Man, Jonathan Franzen is a critically acclaimed author.

It is like a bad joke, who is a well-known author with no self-awareness? You almost feel bad for the guy. Well, that passed. Let me begin by saying I like books, and I even like some of Franzen’s books. But he isn’t worth all the hype. Much like a lot of male authors, they’re good, better than me, but not super original or groundbreaking. I mean take The Corrections, a book that can be boiled down to a tale of a middle class family with a declining patriarch and the disappointment you find in others, and he’s not experimenting with form or language here. John Green’s Papertowns is about a young man projecting onto a girl something she can’t possibly be and thus being forced to grow up. You’ve read these stories before; we all have. This is the Western canon: man + decline or conflict (literal or metaphorical) / personal growth = Great American Novel. Man, I’m a genus. I have one story about a white male lead, and it deals with the ideas we hold about ourselves and others, and how you determine the truth if everyone is telling you different versions of the truth and no one is lying. Literally, a white guy learning about different people’s perspectives and recognizing their value. This will never be a great American novel.

But today is a day of Franzen. As reported by the Guardian, Franzen was considering adopting an Iraqi orphan to understand young people. Thankfully, his editor pointed out the problems with this. Which I imagine was just his editor writing colonialism and fetishism over and over again at Franzen in an aggressive manner. No, sir, you don’t adopt a child from a country your country has destroyed for research. YOU DON’T GET TO USE PEOPLE THAT WAY. Franzen is the Joe Biden of literature. He talks and talks, sometimes he does something right, but most of the time you’re yelling “FRANZEN!” at the top of your lungs shaking your fist in the air. I give Franzen a lot of room most of the time because he’s a writer, and they’re all weirdos with a lot of insecurities and usually self-loathing. However, there comes a point, and for me it was his terrible views on women writers (read about them here). Any man who says that about Edith should know they are on my shit list.

See Franzen is finding himself in that scary place a lot of men go when they think they are the victims:

“I’m not a sexist. I’m not somebody who goes around saying men are superior, or that male writers are superior. In fact, I really go out of my way to champion women’s work that I think is not getting enough attention. None of that is ever enough. Because a villain is needed. It’s like there’s no way to make myself not male.”

Ok, but for Franzen the canon is representative of the best work. It doesn’t matter it was determined by men for men in a time when women and people of color didn’t get attention they deserved. He is unable to see this. A great example of this is the novel itself, which was largely considered to be a feminine form, largely until the 18^th century, which is when things change. Men began giving up the epic and moved into this form. On top of it all, he’s releasing a book called Purity which has a man hating feminist in it who emasculates her husband so much she makes him sit down to piss.

This is the best response to that:

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS WE FINALLY GET TO READ A MAN'S TAKE ON FEMINISM BLESS YOU AND THE HARD WORK YOU DO, MR FRANZEN pic.twitter.com/2bK0okClFA

— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) August 11, 2015

I truly do think he lacks any self-awareness. That or he’s a master troll and this is all one big social experiment. 

Book Review: An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Okay, I had no idea what to expect from this book when I found it except that I love Steve Martin and I thought maybe it would be good. I saw the movie for Shopgirl, which I really liked, so I thought I would give this book a try.

A few things. First, Lacey Yeager is one of the best female characters written by a man in a while. Hm. That may be unfair, but she was definitely a breath of fresh air compared to Franzen's vapid Patty from Freedom. I hated Patty so much that I still can't muster a review for that book. Anyway, Lacey is smart and conniving and witty and I think I've fallen under her spell as well.

Second, any book where I can tell the writer did his/her homework is a good one. This book goes into such incredible detail about the art community in New York that I felt like I was there. I don't know a whole lot about great art, but I did know a lot of the names dropped in this book (Picasso, Warhol, etc.) and was very interested in the ones I was unfamiliar with. I can't even begin to imagine how many years he had to research just to write this book. I am totally blown away by this, and perhaps he is just an art fan and didn't have to do much at all beyond putting artists' names with their famous pieces, but it was incredible either way.

Finally, I love when books are narrated like this one was. The narrator was only kind of a main character and we hear the entire story through his perspective, but with first person information from Lacey. There were some parts where I wondered "How the heck would he know that?" since Lacey is really the main character, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless.

Anyway, I don't want to say much more than this and risk giving anything away. I will say one final thing and that is that the ending of this book was perfect.

5/5

I was told to use a pen name...

Yeah, when I took creative writing courses, we'd have to submit for publication, and immediately after laying out the assignment Maureen said women should use their first initial or a male derivation of their names.

I love Jonathan Franzen. I loved the Corrections, but he isn't the best author ever. I don't think he should have been on Time Magazine, and I didn't pre-order the book. I pre-order books I need to read. When I read about the fuss about his book, all I could think was this is going to be the most overrated book. Then I started reading about this white men vs. the world thing, and still I thought, who cares? Women and minorities are always left out.

However, after NPR and the Huffington Post I got to thinking that their may be something to this. At least to the argument that Jennifer Weiner makes about men create literature and women create chick lit. I'm bad for it; I give a friend of mine hell for reading "chick lit," which I define as a step up from romance fiction, genre science fiction, and horror. These are books written in a series that goes on forever. They follow archetypes and are completely predictable. But all books written by women for women aren't chick lit.

This isn't anything new. The novel itself was considered a feminine literary device during it's inception. Many women wrote them, and wrote them for other women. An interesting fact about slave narratives is they were written to resemble novels to appeal to white women, who they wanted to join the abolitionist cause. Women were kept out of the cannon and largely still are.

There is nothing wrong with celebrating Franzen's work; the concern is that the New York Times, Time Magazine, and a variety of others only celebrate the work of white men. Want a great book by a African-American female author? Check out The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow.