Didactic Freedom: Commentary on Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom”

(Note: This pseudo review does not contain spoilers. I paid careful attention to not discuss elements of the plot or character details, and there certainly isn't a book summary here.)

“Freedom” is my first experience with Jonathan Franzen. I’m one of the few people who enjoy literary fiction but who haven’t (yet) read “The Corrections,” nor have I read Franzen’s two prior novels. I wasn’t victim to the hype either; I didn’t even know “Freedom” was coming out and the media outlets that would hype such a book are outside my sphere of influence: I don’t own a TV so I didn’t see it on Oprah or Charlie Rose; I don’t listen to NPR on the radio; I don’t subscribe to The Times or The New Yorker or any similar publications; and my Internet exposure is generally relegated to Twitter, some independent acoustic music, and a few minimalist blogs. Instead, I saw the book in a bookstore window—sure, I know what you’re thinking: if it weren’t such a hyped book, then it wouldn’t have been in the window for you to see in the first place. And I have no way to argue against that point—while I was walking down the street and Franzen’s name caught my eye, but not because I knew him as some famous mega-author, but because I remember David Lipsky writing about Franzen's visit to a suicidal David Foster Wallace in Lipsky’s pseudo-Wallace-biography, “Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.” I had been intrigued by Wallace’s writing for quite some time (especially after his death in 2008) and thus was sort of attracted to Franzen’s writing (Franzen was supposedly Wallace’s best friend as an adult) by proxy.

(Another note: Yes, I realize the following paragraph is a rather bold statement, but it’s an honest one.)

As for the book itself, only a handful of “current” novels—probably only Ellis’s “Lunar Park,” Wallace’s “Broom of the System,” and McKinty’s “Dead I Well May Be” (the latter of which really solidified my desire to write fiction, while “Lunar Park” taught me it was OK to be unconventional and “Broom of the System,” by a 22-year-old Wallace, humbled me immensely and showed me I had a lot to learn)—have made the same kind of impact on me as “Freedom.” Suffice it to say, “Freedom” is the best book I’ve read in a long time. And it’s not for the conventional reasons either (although the characters, plot, storyline, and pace are all outstanding). The reason it was so powerful for me was its didactic understanding of life. The story itself contained an expansive array of insight into my own life. Perhaps it has to do with where I am in my life right now—a twenty-something guy who is fortunate and lucky (at least ostensibly) but who also, somewhat paradoxically, just went through the toughest, most arduous year of his life (for a myriad of reasons that aren’t pertinent here)—that made Franzen’s didactic wisdom so appealing to me. Whatever it was, it moved me. And it gave me some clarity.

Take, for example, the recurring theme of loneliness: “I did it because I’m lonely. I’m so lonely, I’m dying of it. And the reason I’m so lonely is I love you and you’re not here. I had sex with somebody else because I love you. I know that sounds mixed up, or dishonest, but it’s the truth,” (p. 406).

Or the need to reciprocate love if you want to continue to receive it: “[Y]ou couldn’t keep expecting wholehearted love without, at some point, requiting it. There was no credit to be earned for simply being good,” (p. 335).

Or deeply wanting something you couldn’t possibly have—something that wouldn’t even make you happy anyway—and then realizing why you don’t need it: “I’ve spent three years wanting a thing I knew would never make me happy. But that didn’t make me stop wanting it. You were like a bad drug I couldn’t stop craving. My whole life was like a kind of mourning for some evil drug I knew was bad for me. It was literally not until yesterday, when I actually saw you, that I realized I didn’t need the drug after all,” (p. 375).

Or how vast pain, while incredibly painful, also lets you know you’re alive: “The pain was quite extraordinary. And yet also weirdly welcome and restorative, bringing him news of his aliveness and his caughtness in a story larger than himself,” (p. 407).

Or how the pain of losing someone is appreciably different than having a desire to actually have that person in your life: “[A] flutter in his stomach warned him not to mistake the pain of losing her for an active desire to have her,” (p. 412).

Or feeling weak for needing someone in your life: “[H]e lay boiling with shame and regret and homesickness. He was very, very disappointed in himself....It was unfortunate to have to need somebody, it was evidence of grievous softness...” (p. 430).

Or for the need to be alone, for solitude: “Seventeen years in cramped quarters with his family had given him a thirst for solitude whose unquenchability he was discovering only now,” (p. 455).

And the life lessons—about depression, about what freedom might mean to different people, about petty indulgences that can ruin your life, about sex, about cynicism and anger, about shame and regret, about guilt, about the genuine and irreplicable excitement of being with someone you love, about caring about other people, about selfishness, about self-loathing, about suicidal thoughts, about death and the potential freedom it brings, about dwelling in the past and how that leads to suffering, about the considerable differences between generations, about the exact-sameness among generations—go on and on and on.

If you strip away all of these life lessons though, you still have some great characters within a great story that hums along at a great pace and would undoubtedly keep the masses of people who are buying this book entertained. I was very, very entertained. There are parts throughout the book that had me laughing out loud in public and attracting stares from people I didn't know. Franzen has an amazing, satirical, and somewhat sardonic sense of humor.

As for the complaints about Franzen’s lack of understanding of the working class that some readers and critics have alluded to, I’m a bit skeptical about that complaint. I just don’t see Franzen’s writing as a patronizing take on blue collar life. If it’s patronizing at all, it’s towards the Yuppies who, no matter how much stuff they buy (or destroy), can never be happy. Or perhaps it’s just patronizing in general, towards everyone that is, pointing out their flaws in a patronizing way. Then again, maybe I’m not your typical Jonathan Franzen reader—I’m a 29-year-old white male without a college degree who grew up in a small Ohio town with his minimum wage earning single mother, all of which seem stereotypically working class to me—but I just don’t see a disconnect between Franzen and the so called working class.

And for the comments and the hype about Franzen being the best writer of his generation (no, I’m not so obtuse as to not realize that some of these comments are said or written in jest), I haven’t read anything else by Franzen so I am terribly unqualified to comment on that. It is, however, hard for me to imagine anyone more magnificent or more defining of a generation than David Foster Wallace, who is (at least for me) the writer who defines Gen X, the generation I joined as its door was closing in 1981.

Jonathan Franzen's “Freedom” gave me a new perspective for what “freedom” actually means to me. I, like many Americans, have always related freedom to independence or freedom of choice. When I finished “Freedom,” I wrote a note at the bottom of the last page. It said, “Perhaps real freedom is about finding the ability within yourself to give yourself to the people who are special to you, to contribute to the people who mean something to you. Perhaps that’s real freedom.”