Book Review: Freedom by Jonathan Franzan

'Freedom', a Novel by Jonathan Franzen, is an incredibly fun reminder that nothing in life is ever really free. Franzen, who planned on writing a political novel about washington, turns instead to writing about families, a subject he mastered in the Corrections. He often inhabits each of his characters and gives you juicy tastes of his own eccentric political views or his take on bands like Bright Eyes. Franzen's presence here - obvious at times while not at others depending on how well you know the author - can be marginally distracting. Often times you're too consumed in the drama of whatever is inducing it to even notice. Still, Franzen evidently lives in every single character. The political opinions, often bordering that of Paul Ehrlich, can get tiresome and its eccentricity loses luster at several points. It is when Franzen is writing about the politics of family and community that he is at his best. 

Here, Franzen navigates things like rape or adultery, depression or parenting, as though each event is a series of political moves. There are major pillars of political drama like crushed idealism, deceit, and the inherent injustices of democracy played out as the main female character (patty) tries not to sleep with her husband's rockstar best friend or the main male character's (walter) valiant attempts at not sleeping with his assistant. These scenes are often the most fantastic and easily consumed. They're especially fun when paired with the more experimental narrative styles Franzen uses in Freedom; the first section of the book is written from a collective POV of neighborhood gossip, the second is a memoir written by Patty herself. This way Franzen is able to layer what would otherwise be mechanical story telling into deeply personal triads into his character's psyche. In other words, he does a good job masking what he's doing. You think you're reading about family, parentings, growing up, and finding your way when you're actually reading what it means to be a cog in the human race machine. 

As a result, modern politics is almost works better as a setting than a thematic endeavor. 9/11 is definitely present, but so is overpopulation, military contractors, environmentalism, neoliberalism, each political movement of the early to mid 2000's informs the narrative in new ways. Joey, Walter and Patty's son, gets caught up in a military contracting scandal, Walter tries to use environmental policy as a front for anti-growth movements. This is where the book might get tedious. There are times when Walter or Richard (his best friend) or even Franzen as narrator might start riffing on a subject for seemingly no reason; a particular unconvincing conversation between Joey and his college roommate about the Israel/Palestine conflict comes to mind. While barely thematically relevant it is even harder to draw parallels between the plot and the debate. It's easy to roll your eyes at moments like this and think "yes, we get it, too much freedom is a bad thing" or "when your freedom infringes on mine it ceases to be freedom at all". While modern politics are skillfully used, when they're bluntly applied to situations it gets flimsy in the realm of believability. Politics work better as a backdrop here, because we've already seen so much of them thematically. One could argue this is probably why Franzen went with the family as his primary thematic vehicle over Washington, he should have more consistently stuck to it. 

Freedom though, is a brilliant piece of work. One of the more fun conflicts it offers is whether there is a certain level of duality in the title. While there are many artfully crafted instances of one character's freedom inhibiting another's, there is also precious little willpower. As stated earlier, crushed idealism is a staple of any political drama; think Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It's almost laughable that these characters feel they have a choice in what they are doing. Whether they're disconnecting and cheating on their spouse or perusing something truly and utterly selfish, the reader is doubtlessly let down as that character almost unwittingly winds up doing what they were vehemently against mere seconds ago. This can be heartbreaking or hysterically funny at the drop of a dime. Franzen has you riding up and down with every character in their respective sections, feeling confident when they are and equally as devastated at their seemingly inevitable failures. Perhaps the reader too comes to inhabit Franzen's characters.