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A review by ian_hilgendorf
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
4.0
Some foundational, Franzen tropes... the doting, overbearing mother who just wants the best for her children; the wandering, I-want-this-ohsorry-I-want-that-oh-for-fucksake-I-want-I-want-I-want-I-have-no-idea-what-I-want protagonist; the surly, morally correct/morally conflicted older male; a heavy dose of obscene narcissism... you get the idea.
Yet, as is his blessed calling card, the prose sing. While his characters are overtly Franzenistic tropes, it does not take away from their honesty, nor does the above hurt the storytelling. As I was reading the book, I stopped on more than one occasion to opine to my wife how I was simultaneously delighted by the deftness of Mr. Franzen's talent as writer and storyteller and how jealous I was of his prodigious skill.
He has a way of making his somewhat unsavory characters still loveable and complex.
There are those that consider Mr. Franzen a male shovenist and I guess there is some of that ringing in 'Purity' as well. However, aren't males often shovenists, closeted or overt? And in some cases, aren't those characters, though sometimes unsavory, also somewhat redeemable in their own weird way? For what it's worth, 3 of the main characters in this novel are women and other than Pip's mother (1 of the 3), the other two are shown to be the strongest moral characters in the story.
Some see Franzen's brand of storytelling as a privileged rendering of his predilections and hypothesize at his maligned contempt for everyone, fictional characters and real readers alike. I will admit that I don't see that. Franzen may position himself as the mature moralist whose place atop the literary pantheon allows him to bypass the likes of Twitter and Facebook (icky, self-indulgent forms of narcissism in and of themselves, Franzen might say), but to me he is not unlike many other fifty-somethings who see the likes of social media as an absurd trade for face-to-face relationship building. Is that opinion narrow, missing the mark of what our complex digital world has become? Of course! But to those who would moralize themselves about such a position, I would say what I say to many people who find themselves reading/partaking in some form of entertainment with the full understanding of what they are getting from the artist. If you don't like that artist, read something else. You'll be missing out, but that's your decision.
Yet, as is his blessed calling card, the prose sing. While his characters are overtly Franzenistic tropes, it does not take away from their honesty, nor does the above hurt the storytelling. As I was reading the book, I stopped on more than one occasion to opine to my wife how I was simultaneously delighted by the deftness of Mr. Franzen's talent as writer and storyteller and how jealous I was of his prodigious skill.
He has a way of making his somewhat unsavory characters still loveable and complex.
There are those that consider Mr. Franzen a male shovenist and I guess there is some of that ringing in 'Purity' as well. However, aren't males often shovenists, closeted or overt? And in some cases, aren't those characters, though sometimes unsavory, also somewhat redeemable in their own weird way? For what it's worth, 3 of the main characters in this novel are women and other than Pip's mother (1 of the 3), the other two are shown to be the strongest moral characters in the story.
Some see Franzen's brand of storytelling as a privileged rendering of his predilections and hypothesize at his maligned contempt for everyone, fictional characters and real readers alike. I will admit that I don't see that. Franzen may position himself as the mature moralist whose place atop the literary pantheon allows him to bypass the likes of Twitter and Facebook (icky, self-indulgent forms of narcissism in and of themselves, Franzen might say), but to me he is not unlike many other fifty-somethings who see the likes of social media as an absurd trade for face-to-face relationship building. Is that opinion narrow, missing the mark of what our complex digital world has become? Of course! But to those who would moralize themselves about such a position, I would say what I say to many people who find themselves reading/partaking in some form of entertainment with the full understanding of what they are getting from the artist. If you don't like that artist, read something else. You'll be missing out, but that's your decision.