1. The reviews for Freedom, Jonathan Franzen’s much-anticipated follow-up to 2001’s The Corrections, are in, and terms like “America’s Greatest Novelist” are once again being thrown around, with the decline of the novel itself being re-evaluated as well. Personally, I love Franzen’s work, especially his essays (he’s got a great one about his involvement in youth ministry growing up) and will be first in line on the 31st. Time Magazine has gone so far as to put him on their cover, the first time they’ve done so with a living novelist in ten years. Their profile is only moderately interesting, my favorite bit being Franzen’s take on busyness and books:
There are any number of reasons to want novels to survive. The way [Jonathan] Franzen thinks about it is that books can do things, socially useful things, that other media can’t. He cites — as one does — the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his idea of busyness: that state of constant distraction that allows people to avoid difficult realities and maintain self-deceptions. With the help of cell phones, e-mail and handheld games, it’s easier to stay busy, in the Kierkegaardian sense, than it’s ever been.
Reading, in its quietness and sustained concentration, is the opposite of busyness. “We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we’ve created, and by the constant barrage of so-called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful,” Franzen says. “The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.”
The NY Times Book Review calls it a “masterpiece of American fiction” and describes one of the themes of the book, saying:
As each of us seeks to assert his “personal liberties” — a phrase Franzen uses with full command of its ideological implications — we helplessly collide with others in equal pursuit of their sacred freedoms, which, more often than not, seem to threaten our own. It is no surprise, then, that “the personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage,” as Franzen remarks. And the dream will always sour; for it is seldom enough simply to follow one’s creed; others must embrace it too. They alone can validate it.
3. The latest innovation in the world of New Atheism is pretty clever: A hairdryer, for de-baptizing. Points for creativity! On a less amusing note, Leisl Schillinger’s article in the NY Times “Christopher Hitchens, Not Going Gently,” clearly meant to strike a note of quiet admiration for a man “sticking to his guns,” instead comes across as surprisingly naive, and even a bit silly. That is, it doesn’t stick to its own annihilationist guns, which the man himself did in his recent interview with The Atlantic. It made me particularly sad to read a quote from the great Martin Amis about immortality being something that can be achieved through art. As if…
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Arcade Fire – Ready to Start | ||||
|
||||
P.S. If you haven’t checked out our Resources pages recently, you’re missing out! There’s a bunch of new sermons up.
COMMENTS
5 responses to “Another Week Ends: Franzen’s Freedom, Strippers at Church, Hairdryers, Gender Jokes, Sufjan and Arcade Fire”
Leave a Reply
My favorite part of the Franzen Time piece is the stuff about how DFW's death effected his writing. I had been wondering whether his next novel would reflect any of his feelings on the subject.
I think theirs was one of those great, ennobling literary friendships. They were men who were alike but very different, and they wrote fiction that used very different means to get at the same essential truths.
DFW wrote sometimes chilly, abstract stuff that explored human thought processes and illustrated how bound to sin our conscious minds are: how difficult it is to really give or receive love. Franzen's books do much the same thing but are more literal, and could fall more easily into the social commentary section of your local library. Both also dedicated themselves to going beyond the problem and trying to illuminate the solution. (DFW was the more clearly spiritual of the two, and seemed to see the problem of life as a spiritual one which had to have a spiritual solution. Without really meaning to, he's the one who lead me back to Christ.)
I'm excited to read Freedom, and I eagerly await The Pale King if they ever get around to publishing it.
Josh, I think DFW would be thrilled to know he inadvertently led you back to Christ. I remember being so moved, shortly after his death, to learn that his favorite novel was The Screwtape Letters.
A pet peeve: People always allude to Dylan Thomas' famous poem, but never bother to get it right. Even the NY Times. The title of that essay should be "Christopher Hitchens, Not Going Gentle"…
I highly recommend Reverend Chad Lawrence's sermon given on 8/9/10. Reverend Lawrence even includes a good cover of Bob Dylan's "You gotta serve somebody". The address is:
http://www.sthelenas1712.org/index.php?page=sermons
Correction– sermon was given on 8/8/10. Chad is an associate Priest with The Parish Church of St. Helena's.