Tag: middle class life

Purity, by Jonathan Franzen

This 2015 work is a confusing novel from a writer I have long admired. It is confusing because it moves back and forth among different characters and different time frames. It is a method authors often use today, chiefly to involve readers into figuring out what is going on and, not incidentally, to create suspense.

But I found myself asking too many questions. Who, for example, is the main character? Is it Pip (Purity), whom we encounter at the start of the novel. Is it Andreas Wolf, a German computer hacker whom we next meet in Berlin, and follow to Bolivia, where he is a WikiLeaks-type provocateur? Or is it Tom Aberant, an American journalist tied to Andreas by a crime and his investigative journalism web site, but who also endures a ten-year marriage to Anabel, a marriage of conflict that this reader also found difficult to endure.

Also, why do we meet Pip in the middle of her story? Why is her mother so afraid to tell her about her father? Why does Wolf entice Pip to come to Bolivia? What is the point of the disastrous marriage of Tom? What is the lasting connection between Tom and Andreas? Eventually, we do learn the answers to these question, but rather than work as teasers, these questions frustrated this reader, actually inhibiting his interest. As suggested, I am not a fan of presenting characters and their stories out of chronological sequence. What I wish is that the suspense come from the actions of the characters, and wondering what they will do next, not from wondering what the actions of the characters actually mean.

Franzen is obviously trying here to write a major novel of literature. A novel of generations. A novel of family hate and jealousy. A novel of relationships between parent and child. A psychological novel (the Killer who haunts Andreas). A novel of international scope and subterfuge. A novel of literary complexity and commercial surprise.

The ending, in particular, reflects that commercial aspect. Marriage partners reconnect, but there is no conclusive ending to their relationship. A love affair continues on also, but inconclusively. Perhaps the characters are intended to continue on in our minds, but one also wonder if they are being set up to continue in a sequel. Or is Franzen simply unable to imagine the future of these characters, once their basic drama has concluded?

The novel’s title. More than a name for Pip, it seems intended to be symbolic. There is a billion dollar inheritance being refused. Does that reflect a sense of purity? There is truth being hidden and being exposed. About a nuclear bomb, about a murder, about a paternity. Is hacking in the interest of truth, and is that for reasons of purity, as Andreas pretends it is? There is even a suicide that, for me, comes out of nowhere. Of course, it is Pip’s mother who named her, and she is living her own interpretation of a life of purity. But the title seems meant to go beyond that, and for me is a little forced as a result, as if the author wants to make sure we get his point.

As Colm Toibin suggests in his Times review, Pip seems for a long time seems to be a victim of circumstance and an innocent in the ways of the world—far from the qualities of a major character. Indeed, Toibin calls her “a damaged innocent in need of rescue and redemption.” But even when her central role is more clear, she remains for me a passive character, more a character used by the author to reveal the more significant actions of the other characters. This is again evident when the author uses her to build a final scene that goes nowhere.

Toibin accurately sums up this novel when he writes: “it dramatizes the uneasy and damaging relationships between parents and their offspring in white America, the strains within friendship, and the ways time and familiarity and human failings work at corroding a marriage.” Of course, this is very abstract, perhaps because a critic needs to avoid spoilers, but it accurately reflects the family relationships that are the concern of Franzen in many of his works

The long section of Tom and Anabel’s corroding marriage particularly aggravated me. Especially Anabel’s whiney one-upmanship, her insistence that she is always right. And Tom’s acceptance of her, because he loves her, and his refusal to free himself from her for ten years. Of course, we finally come to understand her, as we finally realize who she actually is, but it is a long slog, barely justified by Franzen’s revelation.

Many of the reviewers comment on the coincidences that appear in this novel. And at the same time, they praise the forward-moving plot. Of course, that forward movement depends often on the coincidences, which bring these characters together at key points and at other times help them understand the motives of others. Such as Andreas and Tom meeting in Berlin. Such as Pip working for Andreas and then for Tom. Such as Andreas and Tom ending up in the same profession, that of revealing secrets. Such as, on the other hand, Pip’s ignorance of who her father and mother really are, the premise of the entire novel. And, finally, such as Pip bringing people together at the end, but with inconclusive, unconvincing results.

I observed that family relationships have long been a concern of the author. And in telling his other stories, he would move among the family members and tell each story from different viewpoints. But there was unity, because he was always within that family. Here, however, he goes beyond that basic family. First, we are not even sure who the basic family is comprised of. And, second, he makes Andreas, an outsider, part of that family. And both these factors require him to move about in time as well as in geography, in order to tell us this complicated story. And they also require him to hold back on key information. In other words, his structure is at the service of the story he wishes to tell.

I shall continue my interest in Franzen, but I hope he discovers a simpler way next time to tell his story of family relationships. (July, 2016)

Flesh and Blood, by Michael Cunningham

This 1995 work is Cunningham before he found his literary voice. I did finally get caught up by this family at the end of their saga, but for much of this book it is a kind of bildungsroman, a family saga novel in which three generations come of age and a lot happens. But it is life happening rather than one or more characters influencing or motivating the actions of others. And this is the kind of novel that does not appeal to me.

Because, while there is a maturing inside the characters, there is an absence of interaction that prompts the reader to want to know what comes next. That may also be why each time I returned to reading about this family, I found it difficult to remember where I had left off. There was no moment of action, no event, that had me wondering what would be coming next.

But at the end, the characters do begin reacting to the family situation, and to the arrival of death and their own vulnerability. And I ended up being unexpectedly moved by this novel. Moved not so much by the individual fate of the characters as by an interactive portrait of family life that I could relate to.

This novel basically covers the years from 1958 to 1995, a period of significant social change. It begins with a beautiful, ambitious Mary and a shy, immature Constantine falling in love and marrying. But then the portrait of Constantine changes, for once he has children he becomes an old-school protective father, a strict disciplinarian. Whereupon, Cunningham becomes more interested, anyway, in the children: Billy (later Will), Susan, and Zoe. Will discovers he is homosexual, Susan marries a lawyer and enters an unsatisfied but comfortable life, and Zoe has an affair with a black man who leaves her pregnant. This rich material extends through the novel, but while the characters interact with sympathy regarding each one’s situation, they really do not affect each other’s situation.

The final portion of the novel introduces Ben, the son of Susan, and Jamal, the slightly younger son of Zoe. Ben is quiet, and is troubled despite his comfortable life, but we cannot more than suspect the source of that trouble until the end. Jamal is more outgoing but as a half-black boy has his own problems.

Two other major characters are Cassandra and Harry. Cassandra is a friend of Zoe’s, a transvestite, a man whose dress and social life is that of a woman. She was for me the most interesting character in the book, not least because she was very outspoken about who she is and was not afraid to bluntly advise others about their lives. Indeed, she is appreciated by the conservative Mary, who recognizes how much she has helped Zoe.

Harry, on the other hand, is not complex at all. In fact, he seems to serve mainly as an opportunity for Will to be a sexual person and to have an emotional life that is never probed. (Only father Constantine reacts to it.) Perhaps it is because I know the author is gay, but my reaction to Will and Harry is that that their relationship is never developed, and that it exists chiefly to enable the author to treat the fact of homosexuality and, early on, to describe intimate homosexual scenes. I will acknowledge the effectiveness of one such scene, however, in which a stranger lets Will seduce him and then reveals he is to be married the next day and just wanted to have such an experience before his life changed. The unfairness of a gay man’s life in that era really hits home in this scene.

My problem with this novel is that I did not care for these characters as much as Cunningham obviously did. The details of family life, the understanding that each of the children and the mother shows for the others, in fact, made me wonder how much this work may be autobiographical. This was particularly true of the gay life here. Of course, other parts may not be, because the children of this family are carefully split up to express three different life styles, the gay life, the traditional suburban life, and the life of a single rebellious girl in a world of drugs and poverty. Cunningham sympathetically portrays each child, of course, even as he exposes their failures to fulfill their dreams, thus suggesting that their suburban origin is not all it’s cracked up to be.

To sum up, this work was a disappointment until the end, when death enters and the children are finally forced to react to each other’s situation, especially to that of Zoe and Cassandra and that of Susan through Ben. A tacked on explanation of the rest of their lives was unnecessary, however, even as it leaves Jamal as the surviving heart of the family. In fact, its main purpose seems to be to reflect the traditions of the old-fashioned novel. Not that the family stories told here are old-fashioned at all.

This novel will deflect me from searching out more early Cunningham novels, but I am still interested in his more recent work. When gay life is at the heart of the novel, such as coming to terms with it, it works for me in literature. But when it is on the periphery, and yet is explored, it turns me off. Yes, the author wants to present how natural it is in some people, but I do not need to follow it into the bedroom—as I do not need to in straight love stories, either. (December, 2015)