Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Dear Mr. Franzen, you are one ANGRY mo-fo. Overpopulation, globalization, environmental terrorists, actual terrorists, hipsters, Republicans and Democrats are all equally loathed in this 500 page tome. Having not read The Corrections despite Hammill’s praise in this very blog, I had no idea what to expect; all I knew was that the Publishing Establishment salivate over this man. He was on the cover of Time magazine with the heading of ‘Great American Novelist’ for Chrissakes – as far as I can tell, he’s written two books of note. Not twenty. TWO. Americans are well lazy.

However.

This is brilliant. Engrossing, unexpected, unflinching. We all know people like this and hope that we don’t turn out like them. Characters jump around the chapters, get all sweaty and dirty, are benched by Franzen and then called up again when you thought they’d been sidelined from the game permanently. Shaky marriages and ungrateful children run alongside bigger plotlines of environmentalism and corruption, and the only time it got slightly bogged down where the more in-depth explanations of political lobbying which was lost on this little black duck (hey, so my uni major was Lit and not Politics. So sue me). I think one day, I managed to work an eight hour day and still read 250 pages. I was hooked.

I advise anyone reading this to shell out for this over your Christmas break and spend a couple of solid days reading. Enjoy.

Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

This book has a kind of interesting genesis: Wolfe was one of the 'new journalism' movement's founders, and this was his first work of fiction. It was originally serialised in Rolling Stone. The serialisation could easily account for if not excuse the fact that it's about 200 pages too long, until you discover it was drastically rewritten before becoming a novel. Whoops.

There was a point in the middle where I kind of wished someone would sneak up on me and tear out some pages from the middle, but then, by the end, I COULD NOT stop reading it. At least 10% of that was because I was sick of the sight of it, but I can't attribute all my enthusiasm to that. When you're hungry, and someone hands you a deep friend hunk-of-shit burger you tuck in, unthinking, and then before you know it you're half way through, bad bread forming a difficult ball in your mouth and over-friend bits of fried stabbing you in the palatte. You realise your situation and are disgusted. Craving something nutritious, fresh, crunchy etc, you plow on regardless, until you're brushing crumbs off your shirt and wondering why you feel slightly nauseous. And then it's over, you move on. Why we do this, no one knows. Well: Book, burger, the similarities are obvious.

You know when two really hot people have a baby, and it's hideously ugly? Or when two really athletic people have a baby, and it's a total unco? It was kind of like Dostoevsky and DeLillo had a baby and it was Bonfire of the Vanities: it was neurotic and minute in it's analysis of humanity, but over written and dull, full of stereotypes and contained not one single woman with more than 2 dimensions. Some parts of it are very clever, and funny, and there's no doubting that dude is asking some great questions. And maybe it's meant to get monotonous?

I'd say leave it on the shelf unless you need a doorstop.