The telephone was not so commonly used as it is today...I found it too slow for my liking, with its abrupt transformations, this admirable magic that needs only a few seconds to bring before us, unseen but present, the person to whom we wish to speak...suddenly transported hundreds of miles (he and all the surroundings in which he remains immersed) to within reach of our hearing, at a particular moment dictated by our whim. And we are like the character in the fairy tale at whose wish an enchantress conjures up, in a supernatural light, his grandmother or his betrothed as they turn the pages of a book, shed tears, gather flowers, very close to the spectator and yet very far away, in the place where they really are. (The Guermantes Way)
I've seen it everywhere, its florescent cover bobbing all over the subway system like bait on a hook, rocketing to the top of the bestseller lists, even for sale at my neighborhood Duane Reade. I'm talking about Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. During the short time it took to read it, I was zoned out on an adrenaline rush that made me feel keenly alive--over caffeinated, really--and focused outwards as if on autopilot. It was closer to the experience of watching a movie than reading Proust. Its simple, uncluttered prose meant that nothing distracted me from the thrill of surging forward, pedal to the floor--so far from the experience of savoring Proust's dizzying verbosity.
And there's nothing wrong with enjoying a Larsson novel. I remember a former writing teacher quoting Kurt Vonnegut as saying, "All writers are in the entertainment business." But why can't I find Proust at my local Duane Reade, sandwiched between the deodorant and the plastic containers of caramel popcorn?
Proust wrote about a time in which the telephone seemed fantastical. Larsson's protagonist, Lisbeth Salander--an expert computer hacker and shit-kicking Goth gamine--experiences life with a technological immediacy that would be absolutely foreign to Proust. In fact, I think that if Proust had picked up a copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it would be a full-on assault on his senses.
Not that the accelerated pleasures of reading a thriller only date from the invention of the internet. Certainly there was tabloid journalism and many other "low brow" sensationalist entertainments a century ago.
But can Proust compete today with an opponent who speaks the language of the 21st century?
There are certain authors who know us better than we know ourselves. Technology may have changed, the average person has the attention span of a gnat on crack, but Proust relates to the stories we tell ourselves about life and love, our innermost secrets, in a way that Larsson, with his appealing tattooed heroine, doesn't come close to.
Today, a friend (an extremely well-read friend, by the way) compared reading Proust to drinking molasses. I think this verison of Proust as stuffed in mothballs is dangerous. My life is so much richer with Proust in it. (And I probably only retain 10 percent of it my first time through!) He may be a difficult pleasure, you wonder why he carries on about one topic or another, but then there is a dazzling moment when everything is laid bare--the stunning beauty of life when one accepts it as it is, and then transcends it, into a dreamlike state. It's a different kind of pleasure than reading Larsson, but no less contemporary and immediate.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Franzen and Moore
I attended a reading at the 92nd Street Y last night. Jonathan Franzen (Freedom) and Lorrie Moore (A Gate at the Stairs) took the stage.
Moore's editor introduced her in ravishing terms as the literary "it girl." "Only a fool would take the stage after that kind of introduction," Moore opened. "I am the warm-up act for the lovely and brilliant Jonathan Franzen." She performed a short ditty on this topic (that I imagine she had scribbled on a damp cocktail napkin on her flight from Wisconson), ending with a few rounds of "We Shall Overcome." Like the voice of her novels and short stories, Moore was both nutty and sophistocated in her keen love of the absurd. Then she read aloud dreamily, giving a refreshing, ironic lilt to every line she read.
In his introduction, the visibly nervous Jonathan Galassi (an editor I admire for his translations of Eugenio Montale's poems) stressed the theme of marriage throughout Franzen's work. He remarked that Franzen had started his career wanting to change the world, and has ended up trying to capture it, represent it.
Franzen bounced on the stage with his satchel like a tardy schoolboy. Murmuring that he should have marked his place earlier, he finally opened to a fresh scene at the middle of his novel. He read this excerpt while punching the air with obvious relish. For the record, there wasn't anything smug about him.
It was in hearing them read aloud that I could see the sheer beauty of their words, suspended in the air like poetry. It made me want to go back and reread their novels more slowly (three pages a day) instead of the binge-like way I had plowed through them initially. In fact, I wish I could do all my reading this way, hovering over each phrase like a shuddering butterfly.
When answering questions from the audience, Franzen would stutter a bit at first as he organized his thoughts. Both seemed flummoxed by the inanity of the questions. At the announcement of each question, they both rolled their eyes and gave a hollow chuckle.
Q: How do you know how to end your books? Moore was eloquent on this topic. The end of a short story arcs back towards the beginning like a radiant light, she said, while the end of a novel looks forward to a future continuation of its events.
Q: Is it a challenge to write about contemporary society? Both books take place around 9/11. Writing about contemporary events was not a challenge, they both concluded, but a necessity. "It would be harder to write about the 18th century," Moore said. What's more, it's a challenge to write, period.
Q: Why are Midwesterners so funny? Apparently, all of the late night talk show hosts are from the Midwest.
Then the reading was over and they both disappeared from the stage to thunderous applause, presumably to marinate briefly in these celebratory juices before returning to their lairs as ordinary scribes, back to page one.
Moore's editor introduced her in ravishing terms as the literary "it girl." "Only a fool would take the stage after that kind of introduction," Moore opened. "I am the warm-up act for the lovely and brilliant Jonathan Franzen." She performed a short ditty on this topic (that I imagine she had scribbled on a damp cocktail napkin on her flight from Wisconson), ending with a few rounds of "We Shall Overcome." Like the voice of her novels and short stories, Moore was both nutty and sophistocated in her keen love of the absurd. Then she read aloud dreamily, giving a refreshing, ironic lilt to every line she read.
In his introduction, the visibly nervous Jonathan Galassi (an editor I admire for his translations of Eugenio Montale's poems) stressed the theme of marriage throughout Franzen's work. He remarked that Franzen had started his career wanting to change the world, and has ended up trying to capture it, represent it.
Franzen bounced on the stage with his satchel like a tardy schoolboy. Murmuring that he should have marked his place earlier, he finally opened to a fresh scene at the middle of his novel. He read this excerpt while punching the air with obvious relish. For the record, there wasn't anything smug about him.
It was in hearing them read aloud that I could see the sheer beauty of their words, suspended in the air like poetry. It made me want to go back and reread their novels more slowly (three pages a day) instead of the binge-like way I had plowed through them initially. In fact, I wish I could do all my reading this way, hovering over each phrase like a shuddering butterfly.
When answering questions from the audience, Franzen would stutter a bit at first as he organized his thoughts. Both seemed flummoxed by the inanity of the questions. At the announcement of each question, they both rolled their eyes and gave a hollow chuckle.
Q: How do you know how to end your books? Moore was eloquent on this topic. The end of a short story arcs back towards the beginning like a radiant light, she said, while the end of a novel looks forward to a future continuation of its events.
Q: Is it a challenge to write about contemporary society? Both books take place around 9/11. Writing about contemporary events was not a challenge, they both concluded, but a necessity. "It would be harder to write about the 18th century," Moore said. What's more, it's a challenge to write, period.
Q: Why are Midwesterners so funny? Apparently, all of the late night talk show hosts are from the Midwest.
Then the reading was over and they both disappeared from the stage to thunderous applause, presumably to marinate briefly in these celebratory juices before returning to their lairs as ordinary scribes, back to page one.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
New York, I Love You (Or, Hello to All That)
And since the district to which we had moved appeared to be as quiet as the boulevard we had previously looked out upon was noisy, the sound of a man singing as he passed (as feeble perhaps as an orchestral motif, yet quite clear even from a distance) brought tears to the eyes of the exiled Francoise. (from The Guermantes Way)
Proust's third volume, The Guermantes Way, begins with a move. Marcel's grandmother needs a cleaner, quieter arrondissement for the sake of her health. This is pure torture to their old servant, Francoise, who is loyal to their former abode where they had been "'so well thought of by everybody.'" In exchange, she is now in a place where "the concierge, who had not yet made our acquaintance, had not shown her the tokens of respect necessary to the nourishment of her good spirits."
Neighborhoods in New York are in a constant state of flux, as if a painter were applying layer after layer of paint to the map, obliterating what came before.
I grew up in that section of Lower Manhattan called TriBeCa (short for "Triangle Below Canal Street"). At that time, the neighborhood was a ghost town full of empty lofts. The only restaurant was the Delphi, where we ate moussaka and backlava. As there was no supermarket, my mother took me on errands to Morgan's, a butcher shop with sawdust on the floor, and Bell Bates, a crowded corner store full of exotic spices.
Today, my mother is my charge in the Saturday morning procession of parents and strollers at the farmer's market outside the park I remember as a vacant dirt lot. "Mama, stick with me, kid!" I say. We pick up loaves of bread dusted with flour, seven varieties of apples, bulbous avocado squash. No shortage of playmates here, as in the late seventies. In fact there must be something in the water--every woman in the neighborhood is a mother or on her way to becoming one. There are so many people here now that the neighborhood houses a Whole Foods and a Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and scores of restaurants at every turn.
In Joan Didion's 1967 essay "Goodbye to All That," she concludes that "All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not young anymore." She is sick of the incessant parade of "new faces" at parties in a city only for the very poor and the very rich and the very young. For her, New York is an experiment one soon tires of. But what about the quiet pleasures?
Quiet pleasures: the room of Degas pastels at the Met, any production of a Eugene O'Neill play, long walks along the bridal path in Central Park, low-key classes at Integral Yoga, lining up at the Film Forum, avocado rolls at Zutto.
I love the scene with Wallace Shawn at the end of My Dinner with Andre in which he treats himself to a taxi ride home and every building he passes is connected to a memory from his childhood. The city by night has become more beautiful than it was before he sat down to dinner, its lights blurred by nostalgia.
Proust's third volume, The Guermantes Way, begins with a move. Marcel's grandmother needs a cleaner, quieter arrondissement for the sake of her health. This is pure torture to their old servant, Francoise, who is loyal to their former abode where they had been "'so well thought of by everybody.'" In exchange, she is now in a place where "the concierge, who had not yet made our acquaintance, had not shown her the tokens of respect necessary to the nourishment of her good spirits."
Neighborhoods in New York are in a constant state of flux, as if a painter were applying layer after layer of paint to the map, obliterating what came before.
I grew up in that section of Lower Manhattan called TriBeCa (short for "Triangle Below Canal Street"). At that time, the neighborhood was a ghost town full of empty lofts. The only restaurant was the Delphi, where we ate moussaka and backlava. As there was no supermarket, my mother took me on errands to Morgan's, a butcher shop with sawdust on the floor, and Bell Bates, a crowded corner store full of exotic spices.
Today, my mother is my charge in the Saturday morning procession of parents and strollers at the farmer's market outside the park I remember as a vacant dirt lot. "Mama, stick with me, kid!" I say. We pick up loaves of bread dusted with flour, seven varieties of apples, bulbous avocado squash. No shortage of playmates here, as in the late seventies. In fact there must be something in the water--every woman in the neighborhood is a mother or on her way to becoming one. There are so many people here now that the neighborhood houses a Whole Foods and a Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and scores of restaurants at every turn.
In Joan Didion's 1967 essay "Goodbye to All That," she concludes that "All I mean is that I was very young in New York, and that at some point the golden rhythm was broken, and I am not young anymore." She is sick of the incessant parade of "new faces" at parties in a city only for the very poor and the very rich and the very young. For her, New York is an experiment one soon tires of. But what about the quiet pleasures?
Quiet pleasures: the room of Degas pastels at the Met, any production of a Eugene O'Neill play, long walks along the bridal path in Central Park, low-key classes at Integral Yoga, lining up at the Film Forum, avocado rolls at Zutto.
I love the scene with Wallace Shawn at the end of My Dinner with Andre in which he treats himself to a taxi ride home and every building he passes is connected to a memory from his childhood. The city by night has become more beautiful than it was before he sat down to dinner, its lights blurred by nostalgia.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
On Friendship (with an Apology)
"But it really is time to join the others, and I've mentioned only one of the two things that I meant to ask you, the least important one. The other is more important to me, but I'm afriad you will say no. Would you mind if we were to call each other tu?"
"Mind? I'd be delighted. 'Joy! Tears of joy! Undreamed-of happiness!'"
"Oh, thank you...thank you...After you! It's such a pleasure to me that you needn't bother about Mme de Guermantes if you'd prefer--calling each other tu is enough." (from The Guermantes Way)
Here, the fictional Marcel is making a formal declaration that his friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup has reached a more intimate stage. They'd been close buddies for months. Marcel (initially motivated to drop in on his friend so that he could somehow break into the honeycombed world of Saint-Loup's aunt, the Duchesse de Guermantes) has found the perfect friend. Saint-Loup caters to the sickly Marcel's every need with remarkable sincerity and understanding. Marcel, in turn, seems divided between the love he has for the Duchesse and the intense affection he has for Saint-Loup.
I sometimes wish that we had a formal mode of address in English with this little stepping stone of the informal "you." How you come about this decision to eliminate the distance between yourself and another person and how you choose to communicate this without getting the cold shoulder has something in common with a marriage proposal. It's an elaborate social ritual that puts friendship on the same level as romantic love. And why not? Why shouldn't friendships be cultivated with the same delicacy as one's love interests?
Mon dieu! I have an apology to make. I confused the Princesse de Guermantes with the Duchesse de Guermantes in my last blog entry. The description of the woman in her loge at the theater was that of the Princesse de Guermantes, not to be confused with the Duchesse who is Marcel's ideal love interest. She's the one he saw as a young boy in the cathedral at Combray. And the Duchesse is also the one who is deliciously jolie laide as you can see in the following description:
...I caught sight of the profile, beneath a navy-blue toque, of a beaklike nose against a red cheek, barred across by a piercing eye like some Egyptian deity...Mme de Guermantes was dressed in fur to the tip of her toque...Amid this natural plumage, her tiny head curved out its beak, and the prominent eyes were piercing and blue.
"Mind? I'd be delighted. 'Joy! Tears of joy! Undreamed-of happiness!'"
"Oh, thank you...thank you...After you! It's such a pleasure to me that you needn't bother about Mme de Guermantes if you'd prefer--calling each other tu is enough." (from The Guermantes Way)
Here, the fictional Marcel is making a formal declaration that his friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup has reached a more intimate stage. They'd been close buddies for months. Marcel (initially motivated to drop in on his friend so that he could somehow break into the honeycombed world of Saint-Loup's aunt, the Duchesse de Guermantes) has found the perfect friend. Saint-Loup caters to the sickly Marcel's every need with remarkable sincerity and understanding. Marcel, in turn, seems divided between the love he has for the Duchesse and the intense affection he has for Saint-Loup.
I sometimes wish that we had a formal mode of address in English with this little stepping stone of the informal "you." How you come about this decision to eliminate the distance between yourself and another person and how you choose to communicate this without getting the cold shoulder has something in common with a marriage proposal. It's an elaborate social ritual that puts friendship on the same level as romantic love. And why not? Why shouldn't friendships be cultivated with the same delicacy as one's love interests?
Mon dieu! I have an apology to make. I confused the Princesse de Guermantes with the Duchesse de Guermantes in my last blog entry. The description of the woman in her loge at the theater was that of the Princesse de Guermantes, not to be confused with the Duchesse who is Marcel's ideal love interest. She's the one he saw as a young boy in the cathedral at Combray. And the Duchesse is also the one who is deliciously jolie laide as you can see in the following description:
...I caught sight of the profile, beneath a navy-blue toque, of a beaklike nose against a red cheek, barred across by a piercing eye like some Egyptian deity...Mme de Guermantes was dressed in fur to the tip of her toque...Amid this natural plumage, her tiny head curved out its beak, and the prominent eyes were piercing and blue.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
On French Women
Like a great goddess who presides from afar over the sport of lesser deities, the Princesse had deliberately remained somewhat to the back of her box, on a side-facing sofa, red as a coral rock...The beauty that set her far above the other mythical daughters of the semidarkness was not altogether materially and inclusively inscribed in the nape of her neck, in her shoulders, in her arms, or in her waist. But the exquisite, unfinished line of this last was the exact starting point, the inevitable origin of invisible lines into which the eye could not help extending them, marvelous lines, engendered around the woman like the specter of an ideal figure projected against the darkness. (from The Guermantes Way)
It's no accident that Proust is often quoted for saying, "Let's leave the obviously pretty women to men with no imagination." The Princesse de Guermantes, described above, would make a good example of jolie laide ("unconventionally good-looking woman: a woman whose facial features are not pretty in conventional terms, but nevertheless have a distinctive harmony or charm.")
We first meet the mysterious Princesse de Guermantes in Combray, when the young Marcel spies her in the town's Gothic cathedral, as the light spilling through the stained glass windows illuminates "the little pimple flaring up at the corner of her nose." Courtly love is very much alive and well two volumes later in The Guermantes Way, as the protagonist, now a man in his early twenties, continues to worship her to the point of stalking her by visiting her favorite Parisian haunts every day.
I thought of the topic of French women when I saw an article in the New York Times on October 11th ("Where Having It All Doesn't Mean Having Equality"), in which the editor-in-chief of French Elle says: "We have the right to do what men do--as long as we also take care of the children, cook a delicious dinner and look immaculate. We have to be superwoman."
Debra Ollivier, author of the scholarly tome (okay, guilty pleasure) What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind, adds her own interpretation when she writes, "Readers, let us bite into the Big Camembert with this: In France men and women actually like one another. A lot. There is no American-style war of the sexes going on. French men and women actually want to be together. They enjoy their mutual company. They spar. They debate. They flirt. They seek out one another's company in a multiplicity of social settings." (Unlike American women who are sex-starved and prickly, I assume.)
What is it about French women, besides their scarves and their thinness (attributed on alternate days to cigarettes, delighting in small portions of foie gras, and peer pressure), that makes them so unique?
I think Jeanne Moreau summed it up when she said, "One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you." This is a tall order when you grow up in a "haveaniceday" culture in which it is not only important to be liked, but well liked. French women (at least in Eric Rohmer films) share a blend of self-possession, self-knowledge, and poise. These women are as intelligent and acutely emotional as they are individual. The American woman in popular culture is childlike, doughy and half-formed in comparison. Superwoman or not, the French woman shoots out at sharp angles, like the Princesse de Guermantes and her "marvelous lines."
It's no accident that Proust is often quoted for saying, "Let's leave the obviously pretty women to men with no imagination." The Princesse de Guermantes, described above, would make a good example of jolie laide ("unconventionally good-looking woman: a woman whose facial features are not pretty in conventional terms, but nevertheless have a distinctive harmony or charm.")
We first meet the mysterious Princesse de Guermantes in Combray, when the young Marcel spies her in the town's Gothic cathedral, as the light spilling through the stained glass windows illuminates "the little pimple flaring up at the corner of her nose." Courtly love is very much alive and well two volumes later in The Guermantes Way, as the protagonist, now a man in his early twenties, continues to worship her to the point of stalking her by visiting her favorite Parisian haunts every day.
I thought of the topic of French women when I saw an article in the New York Times on October 11th ("Where Having It All Doesn't Mean Having Equality"), in which the editor-in-chief of French Elle says: "We have the right to do what men do--as long as we also take care of the children, cook a delicious dinner and look immaculate. We have to be superwoman."
Debra Ollivier, author of the scholarly tome (okay, guilty pleasure) What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind, adds her own interpretation when she writes, "Readers, let us bite into the Big Camembert with this: In France men and women actually like one another. A lot. There is no American-style war of the sexes going on. French men and women actually want to be together. They enjoy their mutual company. They spar. They debate. They flirt. They seek out one another's company in a multiplicity of social settings." (Unlike American women who are sex-starved and prickly, I assume.)
What is it about French women, besides their scarves and their thinness (attributed on alternate days to cigarettes, delighting in small portions of foie gras, and peer pressure), that makes them so unique?
I think Jeanne Moreau summed it up when she said, "One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you." This is a tall order when you grow up in a "haveaniceday" culture in which it is not only important to be liked, but well liked. French women (at least in Eric Rohmer films) share a blend of self-possession, self-knowledge, and poise. These women are as intelligent and acutely emotional as they are individual. The American woman in popular culture is childlike, doughy and half-formed in comparison. Superwoman or not, the French woman shoots out at sharp angles, like the Princesse de Guermantes and her "marvelous lines."
Thursday, September 30, 2010
On Flow
The metaphor of "flow" is one that many have used to describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand out as the best in their lives. Athletes refer to it as "being in the zone," religious mystics as being in "ecstasy," artists and musicians as aesthetic rapture. Athletes, mystics and artists do very different things when they reach flow, yet their descriptions of the experience are remarkably similar.--Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Here, Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "chick-SENT-me-high") has written a self-help book that is truly helpful. He shows how people are often in flow when playing at games and sports, which have clear goals and immediate feedback, and much less so when watching television, which, obviously enough, requires much less ability and isn't intrinsically rewarding. The aim is to maximize the amount of flow you get out of every day.
Clearly, Proust was in flow when he wrote In Search of Lost Time. He needed quiet and solitude in order to concentrate, so he worked night after night in a cork-lined room. In a letter to a friend, he describes his writing regimen: "Never have I lived like this, eating once every forty-eight hours, never before three in the morning, etc., etc." (Notice the telltale mark of "flow" in a lack of awareness of bodily needs.)
In turn, in reading Proust, I am in a state of flow. The last one hundred pages of In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower passed as if a dream of a dream. A cloud of Lolita-like nymphs of summer frolicked on the grassy knolls of the fictional seaside resort, Balbec. In my concentration, I lost track of time and self...
Csikszentmihalyi cites "love of fate" as necessary for a good life. He quotes Nietzsche, who wrote: "My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity...Not merely bear what is necessary...but love it."
Proust's character Marcel might writhe in pain over a troublesome love affair or express disappointment at some long-anticipated event or encounter, yet he sees beauty in everything.
In the last lines of the second volume, the summer at Balbec doesn't simply end, but becomes a relic in itself. Marcel recalls his maid, Francoise, unpinning the blinds in his windows after he has taken a nap:
"the summer's day that she uncovered seemed as dead and immemorial as a mummy, magnificent and millennial, carefully divested by our old servant of all its wrappings and laid bare, embalmed in its vestments of gold."
As Allen Ginsberg would say: holy, holy, holy...
Here, Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "chick-SENT-me-high") has written a self-help book that is truly helpful. He shows how people are often in flow when playing at games and sports, which have clear goals and immediate feedback, and much less so when watching television, which, obviously enough, requires much less ability and isn't intrinsically rewarding. The aim is to maximize the amount of flow you get out of every day.
Clearly, Proust was in flow when he wrote In Search of Lost Time. He needed quiet and solitude in order to concentrate, so he worked night after night in a cork-lined room. In a letter to a friend, he describes his writing regimen: "Never have I lived like this, eating once every forty-eight hours, never before three in the morning, etc., etc." (Notice the telltale mark of "flow" in a lack of awareness of bodily needs.)
In turn, in reading Proust, I am in a state of flow. The last one hundred pages of In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower passed as if a dream of a dream. A cloud of Lolita-like nymphs of summer frolicked on the grassy knolls of the fictional seaside resort, Balbec. In my concentration, I lost track of time and self...
Csikszentmihalyi cites "love of fate" as necessary for a good life. He quotes Nietzsche, who wrote: "My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity...Not merely bear what is necessary...but love it."
Proust's character Marcel might writhe in pain over a troublesome love affair or express disappointment at some long-anticipated event or encounter, yet he sees beauty in everything.
In the last lines of the second volume, the summer at Balbec doesn't simply end, but becomes a relic in itself. Marcel recalls his maid, Francoise, unpinning the blinds in his windows after he has taken a nap:
"the summer's day that she uncovered seemed as dead and immemorial as a mummy, magnificent and millennial, carefully divested by our old servant of all its wrappings and laid bare, embalmed in its vestments of gold."
As Allen Ginsberg would say: holy, holy, holy...
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Franzenfreude
"...a well-read man hearing of the latest 'great book,' can give a jaded yawn, assuming the work to be a sort of composite derived from all the fine works he has ever read. But the fact is that a great book is not just the sum of existing masterpieces; it is particular and unforeseeable, being made out of something which, because it lies somewhere beyond that existing sum, cannot be deduced simply from acquaintance with it, however close. No sooner has the well-read man discovered the new work than he forgets his earlier indifference and takes an interest in the reality it sets before him." (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
This is a great example of how we make books our own. When we finally read a book thought of as a masterpiece--such as Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary--it sheds that generic quality and becomes part of our private universe. It's like getting to know someone well you have only seen from afar or going from a vague sketch to sharp focus. From then on, the book belongs to us, to the most private place within us.
Speaking of masterpieces, Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom is already hailed as the novel of the decade. The Observer calls it "the novel of the century" and Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times declares it "a masterpiece of American fiction." Even Michiko Kakutani, whom Franzen once called "the stupidest person in New York," has conceded that it is "an indelible portrait of our times."
On the cover of Time (next to the words "Great American Novelist" printed in bold), Franzen stares off into the distance with a certain unease, while the windswept hair, English professor glasses and face peppered with stubble cry out "boyish charm."
I've had two Franzen sightings since he published The Corrections nine years ago. Once in that fall of 2001 on a subway platform at 96th Street waiting for the 1 train, where he stood in a raincoat and carried a briefcase, cloaked in anonymity. The second time was at a Citibank on the Upper East Side. I can report that he is surprisingly tall and wore faded black jeans.
I suspect his discomfort in public is to a certain extent misinterpreted as self-satisfaction or conceit. If you Google "Jonathan Franzen smug," you get 7, 250 results. "Jonathan Franzen is a great writer," Newsweek declares. "Should it matter if he's not a great guy?"
Bestselling author Jennifer Weiner defines "Franzenfreude" as "taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen." (Even though it was quickly pointed out that "freude" means joy, not displeasure.) The Herald Scotland rallies against those women authors who feel unfairly overlooked: "They may be justified in ranting against the cliche of the white male darling, but they are in danger of being seen as that even worse creature, the shrew."
This entry has the unfortunate second-hand quality of being about book reviews instead of books. I'm looking forward to the pleasure of reading Freedom. I remember the evening in 2001 when I went to three different bookstores where The Corrections was sold out. I finally ordered a copy from my favorite bookstore, Three Lives, and read it compulsively for most of a day and a half.
I also have a sinking feeling. I end with one final quote, this one from Virginia Woolf on Proust: "Proust so titillates my own desire for expression that I can hardly set out the sentence. Oh if I could write like that! I cry...One has to put the book down and gasp."
This is a great example of how we make books our own. When we finally read a book thought of as a masterpiece--such as Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary--it sheds that generic quality and becomes part of our private universe. It's like getting to know someone well you have only seen from afar or going from a vague sketch to sharp focus. From then on, the book belongs to us, to the most private place within us.
Speaking of masterpieces, Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom is already hailed as the novel of the decade. The Observer calls it "the novel of the century" and Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times declares it "a masterpiece of American fiction." Even Michiko Kakutani, whom Franzen once called "the stupidest person in New York," has conceded that it is "an indelible portrait of our times."
On the cover of Time (next to the words "Great American Novelist" printed in bold), Franzen stares off into the distance with a certain unease, while the windswept hair, English professor glasses and face peppered with stubble cry out "boyish charm."
I've had two Franzen sightings since he published The Corrections nine years ago. Once in that fall of 2001 on a subway platform at 96th Street waiting for the 1 train, where he stood in a raincoat and carried a briefcase, cloaked in anonymity. The second time was at a Citibank on the Upper East Side. I can report that he is surprisingly tall and wore faded black jeans.
I suspect his discomfort in public is to a certain extent misinterpreted as self-satisfaction or conceit. If you Google "Jonathan Franzen smug," you get 7, 250 results. "Jonathan Franzen is a great writer," Newsweek declares. "Should it matter if he's not a great guy?"
Bestselling author Jennifer Weiner defines "Franzenfreude" as "taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen." (Even though it was quickly pointed out that "freude" means joy, not displeasure.) The Herald Scotland rallies against those women authors who feel unfairly overlooked: "They may be justified in ranting against the cliche of the white male darling, but they are in danger of being seen as that even worse creature, the shrew."
This entry has the unfortunate second-hand quality of being about book reviews instead of books. I'm looking forward to the pleasure of reading Freedom. I remember the evening in 2001 when I went to three different bookstores where The Corrections was sold out. I finally ordered a copy from my favorite bookstore, Three Lives, and read it compulsively for most of a day and a half.
I also have a sinking feeling. I end with one final quote, this one from Virginia Woolf on Proust: "Proust so titillates my own desire for expression that I can hardly set out the sentence. Oh if I could write like that! I cry...One has to put the book down and gasp."
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