>>24933339
I find the ways in which Franzen realizes the techniques of his post modern heroes from within the constraints of realism to be quite brilliant, especially Freedom where those techniques are so subtle that we would not even recognize them without the context of his previous three novels showing how his use of them evolved. Freedom is one of my favorites.

truck had republican white man bumper sticker, very spooky watch out

Just interminable soap operatics steeped in vaguely neoliberal politics. No redeeming qualities

>>24933339
post some samples

>>24933339
>It's my first Franzen and I can feel he's not as brilliant as Wallace or Bolano, but it's just such a pleasant read to take a breather from Gravity's Rainbow with.
If you like this I would definitely recommend going back and reading his earlier works. I've read every book by him and in my opinion every book after Freedom is worse. The Corrections is his masterpiece. And then 27th City and Strong Motion are both somewhat amateurish but they have a stronger postmodern influence and involve pynchon-esque conspiracy plotlines which make them ultimately more interesting than Freedom in my opinion. Objectively worse novels but a decade later I remember more about them than I do Freedom. His non-fiction also isn't bad though he repeats a lot of the same stuff multiple times: family stuff; birdwatching. How to Be Alone is definitely the best one and I'd recommend reading it alongside The Corrections when you get the chance.

>>24933959
>The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat.

>>24933339
Every thrift store on the east coast has a copy of this

>>24933339
I liked it too, and I liked The Corrections more

>>24933743
>steeped in vaguely neoliberal politics.
If you actually read it you are a terminal plot fag. He takes no prisoners when it comes to politics; the characters, both left and right, are all direction brained retards who use their politics as proof that they are good and as blinders from their own failings and hypocrisy.
>>24933965
Alfred and the bench was insanely well done.

I'm so glad Franzen fell off the face of the planet. What a trumped-up mediocrity.

>>24933743
>vaguely neoliberal politics

be less vague about your accusations

I though Crossroads was pretty good, on the other hand

>>24933965
>the whole northern religion of things coming to an end

Seems pretty pretentious to me

>>24933959
Yeah, I will absolutely read the corrections, I just wanted to not start with an author's greatest. With Pynchon I started with V and then read GR and the growth was so nice to see. Also, I didn't want such a straining read, so to say, a magnum opus, I wanted something more relaxed and pleasant, that wouldn't demand so much attention from me while I study for exams.

>>24934102
>He takes no prisoners when it comes to politics
I wouldn't go that far because he's obviously a libtard as political ideology is concerned, he just shows a balanced cynicism towards existing political institutions; he's critical of leftist excess and SJWisms but he obviously views Republicans as the big bad villains of our real world. Its just that most of his characters live amongst a sort of moderately lib bourgeois milieu so thats what gets joked about in his fictional works.

That said there's a really funny moment in this interview he did with that kike Silverblatt after The Corrections was published. Franzen says that one of the central themes of The Corrections, and topic that's very close to his heart personally, is family values, and the willingness to sacrifice your own joy for the sake of your family and community. Silverblatt gets audibly taken aback by this and goes something like, "but...but isn't that a rather CONSETVATIVE outlook?" which Franzen himself responds to in a pretty bewildered manner, that someone would consider loving your family to be "conservative."

>>24935043
So what you are saying is that you never read it?

>>24934120
>I'm so glad Franzen fell off the face of the planet.
Did he?

>>24933743
>vaguely neoliberal politics.
Big part of the book is what is masculinity in a time when feminism has become a product of capitalism and a tool of politics, and he is not all that kind to feminism. Not even vaguely neoliberal or even left, but it is also not neoconservative or right. He put a fair amount of effort to make sure Freedom was apolitical, he learned his lesson on that with The Corrections, which also tried to be apolitical but leaves a fair amount of room for people to use as a flag to wave.

>>24933339
>I am going to open myself up more to contemporary works, as I need breaks from modernism and post-modernism
Many such cases. Modernists are great but their boomer imitators (Pynchon among many) tried so hard to be proper "artists" and "writers" in the modernist sense that they ended up being conservative by mistake, producing these massive doorsteppers that are worth your time only if you are a male student - i.e. someone who has a lot of time and is very lonely. For the rest most of their philosophy is superficial and shallow, definitely not worth 700+ pages of text. They are not Proust and they are not Joyce, and got it all wrong in trying to be them - incidentally, this seems to the parable of their generation: a sincere attempt at being countercultural in their youth which gets completely re-absorbed and nullified by the omnipresence of material wealth in their adult life, which they were all, no one excluded, unable to cope with in their books thematically speaking (hence the need to keep resorting to narratives with idiots, bummers, vagabonds and other romantic heroes of their youth as they write). In the attempt of being radical these guys have become unable to write a single page of proper, precise prose, and don't hold a candle to real classics like Flaubert, who actually knew how to write a page of text.
Franzen is at least attempting to describe the world around him in a meaningful way, and sounds way more "free" (no pun intended) than these guys by appealing to a seemingly conservative, non-experimental way of writing. Wallace was also very much in love with his modernists, which is why 70% of IJ reads like an overbloated script for an HBO tv series (a good one, but still tv), but he got progressively better and closer to reality - Oblivion being his best work and a proper classic of English literature. I appreciate Franzen's writing immensely.

>>24937264
Holy shit niggerfaggot, ever heard of the enter key?

>>24937264
That's a lot of words to say Franzen writes clearly and artlessly, which I won't dispute. Doesn't change the fact that he has nothing to say.

>>24937264
You’re retarded, man. You described one aspect of GR and Im fairly confident you didn’t Proust or comprehend Joyce

>>24933339
>book literally incorporates the "mistakes were made" meme
Good God, post-post modernism is utter dogshit

>>24938708
It wasn't a meme when the book was written, it was a fairly direct cultural reference to an occasionally used bit of evasive political language. The world did exist before you were born.

Stop shilling this trash Franzen, nobody reads it.