how-to-write-women thing you are are guaranteeing that you can win or at least stalemate this argument. You’re retreating to something you can’t lose on. You’re not fighting honorably.

Lizzy: That’s a big enough thing. I think he sees himself as a feminist. I think Leila is the closest he got. When we first met Leila here’s a woman who’s active in her life beyond needing an older heroic man to save her from the tragic mess her life is. And then she got so jealous of Pip it became tedious. The young female characters are really ineffectual, all they want is a man to fix them—whether by killing their stepfather or paying their student loans.

Martin: You’re leaving out Stephen's wife.

Lizzy: She’s a frigid bitch.

Martin: She sounds like a capable and strong woman who was married to weak and obnoxious man and then left him for another man—

Lizzy: She wasn’t really a character, she was minor.

Martin: So your problem is that he dwelled on the characters who were most flawed as protagonists?

Lizzy: He tended to dwell on beautiful young girls and having sex with beautiful young girls. I mean, Andreas having sex with 53 underage at risk youth. That wasn’t a thing he felt guilty about.

Martin: I don’t understand. Why are those characters any worse than the stepfather?

Lizzy: Andreas and Tom have more agency. The stepfather is another minor character. Andreas kills him so he can have sex with a girl.

Martin: He’s in love with her.

Lizzy: He’s not. He realizes this the second she moves in. He was obsessed with her youth and beauty and really just wanted to fuck her. He doesn’t know her. He’s known her four days. She’s a fifteen year old high school student.

Martin: OK. What did you think of his treatment of journalism. I love that he thinks that journalists just call up the Denver Post. ‘Hey, I’m a  writer for the Washington Post. Can I just work here a while?’ This is how people bounce around in his world.

Lizzy: Honestly, the story is not bad. It could have been shorter.

Martin: That’s one of the dangers of being Jonathan Franzen. You’re good enough you can get away with writing good things. No sentence or major paragraph is terrible. You want to write a “big book,” which is a funny little meta-thing in the novel. No one will stop you from writing this bloated book. And it is bloated. What do you think about the novelist making fun of Jonathans?

Lizzy: Is this an attack on Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer? I think he was trying to make fun of other novelists with that character, Leila's husband.

Martin: That was inward. He was making fun of himself. Which I thought was good. I thought that was a good character. That’s what I expect that guy to be like. His analysis of how gin blossoms are different from whiskey blossoms. That was funny. This is a thing I like about it. I don’t think other people make the connection between Craigslist and online classifieds and the death of journalism. We all know that and take it for granted. But a lot of people reading this are like New York Times subscribers, read the new jonathan Franzen and think,’ huh, I didn’t realize.’ He picks out interesting little details about the world and weaves them in to teach you something, which I really like. You learn a lot about our contemporary world and some of the ridiculous things about it.

Lizzy: I think by the end I just thought—I know what the outcome of this is. It seems self-indulgent to have a 600 page book that doesn’t need to be 600 pages. He does think he’s very smart.

Martin: Like the thing about the cats, eating birds. That’s a very important point. Nobody who read Freedom is so pro-stray-cat.

Lizzy: I guess I know about that. Because my parents are birders.

GO: Jonathan Franzen is at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 228-4651, powells.com, on Tuesday, Sept. 8. 7pm. Free.