Jonathan Franzen Books

For a die-hard Peanuts fan, this series is a must-have!

This series is going to be a regular drain on my bank balance for the coming decade, as that is how long it is going to take Fantagraphics to finish publishing this collection, if they stick to their published schedule.

Be warned: The Sunday strips are not in colour unlike the Calvin & Hobbes and the Farside collection in which even the black and white strips are printed on colour pages. This quite pisses me off...

Finally, a Peanuts collection in chronological order and nothing left out. It's going to be a long wait indeed...

I've always thought of creating a bookshelf of hard cover with all my favourite comic strips, when I could afford them... Calvin & Hobbes, Farside, Tintin, Asterix & of course Peanuts.

I have the first two, and I'm on my way with Peanuts... It's going to be a long and interesting 11 years...

There was a time when the newspaper comic strip was HUGE. In the early 1900s, the success of a newspaper was in part due to the comics it featured. That era has long since disappeared, and it often seems that the comic strip is a neglected relic. There are still some good comics out there, but they are getting rarer and the newspapers treat them with less and less respect, cramming many onto a single page that used to hold just a few.

Where does Peanuts fit into all this? Well, it is the most popular comic strip of all time. Does any other strip have anything close to its legacy of movies, TV shows, plays, books and merchandise? And happily, it is deserving of its success; it is arguably the best comic strip ever, and certainly one of the top ten or so. As a result, it is not hard to see why the newspapers continue to publish old strips years after its creator, Charles Schulz had died. They don't stop printing it or allow another artist to take it over. The comic strips overall are a pale shadow of what they once were, so repeats of Peanuts can prosper because nothing new can replace them.

Volume 4 of the Complete Peanuts is where the characters are really beginning to show their full development. We have Lucy, the champion fussbudget and Linus, her philosophical brother with a dependence on his security blanket. Schroeder is the budding musical genius. Patty, Violet and Shermy are mostly supporting characters at this point; they will be eventually replaced by other characters (but not in this volume).

The two key roles, however, are those of Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Snoopy is up to his usual antics, pretending to be a vulture, grabbing at Linus's blanket and relaxing in his water bowl. He also starts his practice of lying on top of his dog house, although his first attempts are not all that successful. Charlie Brown is, well, Charlie Brown, the ultimate loser who the Fates themselves conspire against. Kites won't fly for him, pens constantly smear and if, by some remote chance, his baseball team is doing okay, they heavens themselves will open up and rain out the game. His "friends" are often cruel to him (with the exception of the benevolent Linus and the aloof Schroeder). In a way, the main theme of Peanuts is defined in the very first strip (in volume 1) when Shermy says, "Good old Charlie Brown...How I hate him." This seems to be the way the whole world thinks of this hapless character.

Peanuts may seem to some to be just an overrated strip, but I don't think that's so. It may be overly merchandised, but the comic itself is a cornerstone of the genre and one of the most influential strips out there. This volume again shows why Peanuts is one of the all-time greats.

Here the Peanuts gang becomes familiar, as they start hitting the usual topics that would develop and blossom over the years. Every one of the main characters has secured their place, and Snoopy starts his development into the multi-faceted character we know and love.

Probably the best thing about the book is that we watch Charles M. Schultz modify and mollify his characters. In 1957, quite a few of the Sunday cartoons show Lucy becoming too much the bully, abusing her younger brother viciously without cause and causing no end of pain to Charlie Brown. During 1958, Lucy develops a vulnerability and Linus becomes more an actor, sometimes getting back at his sister and sometimes causing his sister's temper tantrum (it's easier watching her blow up when she has a cause). Schultz could have blown things with Lucy, but with a few modifications between her and Linus, a balance is made that makes things more interesting.

Now, here's to next April, and 1959-1960.

Everyone's favorite beagle comes into his own in this fourth volume of the best-selling COMPLETE PEANUTS series. Snoopy covets Linus's security blanket, indulges in imitations and impressions,joins the baseball team and, toward the end of the book, he even--an epochal development!--starts sleeping on the roof of his doghouse.

Of course, fans of Schroeder, Lucy, Linus, Patty, Pig-Pen, Shermy, Violet, and Charlie Brown will also find plenty of hilarious strips to enjoy as well including several hundred that have never seen print in book form before today.

I heard Franzen speak about how unfaithful the recent NY production was to Wedekind's anarchistic perspective. This is a brash and funny send up of modern society's sexual hypocrisy. Fast read, too.

I've known about "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" for years but it was the movie not the book. For the record I have avoided looking at movie. The title turned me off. However while wandering through the library, I happened to see the book on a shelf. That was when I found out the boring sounding movie was based on a critically-acclaimed, enormously best selling novel by Sloan Wilson.

Set in the years after World War II, Tom and Betsy Rath are stereotypical young executive-suburban New York couple. He is an executive with a charitable foundation. She is a housewife with three young children. Their house is too small. Tom doesn't make enough money and neither is very happy with their existence. Both (especially Tom) are just going though the motions.

The quiet dreariness of their circumstances forces Tom to search for a better paying job. At the same time, Tom's formerly wealthy grandmother is dying ultimately leaving them her estate and little else. Finally, Tom is haunted by events during his service as an Army officer during WWII.

Their saving grace is the two of them are truly devoted to each other and their family.

Things come to a head rapidly. Tom and Betsy are forced to examine their existence and really determine what it is they really want in their lives. They must confront the truth of their existence and develop the strength to make the changes to increase the quality of their lives and end their quiet desperation.

The amazing thing about this book is that it still holds up after over 50 years. This book is about taking charge of your life rather than just doing things that are expected of you. By that I mean, attending the right schools, hanging out with the right crowd, working for the right company, making the right career move, etc. It's about understanding what you want and living with honesty and integrity.

Now I'll think I'll watch the movie. I hope it lives up to the book.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit richly deserves all the praise it has garnered over the years. This is a wonderful novel which succeeds on many levels. It is very much the story of the generation that came of age with WWII. Tom Rath and his wife Betsy are average suburbanites struggling to make a go of it in the America of the 1950s. An era in which a mood of great optimism existed side by side with anxiety and fear.

The characters are well fleshed out and thoroughly believable. Not just Tom and Betsy but supporting characters like Judge Bernstein and Tom's boss Ralph Hopkins. These are real people the reader can reach out and touch. Moreover, each and every event depicted rings absolutely true. Author Sloan Wilson demonstrates a remarkable talent for creating fiction that has the unmistakable feel of reality.

Although The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit contains special lessons for those just beginning their climb up the corporate ladder, I enthusiastically recommend it to all readers who appreciate great fiction. It's a classic of American literature and a must read.

I read it many years ago and never forgot it. At the time Tom should have been too old for me to identify with, but the author created a man so human it was jarring. You worry about this character. Tom appears calm, but underneath the water his feet are churning and the reader churns with him.

Every now and again, a book or movie is produced which captures the spirit of the era in which it is written. Sometimes this is done by accident (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS was seen by right-wingers as a warning about communist infiltration, and by left-winters as an attack on McCarthyism, when it fact it was neither) and sometimes on purpose (WALL STREET was an almost gleefully self-conscious in its attempt to sum up the greed-crazed 80s), but the effect is basically the same: the work in question becomes a catchphrase, encapsulating not just a story but the spirit of a decade or even a whole generation.

Sloan Wilson's THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT is such a work. Intended as mere novelized autobiography, it struck such a chord with readers that, decades after it was written, it still symbolizes for many the oddly shallow dark side of what was supposedly America's "Golden Era" - the 1950s.

SUIT is the story of Tom Rath, a middle-class American everyman who, in the mid-1950s, experiences a kind of premature midlife crisis. On the surface, Rath seems to be rock solid - he has a beautiful wife, three kids, a car, a house in the New York suburbs, and a good job with a secure future. Stepping off the A train with briefcase in hand, his missus always has a cold Martini on hand, and a nice meal on the stove. Hell, his aged grandmother is even about to will him a mansion on Long Island! By the plastic-fantastic standards of the 50s, he should be ecstatic. But he isn't. He isn't even happy, and neither is Mrs. Rath. They are, in fact, pretty miserable.

The Rath's prosperity is actually an illusion. His wife feels emotionally disconnected from him ever since he returned from World War II - and rightly so, since can't bring himself to talk about it or the seventeen men he killed while it was going on. His kids are spoiled. His car is a piece of junk on its last legs, and his "starter house" seems to have turned out to be his burial plot. His grandmother's "mansion" is a rotting hulk mired in zoning problems and lawsuits. Even his "secure" job downtown is an unsatisfying bore.

Prodded by feelings that his life is passing him by and that he has failed to achieve any of his prewar dreams, Rath chucks up his old job and takes a new one as a speechwriter for a workaholic millionaire. As he does so, he encounters an old acquaintance from his army days, the sight of whom forces him to face some very unpleasant truths from his wartime past - truths that threaten to destroy his marriage and ruin him financially. At the same time, he struggles to fit in in the go-go, cutthroat atmosphere of his new employer (his immediate superior, Ogden, is so undermining, condescending and rude that the normally placid Rath has fantasies of killing him). Over time, Rath - whose growing cynicism is alienting his wife even further - begins to question absolutely everything in his life - from his marriage to the corporate rat race. He's even forced into painful self-examination over his actions during World War Two. And this is the crux of the novel: will Rath open up to his wife - which could lead to ruination and divorce - or will he continue to play the tight-lipped, buttoned down Mr. Cleaver role that has been suffocating him since the end of the war?

SUIT is by no means a perfect book. The pace is often sluggish, and a lot of Wilson's prose is bland and colorless - although this may be by design, as his reminiscences of the war are extremely vivid and well-drawn, probably Wilson's way of indicating that Rath's past is more vivid than his present. There are some bizarre point-of-view shifts which occur surprisingly late in the novel, and the sub-plots are all wrapped up so conveniently it threatens the story's integrity. The final exchanges between Rath and his wife are totally unrealistic - the dialogue, realistic up to that point, becomes unbelievably melodramatic. But these flaws, while significant, don't really diminish the book's laurels.
Whether Wilson intended it to be or not, SUIT is a generational tale: Rath symbolizes the silent and painful battle that WW2 veterans waged with themselves after 1945, when they returned to find, in many cases, that that American Dream that they had fought and killed for consisted of nothing more than crass advertising, jingo patriotism and banal materialism, all set to the tune of a merry commercial jingle. Was it possible for such men to find meaning in such a shallow world as "Leave it to Beaver" represented? Sloan's answer to this question may surprise you.

Tom Rath, a WWII veteran who survived against incredible odds, feels stressed, distant and unhappy. He has a wife and three kids and works in an unchallenging administrative job that affords him but modest pay and no real room for advancement. He tries for and gets what turns out to be an uncertain, but better paying, position at the United Broadcasting Corp. With his new salary and the sudden death of his 93 year old grandmother, his discontented wife decides to sell their modest house in a boring suburb and move the family into the estate Tom has inherited. Meanwhile Tom, feeling detached and cynical, struggles in his new job to provide what he thinks is expected of him. At the root of this are his growing WWII recollections of a long romantic affair with Maria and, later, of accidentally killing his best friend -both memories triggered by repeatedly running across a fellow war vet now working as an elevator operator in his building.

There are many interesting and important subplots, but the three interrelated central issues confronting Tom regard his attitude toward his wife, his employer, and his past (Maria and the son struggling to survive in post-war Italy). The tension and joylessness that pervade his life hinge on whether or not he can resolve these conflicts. He resolves the issues at home by standing up and fighting for passage of a school bond measure; the issue with his employer by being completely open and honest (instead of playing the cynical game he thinks he is expected to play); and the issue with his past, by committing to send $100 a month to help his son in Italy -and coming clean with his wife Betty about his affair with Maria.

In confronting every painful or difficult decision he knows to be right he goes through the same thought process that gave him the mental strength and self-control he needed in the war (1. "It doesn't really matter." 2. "Here goes nothing"; and 3. "It will be interesting to see what happens").

In my view, Wilson's thesis -especially given the happy ending -is that, by being honest and taking responsibility for your life and choices you allow everything to turn out -if not exactly how you expected- then at least for the best. Your life then becomes authentic and joyful, not merely a stressful, dutiful, and impersonal routine to be endured until things somehow work out (because they never will, and you will simply remain unhappy until you die).

In other words, by successfully confronting the past you reclaim the present (and future) -and every moment becomes precious once more.

Looking at the novel as a historical document, it gives me a deeper understanding of the sense of ennui or drift that many WWII vets underwent after returning from the war, and their feeling of being between wars -a desire to enjoy life now while there's peace, and not throw enjoyment of the now away on an ultimately futile or empty pursuit of title or status.

Implicitly, it communicates well the feeling of survival-guilt or a soldier's sense of unreality toward his surroundings after the unimaginable death and horror he has experienced during the war. Tom Rath must wake up from the past by developing a real connection to the world around him in the present. He resists the pervasive and lethal cynicism by playing it straight and taking full responsibility for his life.

Franzen's collection of essays is about a variety of different topics, but it is ultimately about the isolation and alienation a person can feel in today's modern world.

Each of the essays is well crafted and thoughtful. Topics as divergent as a father's death, fame, and the postal service come up here. But, at the core, Franzen explores how we grow apart as more things are created to bring us together.

The most poignant essay is the one about the deterioration of Franzen's dad. It gives a son's account of what it feels like to slowly lose a parent. The reader can feel the slow dread and sorrow that the failing of a once mighty human being can bring. Another interesting essay concerns Franzen's thoughts about the Oprah controversy.

If you want to know more about the American psyche, read this.

First off I'll say that I love Franzen's writing style and his dry sense of humor. The problem I had with this book is that because most of the essays were written in the mid to late 90s and all were written before 9/11, much of his observations have been rendered, in my opinion, obsolete. The world became a different place after 9/11 and the start of the war, etc. - and his observations on the zeitgeist, obviously, don't reflect that change.

A good dream interpreter will offer multiple possibilities from which you might pick. One will make sense to you and surpass "reasonable" or "plausible" to attain "feeling right." In a similar sense, I enjoy Franzen's essays most when they elicit instant affirmation. At those moments, you can nod, say he's hit upon something, notice what nifty way he's found to express what you should have known before. Surprisingly, he seldom achieves that exalted state when he's speaking personally, for himself. He seems more effective when he triangulates his own views with contributions from other smart people. Reading this collection of essays, you occasionally detect the prickliness that makes him--rightly or wrongly--a literary bad boy. His indignation can veer into stridency. However, you also see a sort of warmth that, for me, The Corrections sometimes lacked. As Franzen suggests in his essay "Why Bother?," I read for confirmation that life is complicated. At its best, How to Be Alone does so in a way that suggests not just solidarity with Franzen--and with those he quotes--but with what Franzen observes.

"How To Be Alone" by Jonathan Franzen is the most remarkable collection of essays I've read so far. Perhaps there's a better one, perhaps there are other authors whose mastery of language is sufficient enough to awaken my curiosity about the power of words over feelings. Perhaps, but I'm simply not aware of any other (hint! Help me find them). And in all honesty, I'm not sorry. Because once I've read Franzen, I've discovered the reasons behind my personal amazement of what language is. It is the realization that words carry feelings. Well, not quite. Words possess meaning and their poetic use delivers perception (yes that sounds better). Think about it. 7 million years of humanoid evolution and while the body slowly adapted its physiology to the demands of the environment, our brains played sluggish catch-up. And now, here we are, utilizing a language created only about 100,000 ago with a mind that is still learning how to cope with the billions of thoughts and physiological responses to everything imaginable, and at the same time being bombarded with words, most of which have already lost their sparkle even before the second cup of coffee is finished, and suddenly we discover Franzen's essay - the one beacon in the darkness of the mundane ocean of the familiar, the cliché - and it's shining like a sun, pointing to the only source of emotions and meaning, reminding us of why we think, why we feel, why we live. Like a skillful organ player, Mr. Franzen manipulates the keys and pedals of words to create in me a frame of mind, feelings and dreams. And that's what I call art.

I recommend this book to everyone who has ever wondered what it means to be a skillful writer. Even if you don't agree with what Mr. Franzen stands for, you are obligated (by the power of the written word) to take some time and read one of his essays (my recommendation is the 'Harper' essay. You won't be disappointed).


- by Simon Cleveland

I was looking at the wide range of reviews this book has gotten, and it completely strikes me as appropriate that this books garners the reviews that it does. Consider a quote within the very book:

"The novel is whatever novelists are doing at a given time. If we're not doing the big social novel fifteen years from now, it'll probably mean our sensibilities have changed in ways that make such work less compelling to us - we don't stop because the market dried up. The writer leads, he doesn't follow."

Franzen does not appear to be writing to appeal to everyone - he intends to speak directly on a particular subject that has riled his heart from the beginning, a riling that only a select set of people will embrace. Those that recognize what he speaks of will quickly see the subtext behind all of his writings and see how his selection of essays paints a grand picture of aloneness without seeming to really touch upon the issue directly. Instead, he attacks the idea of it from every angle he knows, as a novelist, from the view of prisons and technology, as one dealing with the past and the present. All is said without saying anything on the topic and it is in this tremendous work that his words carry the careful reader through.

Not all readers will make it to the end. But that is the nature of the book. As many saw only in Catch-22 absurdity and stupidity, I am sure people will regard this book to be likewise. Yet, 'tis not to his audience he writes.

After reading The Corrections, which I LOVED, I went in search of other Franzen books. This book was tedious, slow, boring, and simply uninteresting. It is so dreadfully dull and dry relative to The Corrections or 27th City.

Although this novel is unorthodox and the first half of it is very slow, it is also highly worth reading because the payoff for sticking it out is great. This is Franzen's novel which focuses on "the soul". His other two novels -- The Corrections and The Twenty-Seventh City -- are founded on the themes family and government, respectively. The Twenty-Seventh City keeps our interest with its fast pace and hilarity; the Corrections sacrifices pace for an intense family chronicle and thus keeps our attention. Strong Motion has no such "reading-lubricant;" like other activities which concern the soul, you have to be devoted to reading the book if you want to get something out of it. And you will.

As in his other books, Franzen gives us illuminated and very unique portraits of the book's cast of characters and locale. The frequency of the plot is jagged with its frenetic highs followed by sharp drops into detail. The philosophies of various characters which pervade the book give it the aura of a Platonic dialogue or holy text.

It is also important to note that this is Franzen's only real love story, and of all love stories it is one of the most touching and realistic that I have ever read.

Read this book if you enjoy challenges with serious rewards.

Strong Motion, Jonathan Franzen's second novel, is a big, elaborate book that's packed with...well, with all sorts of things: earthquakes in greater Boston, familial dysfunction in the extreme, the antics of a clinic-picketing minister of an anti-abortion church, grouchy observations about American culture at the end of the `80s, the misdeeds of an environmentally irresponsible chemical company, an attempted murder, vast sums of money being thrown about, and the Red Sox losing the playoffs. The book follows Louis Holland and Renee Seitchek as they fall in love with each other and attempt to find their way through all the chaos of the narrative.

It's exciting to watch a writer try to pull off a book as ambitious as this one, but I always get so disappointed if they don't succeed. Franzen gets close to realizing his ambitions with Strong Motion, but the book never really gels. I think this may be partly due to the sheer volume of what the book contains--there's just too much stuff competing for the reader's attention, and the split focus on reproductive rights and environmentalism means that neither issue gets explored in a satisfying way. The real problem, though, is the characters. They just don't make sense. I wanted to like Renee and there were times when I found myself identifying with her quite strongly, but there were also many moments when she would do or say something that would leave me shocked that Franzen believed that a 30-year-old woman would think/feel/act like that. And it wasn't just the 30-year-old woman, either. All of the characters had these slips, where suddenly their motivations stopped making sense, or their reactions suddenly seemed out of proportion to the situation, or the decisions they made felt like choices that no human on the face of the earth would ever pick.

I was troubled by odd bits of disconnection in the plot, as well. Why, for instance, when Louis is initially presented to us as a typical nerdy loner--a pale, lumpen guy who's losing his hair at 23, who wears aviator glasses, who spends his spare time fiddling with transistor radios in his bedroom, who is still much more boy than man--does he end up being fought over by two different women? I have nothing against nerdy guys, but Franzen set Louis up as such a loser that I found it very hard to believe that both women (and especially the beautiful and superficial Lauren) would be interested in him. It's very hard for a book to recover once it's gone too far over the plausibility line, and Strong Motion did that more than once.

Despite its flaws, Strong Motion is a decent book. It's entertaining, there's enough intrigue in the plot to keep things moving at a pretty good clip, and Franzen's prose is sharp. It's also very evident that a lot of research went into producing it. The book feels almost like a practice exercise for The Corrections--similar themes handled with less assurance--and although it's not nearly as good, fans of The Corrections may be interested in reading this book to trace the origins of the better novel.

After reading "The Corrections," any book let alone a Franzen book is sure to disappoint. It's like asking a young Charles Dickens to write "Great Expectations" at a time when he's still trying to muddle his way through one of his Christmas tales (forgive me Dickens purists if I've somehow messed up any sense of chronology, but you get the picture). "Strong Motion," Franzen's second book, shows flashes of brilliance, but ultimately fails to show the magic he comes up with in subsequent books (by the way, Franzen really needs to start writing ficiton again...).

This dense book follows a single dysfunctional family, the shady dealings of a multi-million dollar company, and what happens when a series of earthquakes claims the life of a wealthy space-agey grandmother. Franzen takes an unlikely plotline - earthquakes affecting the New England area - and juggles multiple perspectives and relationships affected by it. I was apprehensive when I started reading the novel because of how expansive the book felt - I mean, he goes off on random tangents like what life is like from the viewpoint of a raccoon - but he ultimately ties everything else quite nively. I apologize for writing in vague terms, but the book is truly pregnant with details. But as great as the tangents and density of the novel are, it's these aspects that ultimately fail the novel. In many respects, the novel often seems like an excuse to play with writing and language within an overall framework. For fans of good writing, this is an important book in the career of an important writer, but for the subway and recreational reader, save yourself some time and read "The Corrections" or even his collection of essays "How to Be Alone."

Let me say first of all that I loved "The Corrections" which is why I was eager to read another offering from the same writer. But this book does nothing right. Every character is unlikable. The plot (or one of the many plot lines) involves the "evil corporation" cliche that dominates so many books and quickly became tiresome. And I can't imagine that this book ever got past an editor. Some of the prose was so poorly written I was literally laughing out loud. I rarely stop reading a book once I've started but with only 40 pages left of this 500 page novel, I gave up. I had no interest in the story or any of the characters and just couldn't stand to read another page.

What a waste or real talent.

Jonathan Franzen is a great writer who is torn apart by worries about the decline in the amount of good literature being read. During the article he makes a desperate cry to the readers about not giving in to the "burden of knowledge" and allowing technology medicate you.

Overall a provocative read which makes good points and eloquently says what many of us are thinking.

This is a pretty perceptive novel, it takes swipes on our unfettered faith in capitalism, and free-market theories. Most of the characters introduced in the novel are likeable, flawed, and consequently interesting. The plot is a bit hazy, but it's an engaging commentary about the times we live in. Do give it a go- I found it to be an entertaining piece of work to lose myself in.

After reading The Corrections, I was ready to jump on the Franzen train, to buy all books that he has ever written and devour all of them. The Corrections was one of my favorite books ever. This one, however, is a quagmire. I was stuck reading an uninspired newsreel for weeks, with too many characters, dry narration, and uncomfortable racism infused paragraphs. Really dissapointing.

This is a fun and quietly zany book about a host of political players caught up in a one-horse conspiracy to rezone the city - for vast real-estate profits - and the vain fledgling counter-conspiracy that springs up to try to stop it. A great soup of quirky, convincing characters who continuously flavor one other's actions and motives.

I loved the Corrections and the writing here is similar, if not nearly identical in tone, style and purpose. But where his later smash hit was about small circumstances and grand themes, "The Twenty-Seventh City" is about supposedly soaring politicos and the mundane goals they fight for with all their might. The great farce of "The Twenty-Seventh City" - if you want to look at that way - is that for all their outsized and often self-imposed importance, these characters end up really going nowhere, achieving nothing.

I can't say enough good things about "The Corrections." Because of that, I had really high hopes for "The Twenty-Seventh City." I couldn't have been more disappointed in a book.

Complicated, ambitious characters and plot-lines and themes don't scare me; I prefer those types of stories. But I could not follow this thing at all. Many times, I found my mind wandering on other exciting subjects such as what I'm gonna cook for dinner or when am I gonna sort the socks.

S Jammu was a corrupt person with an agenda and that was the only thing that was obvious. The other sub-plots and characters had no connection as far as I could tell. The business themes and story lines were boring for me. The in-depth descriptions of the real estate business held nothing of interest.

I give this book two stars because in Franzen style the descriptions were outstanding.

I wouldn't tell anyone NOT to read this book. I just didn't happen to get it. I do think there are plenty of people out there who would have an appreciation for this bizarre story.

The Twenty Seventh City is Jonathan Franzen's first book, but his debut is exceptional. Had I read this book back in the late eighty when it was first released, I'd followed Franzen's career more closely. Not many twenty-something year-olds can write with such clarity, stamina and talent.

The story takes place in Franzen's home city of St. Louis. It follows the devious raise and fall of an American-born female with an Indian descent (we are talking Bombay Indian), desperate to win the elections for unification of the County and City. Of course, Franzen introduces numerous other characters and masterfully examines not only their relationships, but their complex internal natures, emotions, aspirations and needs.

This is a book that replaces TV, internet and radio as a sort of entertainment. You'll get home from work, school, whatever, and would want to grab it and loose yourself in it. You'll go to bed with it and wake up with it. It's well thought, entertaining and intricate. I highly recommend it.

-by Simon Cleveland

These autobiographical essays teeter between personal revelation and keeping the reader at arm's length and the discussion at an intellectual level. Franzen describes in unforgiving detail how he chose the wrong realtor to sell his mother's house. We see him fall for the flirtatious sales pitch of the woman in tight jeans but not the reaction of his brothers once the error is discovered. He describes his attraction to his future wife because she is a precise, brilliant reader, but he seems incapable of explaining why that's not enough to make the marriage work. The failure of the marriage and reaction of his brothers remain just off stage. Franzen as an adult isn't far removed from the child who told his mother that he didn't hear the fight between his brother and father the night before -- everyone is safer if we carry on as if nothing happened.

The result is carefully crafted tension between Franzen's reticence to talk about intense messy feelings (except perhaps by allusion to Kafka) and meticulous cataloguing of everything incidental to those feelings. Trapped between the contradictory desires to be known and to remain distant, Franzen is at his thoughtful, ambivalent best.

These autobiographical essays teeter between personal revelation and keeping the reader at arm's length and the discussion at an intellectual level. Franzen describes in unforgiving detail how he chose the wrong realtor to sell his mother's house. We see him fall for the flirtatious sales pitch of the woman in tight jeans but not the reaction of his brothers once the error is discovered. He describes his attraction to his future wife because she is a precise, brilliant reader, but he seems incapable of explaining why that's not enough to make the marriage work. The failure of the marriage and reaction of his brothers remain just off stage. Franzen as an adult isn't far removed from the child who told his mother that he didn't hear the fight between his brother and father the night before -- everyone is safer if we carry on as if nothing happened.

The result is carefully crafted tension between Franzen's reticence to talk about intense messy feelings (except perhaps by allusion to Kafka) and meticulous cataloguing of everything incidental to those feelings. Trapped between the contradictory desires to be known and to remain distant, Franzen is at his thoughtful, ambivalent best.

Jonathen Franzen's personal history is more a short collection of slightly disorganized life happenings than what one would usually expect in a memoir. He begins with the story of the sale of his mother's house after her death, located in "just right" Webster Groves, Missouri, where he grew up. His goal to obtain the highest possible price doesn't work out entirely as planned. Chapter Two, My Ponies, concerns Snoopy, with whom he felt a certain "kinship," and Peanuts comic strip creator Charles Schultz. Joy Breaks Through follows the antics of his teen youth group members, of which he shares some great words of wisdom (p 113): "Adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, is its leading symptom," and "You're miserable and ashamed if you don't believe your adolescent troubles matter, but you're stupid if you do." More on his teens follows in Centrally Located, especially the details of some high school pranks (complete with sketches). Learning German abroad is main subject of The Foreign Language. My Bird Problem contains a bit on romance and marriage, his changing awareness of and concern about the environment, and, likely the favorite part for birders, funny anecdotes about bird sightings at the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge as well as his experiences as a bird watcher on Hat Island. Good as is, but fans will likely be left wanting more. Similarly satisfying: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers and Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.

As I read this efficient memoir, I was increasingly reminded of myself. Though I didn't grow up with the pressures imposed by parents with strong preconceptions of what I should do with my life, I was, like this fellow Jonathan, a youngest child, unusually shy and unwilling to cause trouble, interested in but slow to find my footing with the other sex. It took me 50 pages to become immersed, then I was swept along by Franzen's easy prose and quirky, sometimes hilarious misadventures. As a birdwatcher, I was delighted by the final chapter, which almost became a birder's diary. Had Franzen himself been the vegetarian his love interest was at the book's end, the parallels would have been complete. I only wish I could write like him.

The Discomfort Zone is honest, funny, insightful and nearly every sentence is a work of art; just what you would expect from a memoir written by Jonathan Franzen. However, despite his prodigious gifts as a writer, this personal history doesn't feel cohesive, is often aloof and it never feels like vital reading. It is an interesting if uneven glimpse into the mind and past of Franzen, but if you haven't read his work before, read The Corrections before this. For fans only.

After seeing this on best selling lists forever, finally picked it up from my library. Liked the beginning, but it really waned. Made myself finish it since SO many people loved it, but I'm not feeling it.

Grand ideas, ambitious and captivating- a novel about a dysfunctional family, and the many contradictions and concessions that family life requires. It kept me absorbed for days.

While Jonathan Franzen obviously has a talent for character development and drama, I was initally put off by what felt like a pretentious writing style. I've seen other reviewers here state that this was part of the story. I'm not sure I agree with that (it could simply be Franzen's writing style). But if that was his intent - to show the dysfunction of an average, midwestern family vis-a-vis a snobby, psuedo-intellectual narration, then he didn't succeed on that point. It may have been effective with a first-person POV, not third-person omniscient.

I ended up putting this book down for a time because it was too depressing, negative and seemingly self-important. However, when I picked it up again - prepared for the tone - I had a much greater appreciation for it. Parts were brilliant (the father's mental breakdown on the cruise is one of the best book *scenes* I've ever read) and Franzen is unquestionably an insightful writer. But in the end, it didn't go anywhere. We were left with the same dysfunctional characters who didn't appear to have grown, changed or developed over the course of the story. Perhaps that was the point, but does a reader really want to invest time and energy into static, unlikable characters? This novel struck me as one that had great potential but never fully delivered. It's still worth a read, for the pure family dysfunction aspect alone, but ultimately it left me craving something more palatable.

This is the great St. Louis Novel, a work that tells the truth so devastatingly that it is also hilarious, a kind of knitting doled out in the narrative over a time that one hopes never stops, except that the close is so satisfying. A masterpiece.

Let's take the good points, first:

1. Chip's part of the story. The Corrections is divided (roughly) into four or five parts, one for each member of the Lambert family -- Alfred and Enid (the parents), Chip, Gary, and Denise (their children). The second section, focused on Chip's declining academic and writing career is actually buffo stuff.

The characterization of the rich young undergrad whom Chip beds and spends a wild weekend with is painfully accurate. Even the descriptions of their sex (usually as unfunny a subject as possible) are uproarious. Pay special attention to Franzen's own coinages used to describe the act.

2. The names of the St. Jude characters. Franzen obviously took some care naming the Lamberts' neighbors -- there are Esther and Kirby Root (believably homeland) and Dale and Honey Driblett (both funny and believable). There is a clever play on "Amour" with Don Armour's name, and even the first name "Don," is probably meant to suggest Don Juan.


Now to the bad:

3. The comedy ends with that second section. The rest of it is a forced death march, through financial journalism material, stock options, patent fees, railroad arcana, the econo-politico maneuvering in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Franzen the Journalist suddenly takes the reins over from Franzen the Artist, or Franzen the Novelist. It is not entertaining.

4. Desperately in need of editing. This could have been half as long. Gary's and Denise's sections of the novel were both too long, and too short. That is, the material in them suggested character, but never really closed in on it (certainly not the way Chip's section did) but at the same time, was full of extraneous back-story. Witness, for instance, the pages dedicated to Robin Passafaro's (already a secondary character herself) career-criminal brother. Why did we know about this character? How did he move the plot?

5. For all of its posturing as a "family romance," when the siblings are brought face-to-face at last, the chemistry between them is unbelievably dead. I suspect some fatigue on Franzen's part. The stage has been set for all manner of verbal fireworks, but Chip and Gary can only manage a couple of lame digs at one another (mainly to do, again, with social and economic issues). It's like these supposed siblings never met one another before. No family row has ever been conducted at this volume. Franzen was an only child, perhaps?

6. The sex. This is not a moral objection, but an artistic one. In that raucous section about Chip, Franzen gets the depiction of sex correct -- that is, it is burlesque. It is ridiculous, grotesque, and embarrassing. But then he follows this with all these obsessive, medically accurate depictions of encounters (and yikes, for every character, as well) which are dissociative, creepy, and unlike any sex ever had by human beings.

This is not "The Great American Novel." It's not even "a great American novel." It is best when Franzen allows his imagination to fly (as he does when following Chip) but too often, the book is bogged down with journalistic ballast.