Guest Blog: On "Freedom"

My friend Mary wrote me the following comments about the long novel "Freedom," which I struggled with some time ago (see my posts of 11/8/10, 11/11/10, and 11/13/10); I am happy to publish her thoughtful response as a guest blog entry.

Mary's comments:

As I read your recent posts about the subject of marriage in novels, I thought about Jonathan Franzen's book "Freedom." The marriage of Walter and Patty, two of the main characters, looked far different from the outside than the inside. Interestingly, as their seemingly happy marriage began to unravel, their mutual friend Katz (although himself part of their trouble) felt disoriented by the loss of what had felt like his home base.

I've been curious about this book since I read a practically worshipful review of it in the New York Times and then your own rather negative one. My reaction was in between, but closer to yours. I too found myself having to push through parts of it. It was part zingy satire, part saga, part family history, part current events -- with way too much stuffed in between. I found the descriptions of such things as the coal mining scheme and the endangered birds particularly tedious. It took me a long time to care much about the characters. They seemed to be intentionally "types," used for the purposes of satire, so it was hard to really feel for them. If I am going to have to live with characters for as long as this long book required, I'd like to feel a little more connected to them.

Toward the end of the book I began to like it more. Those last pages had the momentum that I didn't feel earlier in the book, and the writing itself just seemed better. There were parts where I found myself nodding at certain dead-on observations, beautifully phrased. It felt like finally genuine feeling had broken through the thick air of smirky satire that permeated most of the book. It just took too long to get there.

Marriage is a Mystery

People say that you never really know what someone else’s marriage is truly like, and I agree. Even the marriages of one’s parents (although I believe that my parents had the best marriage ever), other relatives, and close friends contain reserves and mysteries. I, like you I am sure, have had the experience of being surprised to hear of serious problems and/or impending divorces for couples whom I thought were happy, even models of good marriages. As I was thinking about this, I realized that I get at least as much of my “information” about marriage from books (fiction and nonfiction) as from “real life.” Even in books, however, authors are selective in what they share about the marriages they portray, and consciously or unconsciously shape the perceptions of their readers. Still, I regard literature as an important source of knowledge about marriage, as about so many things. One reason I am thinking and writing about this now is that I realize that several of my last few postings were on books portraying marriages (e.g., 3/15/11, 3/21/11, 4/9/11, 4/11/11, and 4/12/11). These and other books provide evidence that no matter how ubiquitous marriage is, each marriage is unique, and each marriage exists and grows in its own ways, with its own joys and travails, its own fluctuations over the years. As someone who has been married a long time, known a lot of people, and read a lot of books, I am somewhat knowledgeable about marriage, yet still sometimes feel quite ignorant about the mysteries of marriage in general and about the marriages of those I know.

"Must You Go?"

The noted English historian and mystery novelist Antonia Fraser’s new book, “Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter” (Doubleday, 2010), tells, as the title indicates, of her long love affair with and marriage to the eminent playwright Harold Pinter, who died in 2008. Unlike recent books by Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates about their husbands’ deaths and the aftermath in their own lives, Fraser’s book focuses on the long years of her relationship with Pinter, and describes his illness and death only briefly, although movingly. Theirs seems to have been a great and satisfying love, enhanced by their mutual joy in the intellectual, artistic, writing life. The book emphasizes the positive and mostly skims over the negative; perhaps this is the (stereotypical, I know!) British “chin-up” stance? Or perhaps it is because Fraser knows how fortunate she and Pinter were to have the life and love they had, and prefers to focus on that rather than on bumps in the road, or on its end. The book’s title comes from Pinter’s asking Fraser at a dinner party, “Must you go?”, which became the fateful beginning of their relationship, after which they never seemed to have wavered, despite their need to end two marriages in order to be together. Of course the title also refers to Pinter’s death. Because the book is based on Fraser’s diaries, it is perhaps not quite as satisfying as a more unified narrative; on the other hand, readers benefit from the immediacy of the diary entries, and from the feeling of having a window into these two great writers’ lives as they were lived. The book is full of stories about the couple’s writing, their travels, and their famous friends, yet there is no sense of boastfulness or superiority displayed. Fraser comes across as a thoughtful, down to earth person. Pinter occasionally had a temper, and sometimes became depressed, but overall seemed to have been a brilliant and caring person, dedicated to his art as well as committed to fighting injustice in the world. This is a truly touching love story. The book is enhanced by a generous selection of photographs, many in color.

"Three Stages of Amazement"

Carol Edgarian’s “Three Stages of Amazement” (Scribner, 2011), intrigued me because it focuses on the financial crash of the past three years and its effects even on many prosperous people, and because it is set in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. Silicon Valley figures prominently, as do the wealthier neighborhoods in and around San Francisco. The upper middle class but spread-too-thin-financially main characters, Charlie and Lena, are very believable, as are some of the other vividly portrayed characters, particularly Lena’s extremely wealthy uncle Cal and his wife Ivy. We understand and sympathize with the sort of trap Charlie and Lena have fallen into: their ambition has led them to a place where they risk failing on a spectacular level. They are not simply ambitious, however; Charlie’s goal of inventing a robot that can perform surgery in poor countries, directed by a doctor elsewhere, is altruistic as well. We also sympathize with the couple’s deep sadness about the death of one twin girl at birth and the ongoing illness of the other infant twin girl, with the toll Charley’s long work hours and frequent travels take on the marriage, and with Lena’s emotional deprivation and frustration at being left to handle taking care of her two children (they also have a five year old son), including the pain and complications of having a chronically ill child, practically alone. One of the main themes of this novel is, in fact, marriage and its difficulties as well as joys. Charley’s and Lena’s marriage is a beautiful, loving, yet fragile and threatened relationship, realistically delineated. Something that bothered me as I was reading this novel, though, is that there is something unsettling, almost jittery, about it. There is not necessarily anything wrong with that; good literature is often unsettling. I imagine the author intended this impression. But I am not sure the rewards of the novel justify this sort of jumpiness. On the other hand, I read the novel quite quickly, indicating that I enjoyed it, so I won’t be too critical of it.

Questioning Steinbeck’s "Charley"

How disillusioning! An editorial in today’s (4/10/11) New York Times reports on Bill Steigerwald’s research showing that much of John Steinbeck’s ostensibly nonfiction travel memoir, “Travels with Charley in Search of America” (1962) (a book that I very much enjoyed many years ago), was more fiction than nonfiction. Steigerwald researched Steinbeck’s letters, itineraries, and other documents, and found that, according to the Times, the book was “shot through with dubious anecdotes and impossible encounters.” He also found that Steinbeck was NOT alone with his dog Charley most of the time on his trip across America, that his wife was with him much of the time, and that they often stayed in nice hotels and seldom actually camped. This discovery reminds us that the controversies of more recent years regarding James Frey’s "memoir" that turned out to be fiction, and regarding the nonexistent teenaged JT Leroy’s purported “memoir” that turned out to be fiction by a middle-aged woman named Laura Albert, were not new in the annals of literature. The big question, of course, is how much this matters. At least one Steinbeck scholar, according to the Times, felt it didn’t matter. And everyone understands that memoir cannot be perfectly factual and “true” because memory is fallible, and because the episodes and details the author selects to write about shape the “truth” of the piece. But despite this understanding, readers expect that nonfiction/memoir will be basically factually “true,” and feel that their trust has been violated if it turns out not to be so. The Times editorial agrees with this stance, stating that if a book is put forth as nonfiction, it should in fact be nonfiction.

"Marry or Burn"

The eye-catching title of Valerie Trueblood’s collection of short stories, “Marry or Burn” (Counterpoint, 2010), is of course reminiscent of the apostle Paul’s statement in the New Testament that it is better to remain celibate if possible, but if not, “It is better to marry than burn.” The final, longest story in this collection, “Beloved, You Looked Into Space,” sets up this very opposition, and ends with a happy marriage despite threats and complications of various types, including a possible forest fire that fortunately does not materialize. These stories are full of wonderful, complex portrayals of relationships among spouses, family members, lovers, and others. There are several insightful stories about marriage. Another strength of these stories is the portrayal of relationships among sisters and woman friends. The tone of the stories is both matter of fact and dreamy, as if the characters -- and by extension we readers –- move through life in a sort of dazed haze, accepting and absorbing the inevitable bitter along with the gift of the sweet. There are complicated love affairs, a fair amount of adultery, and complicated families with lots of step-relatives. There are estrangements and reconciliations. Trueblood’s stories manage to be both very realistic and beautifully imaginative. Somehow, throughout, my main impression was one of grace, not necessarily earned or predictable, and not necessarily in traditional forms, but pervasive. It took me a story or two to get caught up in this collection, but once I did, I was enchanted and impressed.

Bibliotherapy

The concept of "bibliotherapy" may ring true for the many of us who would agree that reading -- among its many benefits -- can be therapeutic. It makes us feel connected, recognized, understood, inspired, supported, and even healed. Bibliotherapy has a more specific use in the field of education, and more particularly in the field of literacy, where it has been found to be a powerful tool for teaching and supporting children. I recently found that the International Reading Association (IRA) has a Special Interest Section (SIG) on "Bibliotherapy and Reading," currently chaired by my colleague (across the country!) and friend Dr. Rachel Grant, of George Mason University. This group produces a newsletter and a journal, and holds sessions at IRA conferences. For example, according to a newsletter article by Dr. Grant, "As a result of growing concern for the psycho-social and emotional health and wellbeing of children and youth during times of conflict and war, in 2008 and 2009 the Bibliotherapy and Reading SIG academic sessions addressed the impact of conflict and violence on our youngest and most venerable populations," sharing titles of books that "build resiliency and promote a culture of peace in classrooms and beyond." This is yet another testimony to the power of books and reading. I thank Rachel and her IRA SIG colleagues for the good work they are doing as educators, and in particular through promoting bibliotherapy.