It’s been a packed couple of weeks; my fiancee and I moved across town, and I’ve been trying to play catch-up on a mountain of papers. The move was not part of my schedule for this term, so I had allotted the past weekend for grading three classes worth of composition papers. Instead, I moved…’nuff said. I’ll have them all back by the end of the week, but it means I’ve had to put off the next post in my sequence on Atwood and Oryx and Crake, partially because the Kindle’s gone dead and I need to find the charger (oh, e-books…how far you have still to go…)!
I did, however, want to take a moment to draw attention to Laura Miller’s great piece on Jonathan Franzen, published last week over at Salon.com. At some point, I fully intend to address Franzen in greater detail; I’m fascinated by the now decade-long tendency for many writers and critics to simply label him as a “misogynist” and then run, as if pointing out that a writer is 1) arrogant, 2) male, and 3) white eliminates the need for ethical engagement with his work. I’m a moderate fan of Franzen’s work — The Corrections was a pivotal book for me as an undergraduate English major, in the sense that it had the guts to present a cast of thoroughly unsympathetic characters, reveal the worm-infested subcultures they inhabited, and then simply walk away without providing some sort of comforting resolution. I actually threw the book at the wall when I finished reading it. Freedom was interesting to me in part because, as a self-exiled Minnesotan, I was able to re-engage with my home state through the geography of the novel. The ecocritic in me was intrigued by Franzen’s ability to peel back the facade of altruism representing the shiny exterior of so many seemingly “enviro-friendly” philanthropists and self-styled protectors of wild spaces, here revealing the hard crust of capitalism lurking beneath.
What I like about Miller’s piece is that she has the courage (no doubt some will call it temerity) to defend Franzen as a writer, setting aside attempts at character assassination to do so. Again, I’m looking forward to engaging with Franzen’s trials and tribulations in the public eye at a future point; his critics have more than enough to complain about when they critique his public persona, and their contempt for his unsympathetic characterizations of various characters is certainly understandable. Patty Berglund, the female protagonist of Freedom, offers a great case study in literary misogynism. However, I read Franzen as wanting us to ask why Patty is the way she is. It’s too easy, in my mind, to assume that Patty is simply a hollow construct representing the way Franzen views and understands women — as inefficient desiring machines, never satisfied with what they have, always searching for the right man to attach their affection to, and so forth. With Patty in particular, I think, Franzen tries to demonstrate that there are no easy answers.
I also tend to believe that even if Franzen depicts his female characters harshly, he actually despises his male characters, in no small part for what they do to the female characters. I’m never quite able to suppress the sense that Franzen really wants to reach out and smack American males in the face, grab them by the lapels, and force them to confront their bad behavior as he neatly describes it on the page. Take Walter Berglund’s relationship with Lalitha in Freedom, for example. It’s tempting to suggest that Walter, the hard-working, earnest liberal that he is, deserves a second chance at happiness with Lalitha, who all but literally throws herself at him. Spoiler Alert!. But Lalitha’s tragic end is ultimately the responsibility of two men, the anonymous hit-and-run driver, and Walter himself, who bears the brunt of the blame here. As an older, more experienced (ergo, wiser) adult, Walter should have recognized that he was simply using Lalitha for his own ends, both sexual and professional. His poor decision-making puts her in unhealthy and threatening situations time-and-time again.
Ultimately, I’m really most interested in having an actual conversation about Franzen’s work without being chastised for suggesting his work has merit. I know I’m not alone in this — I’ve had conversations with female colleagues who are equally frustrated about this issue. Maybe it’s time I went back to The Corrections and presented a full-form dissection…? But then again, I’m not sure I want to read that book again, and that may actually be the best summary assessment of my conflicted feelings about Franzen as a writer.
Even so, that’s not likely to stop me from further commentary!
The Cognitive Turn 
Well put, Josh. I have a similar, albeit more conflicted response, to a couple of authors, including Sherman Alexie. I think he’s a brilliant writer but when I met him in person he was a total dick, which makes me conflicted about liking/recommending his work. (Tim O’Brien gets similar criticism.) So I think that the charge of “misogyny” feels like it lends more credence to rejecting the work itself but actually often simply translates to: “That guy is an ass and I don’t like him.” I wonder, then, if it would be better to have a more open dialogue about the merit of judging any artist by his or her personality, personal life, etc. Is there a case to be made for that kind of criticism or should the work stand alone apart from personality? Certainly it doesn’t work; you don’t see arguments claiming that someone is a good writer because she’s a lovely person.
Thanks for the great response! I haven’t read a lot of Sherman Alexie’s work, but I’ve heard similar feedback (ditto on Tim O’Brien, although I had a chance to meet him and found him very pleasant). Sarah, I know you and I have had this conversation before, but I’ll say it again — as much as I love Ernie’s work, I don’t think I could have been able to stand having a drink with him, and I suspect the same thing would go for Scott (or, for that matter, Ben Jonson). This is one of the reasons I seldom read book reviews anymore, to be honest — it seems like the community of “elite” writers is increasingly incestuous, and everyone goes around waxing poetic about the work of their friends, or spewing venom on those who have been “mean” to them at some point. Even so, I have to give credit to Kakutani, who gave “Corrections” a nasty review, but praised “Freedom,” despite Franzen’s very public dislike of her; it speaks to an ability to actually judge the work, in spite of emotional valences.
“Certainly it doesn’t work” in reverse. Yeesh.
This piece is really smart. Folks need to have a more clear sense of the role of the author and how the author, as person, needs to be divorced from the literary work. I agree with those who criticize Franzen’s reception in the media, particularly the incredible exposure offered to male writers over female writers. Women writers continually need to fight for access into more reputable journals, newspapers, etc and to be reviewed by these periodicals. This argument, though, is separate from an analysis of the text itself.
I had a lukewarm reaction to The Corrections, but having lived with an eco-critic for many years have too, become eco-crtically inclined. Therefore, I was particularly enamored with Freedom. After Eugenides’ Middlesex, I would say that Freedom would be my second choice for the book of our century. I was pleased to see the fracking issue be brought to the surface and to see strong parallels between this issue and the “misogynist” / “male self-hatred” tendencies. Its as if man’s relationship to the earth is caught in this similar holding pattern. Man desires these natural resources, yet cannot handle the dirtiness of his own exploitation. It should go without saying that by man, I am referring to humankind. Nevertheless a brilliant text for opening up the historical ties between war and environmental resources, and our unsettling ambivalence toward it all.
Re: gender and “critical coverage,” I think you’re spot-on here. It’s true that the “great white men” still draw the bulk of the attention in major review publications. I’ll suggest, though, that the class issue is starting to eclipse that of gender in this regard; it seems to me that upper middle-class white writers and academics (the latter category having seen a surge in female membership over the past few decades) greatly eclipse the number of lower / lower-middle-class, non-white writers. In other words, it’s a lot like the music business; if you’re part of the increasingly small “club” of (mainly) East Coast writers, MFAS, or public intellectuals, you’ll get lots of coverage. If you fall outside of that circle, well, good luck. I think most of the interesting writing these days falls outside of the “literary” canon; I would much rather pick up a novel by Neil Gaiman than anything by Don DeLillo.
I was also glad to see Franzen tackling some very thorny environmental issues in “Freedom,” particularly in his scathing critique of environmental philanthropy. It called to mind the xenophobic internal struggles of the Sierra Club a few years ago, which caused me to yank my membership; a conservative, anti-immigration cell within the organization made a bid for control of the board of directors, hoping to use organization funds to lobby in favor of strict anti-immigration policies. Growing up in the midwest, I saw a lot of folks supporting Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever, who absolutely hated pro-environment policies; they just wanted their little hunting spaces preserved. Franzen really highlights the hypocrisy of the system nicely in this book.