{"id":16714,"date":"2015-10-06T11:48:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T15:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=16714"},"modified":"2015-10-06T11:48:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T15:48:29","slug":"jonathan-franzen-purity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/10\/06\/jonathan-franzen-purity\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Franzen: Purity<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When Jonathan Franzen started out as writer, he and his then wife, Valerie Cornell, would lock themselves away for twelve hours a day and, sat a few feet apart,\u00a0write pretty much constantly. He was serious about being a writer. (So was Valerie — alas,\u00a0some suggest her failure to produce any\u00a0publishable work\u00a0seems to have exacerbated marital strife.)\u00a0His first two novels, The Twenty-Seventh City<\/em> and Strong Motion<\/em>, were accomplished, the latter displaying what would become a signature “issues” bent, a social conscience sugared up by compelling mouthpiece avatars. But it wasn’t until The Corrections<\/em>, written largely after\u00a0Franzen was divorced, in a borrowed corner of a loft in Manhattan, that the writer reached his zenith as an entertaining social\/familial commenter. (And that’s what he is, the latter part of that equation being the factor that’s\u00a0long since turned huge numbers of readers against him.)\u00a0He was by now writing\u00a0blindfolded and with headphones piping “pink noise” into his ears.<\/p>\n

\"Purity\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I mention all this stuff for numerous reasons. One is that I have rarely, if ever, seen the kind of split Franzen effects among readers and critics. And details like those enumerated above make him sound a bit like a precious grafter, a bit of a literary poseur driven to make good on his commitment to be “a serious writer.” Pink noise? Blindfold? The intra-marital writerly obsessiveness? He’s asking for ridicule, isn’t he? There are huge essays out there, gloriously replete hatchet jobs, that seem hugely annoyed by Franzen. He gets a lot of goats, and they bleat loud. The authors of these exhaustive takedowns rip Franzen to shreds, citing sentences “anyone could write” that seem no better than “second draft hack jobs.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Franzen also at turns\u00a0seems fussy, judgmental, prissy, awkward and, in terms of gender politics, questionable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Of course, the other way to look at it is: he knows all this and yet also knows that he’s good\u00a0and is\u00a0going to do the work, one way or another.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Purity<\/em> is no huge departure from Freedom<\/em>, Franzen’s last novel, which was similarly about troubled, infuriatingly complex\u00a0women,\u00a0and men who haven’t a clue what to make of\u00a0them. This time\u00a0some of the\u00a0men are equally problematic\u00a0or unscrupulous or complexly self-serving (Franzen blames the parents), with the result being his best novel after\u00a0The Corrections<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Purity<\/em> is certainly no great work, but it offers something very few novels do: it’s an\u00a0accomplished page-turner. Franzen is clearly (never more obviously) in thrall to the Don DeLillo of White Noise<\/em> and Cosmopolis<\/em> (many readers’ least\u00a0favorite\u00a0DeLillo), the Philip Roth of Portnoy’s Complaint<\/em> and Sabbath’s Theater<\/em> (as Howard Jacobson, another audience-splitter, so blatantly is), and lighter Updike. His awed gratitude to those works bears considerable fruit here — the plot shouldn’t be given too much consideration. This is a book masquerading as a deeply dismayed tirade about the internet (the equation with East Germany between 1961 and\u00a01989 often feels a little off-the-peg make-do) and the corrosive nature of\u00a0secrets. It manages to pull those aspects off with qualifications, and the weak parts of the book are bogged down in a sub-\u00a0Greene\/Le Carre\u00a0world of murk and subterfuge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Where the book works best, as was the case with The Corrections<\/em> and Freedom<\/em>, is when he has masterfully delineated characters talking to each other about ostensibly the same thing, which always happens to be massively disparate. People rarely get one another in Franzen books, and this leads to highly entertaining trouble and sparky conversations that are funniest when\u00a0spiraling\u00a0out of control.\u00a0Even when they get one another, they tire of the lack of the kind of mystery they know will ruin them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The main characters in the book: Purity, or Pip, a\u00a0young woman smothered by an isolated and eccentric mother, and Andreas Wolff, a one-time murderer (with a key accomplice) and privileged layabout (with, of course, an intricately troubled mother and obscured object of desire) turned Assange-esque online secret spiller. Both will meet in Bolivia (where Wolff’s creepily cultish\u00a0“Sunlight Project” is based, thanks to benevolent governmental asylum)\u00a0in unlikely fashion. The mystery, which involves that aforementioned accomplice and a deeply seedy plot to wreak revenge, is eventually solved, but none of any of the “topical” plot strands had anything to do with\u00a0why\u00a0I kept reading Purity<\/em>. As weak as Freedom<\/em> often was, and as barely convincing as Purity<\/em> sometimes is, the\u00a0dialogue\u00a0exchanges (elsewhere described as stilted and unconvincing, it’s only fair to point out) kept me interested. I can think of only Edward Albee and Philip Roth who are better at believably scathing, internecine slanging matches that spin out of control (and Purity<\/em>, fittingly, ends with one) and those are what propel the novel and keep it out of the occasional sludgy trough.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Purity<\/em> is unquestionably problematic but\u00a0also a great deal of flawed fun. The level of fun you’re going to have will, I think, largely depend on how much slack you’re willing to cut the author of exchanges such as this one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The note of self-righteousness in his voice set fire to a larger and more diffuse pool of the gas, a combustible political substance that had seeped into her from her mother and then from certain college professors and certain gross-out movies and now also from Annagret, a sense of the unfairness of what one professor had called the anisotropy of gendered relationships, wherein boys could camouflage their objectifying desires with the language of feelings while girls played the boys\u2019 game of sex at their own risk, dupes if they objectified and victims if they didn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn’t seem to mind me when your dick was in my mouth,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t put it there,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it wasn’t there long.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, because I had to go downstairs and get a condom so you could stick it inside me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWow. So this is all me now?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Through a haze of flame, or hot blood, Pip\u2019s eyes fell on Jason’s handheld device.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHey!\u201d he cried. She jumped up and ran to the far side of the room with his device. \u201cHey, you can’t do that,\u201d he shouted, pursuing her.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes I can!”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, you can’t, it’s not fair. Hey — hey — you\u00a0can’t\u00a0do that!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She wedged herself underneath the child\u2019s writing desk that was her only piece of furniture and faced the wall, bracing her leg on a desk leg. Jason tried to pull her out by the belt of her robe, but he couldn\u2019t dislodge her and was apparently unwilling to get more violent than this.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat kind of freak are you?\u201d he said. \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Pip touched the device\u2019s screen with shaking fingers. \u201cFuck, fuck, fuck,\u201d Jason said, pacing behind her. \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d She pawed the screen and found the next thread.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you have Franzen hang-ups (I have a few), this won’t assuage them. I still imagine him giggling mischievously as\u00a0he writes some of this; there are a few too over-ripe self-referential moments (albeit funny ones) and there’s still something not quite right about his general take on women (he continues to round\u00a0off all male edges whilst\u00a0sharpening\u00a0those of his female characters), but the book works as a densely populated contemporary blast of entertainment. It’s an impish, na\u00efve, grumpy, sophisticated provocation, a blackly comic HBO melodrama, a concerned tirade with a sardonic ensemble. It’s AM Homes with less empathy. It’s a geekier, trashier Philip Roth.\u00a0I’d say “give it a go,” but you’ve probably already made up your mind re: Franzen. I doubt he has another Corrections<\/em> in him but he certainly has more of whatever he’s got than anyone else. He knows what makes people tick (or is glibly reductionist about motivational psychology, take your pick)\u00a0and ruthlessly lets\u00a0you in on it. He could easily lose all the geopolitical stuff, but by doing so would probably feel like a bit of a fraud. He’s too serious to do such a thing, and that seriousness is both his strength and his weakness.\u00a0Maybe he should ditch the blindfold and put a mirror behind his Mac.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lee reviews Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Purity<\/em>. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":16715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,520],"tags":[],"coauthors":[516],"class_list":["post-16714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-jonathan-franzen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Purity.jpg?fit=1484%2C2231&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-4lA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16716,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16714\/revisions\/16716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16714"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}