This post does not have spoilers. However, the comments will be ALL SPOILERS. If you've finished the book and want to talk about the scene where [redacted] and [redacted] do [redacted], come on over and play.
I'll kick it off with my thoughts on the ending sometime between 8 and 9AM. Seriously, if you haven't read FREEDOM, do NOT enter the comments -- but feel free to pass along to your friends who have and are pestering you to talk about it.
1 day ago
3 comments:
SERIOUSLY TURN BACK NOW if you haven't read this book!!
First I want to confess that I did cry at the end of this book, at the scene where Walter brings Patty in from the cold. I was caught so off guard by the false ending, the "Oh, Patty is a gym teacher in Brooklyn now," that I felt completely wrecked and surprised. I don't even think
I feel weird admitting to that, but there you go.
The interplay between the titular theme of freedom and the encumbrances of life was really fascinating to me here. Patty-Walter-Richard Katz, of course. Patty's family trying to shed the old house and all the baggage that comes with it, and there is a lot. Joey spends the whole book trying to shed Connie, only to decide that he will stay with her in the end. (I guess after you've turned yourself inside out looking for your fake wedding ring, you can feel differently about these things. How cringe-inducing was that moment, by the way?)
I was reminded of that scene from "Half Nelson" where Ryan Gosling's character asks, "What keeps us from being free?" I think Franzen really nails the point home that in fact we really don't know what we need to be free. Just as all the studies on happiness show that we really don't know what we need to be happy, so we expect to know what to free ourselves OF, but we don't. For Walter, maybe the realization is that he is free not to start over, not to pursue a different life -- maybe not a freedom we would wish for him, but he claims it in the end.
I also appreciate him semi-reclaiming the term (at least in my book) from 9 years of rhetoric about freedom "not being free" and the right-wing justification of a lot of horrible things under its banner. Not that you can erase all that, but the book offers another... view, I guess.
A few more matters to ponder or things I would like to discuss:
- Did Lalitha really have to die? At the time I thought it made perfect sense given the narrative scale, but with a few days' distance I'm thinking maybe that was unnecessary.
- This isn't really a spoiler, but Franzen said Richard Katz and his band were based on the Mekons. I had no idea they had been around that long, am I the only one?
I agree with your comment in an earlier post: I had forgotten how good Frazen was at writing endings. This novel's ending is really its final two sections, which cover maybe fifty pages, and it doesn't wrap itself up so much as wind itself down, in a way that is appropriate to the story. Its really masterfully done.
For me, the novel's depictions of mundane, every day details buys it a lot of credibility, which make the big-picture themes go down a lot more easily. For example, Walter's naivety in dealing with the coal removal project would seem incredible if it didn't fit so perfectly with his general willingness to let himself get abused in the pursuit of worthy goals.
Question: Did Walter Berglung remind you, at all, of the father from Calvin & Hobbes?
All of the mainstream reviews I have read so far have discussed the book in terms of Franzen's personality. Having read Franzen's non-fiction, it is clear that he really enjoys discussing certain topics, such as conservation, bird-watching, the corrosive nature of our constant exposire to electronic stimulation. It sort of makes me wonder about how he arrived at a few of his other favorite things to discuss - shady international business dealings, people moving to Brooklyn to get away from the messes they made of their lives in other cities (think: Denise in The Corrections), the way that sex smells, and the "urban gentry" and their good taste, which he seems to consider to be both admirable and oppressive.
I did not think of the father from "Calvin and Hobbes," but hmmm... given the context, maybe a little bit.
I'm definitely interested in how Franzen arrived at some of his favorite topics. (He's very involved in bird
conservation projects, although kudos to him for not writing a "message" novel. Why, we hardly even see the birds at all here.) The shady-3rd-world-country-dealings bit in FREEDOM felt at first like a retread of the same material in THE CORRECTIONS, but Joey's paranoia and the protective effect of the corruption at high levels of the government added a new spin to it. I felt legitimately tense waiting to see if he would get caught. Didn't Walter encourage him NOT to turn himself in, too? Can we talk about that?
I was also a little surprised at how on the nose I thought his depiction of the interplay between Walter and Patty and their children was, considering he doesn't have kids himself. But of course he has parents, and may have just done a lot of really solid eavesdropping (funny to visualize).
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