Freedom

A couple of months ago, I was in a book rut. Like with music, I find this happens on a fairly regular basis: I end up reading the same author or style over and over until I'm just plain tapped out. The end result is that weeks (or even months) go by with nary a page turned. In the era of ready made access to endless bookstores through Kindles, and Nooks, it's even more depressing. What excuse do I have when the world of books is quite literally at my fingertips and the need to actually venture to the the bookstore and fight traffic and crowds is completely removed. Chalk it up to laziness, but it is what it is.

In a moment of desperation, I posted a Facebook status asking for suggestions from friends. The twenty or so responses ranged from the obvious (The Stieg Larsson Trilogy) to the ridiculous (Everybody Poops) to the gratuitous (Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition). Buried in there, however, were several gems, one of which I feel compelled to praise here.

One of the odd side effects of e-readers is that you don't get a sense of the actual size of whatever it is you are reading. Sure, you have the percent completed ticker along the bottom, but there is no tactile understanding that you get with a fat brick of a hardback book in your hands. When I downloaded Freedom by Jonathan Franzen to my Kindle, I had no idea of the sheer scope of what I was holding in my hands, on two fronts. I found out after the fact that Franzen's book is over 500 pages long. I was about halfway through, however, when Franzen's achingly sharp prose compelled me to learn more about the person behind the writing and what he had done in the past.

It was then that I learned that I had been working through what those in the know consider to be the first truly great American novel of the 21st Century and that Franzen is being propped up as the heir to Updike and Steinbeck. I honestly had no idea. There a hundreds of reviews out there that peel back the onion of what Franzen has created in this work, and I will not belabor the same points here. People much smarter and more accomplished than me have already made every point that is to be made as to why this book belongs in the Pantheon.

Instead, the best way I can describe my reverence for Freedom and Franzen himself is to say this: I have always harbored the hope of becoming a writer. Never in my life have I encountered a work that so brightly spotlights how good writing can be while at the same time so brutally reminding me how far above my talents such a work would be. Put differently: in the same breath, Franzen makes me want to chase that dream that much harder as well as give it up since there's no chance I'll touch the heights that he has.

Over 500 pages, multiple flashbacks, four completely developed and flawed characters, and not a single word wasted in the process. Make no doubt about it, Franzen is a master of his craft.