Franzen

For years I was certain I had read and enjoyed "The Corrections." So it was with eagerness that I queued up early in the library website line to get "Freedom" as soon as it was released. I read the first 50 pages and couldn't take it. I didn't like any of the characters and while I appreciated Franzen's story-telling abilities and eye to absurd detail, I just didn't want to spent 500+ pages on this project.

About two months ago I was having lunch with a writer friend who talked about how much she loved "The Corrections." I agreed and talked about how I loved that final scene at the house in New Jersey. My friend looked at me strangely. Within a minute of further discussion I learned that I had not in fact read "The Corrections" but some other book which must have come out at around the same time. [I have also learned I never read "Cloud Atlas."]

I decided I had attempted the wrong Franzen as my first foray. In the week after that conversation two more people whose reading critiques I highly prize also went on and on about "The Corrections." All right, already. I got it as a book on CD from the library.

I listened to the first few tracks and it didn't grab me. OK, maybe I needed a bigger stretch of time. Well, I've now done 6 CDs (12 more to go -- that's another 15 hours). I DON'T WANT TO SPEND ANOTHER MINUTE OF MY TIME WITH THIS FAMILY.

Is it elegantly written? Yes. Does Franzen have a amazing eye for detail and dialogue? Yes. It is laugh out loud funny at points? Yes. But I just don't like it. I don't get the thrust of the story and whether I should be most worried about the guy going to Lithuania or the patent owned by the father. Franzen wore me out by so many alley-ways and furbelows in the story that I no longer care about any of the main characters.

So Franzen has now joined my list of writers that includes Philip Roth (see 2009 posting about my attempt to read the Zuckerman novels over the course of one summer). It's very hard for me to admit that I just don't like/just don't get such well-regarded, acclaimed writers and I do feel the nudge of thinking it's a fault in me rather than a question of taste. But for me, life is just too short for a Franzen novel.