The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History Book

In which I tell Jonathan Franzen to stop trying to distract me with goddamned ducks, dammit:

(Why not call it essays? Or a memoir? Because Franzen is at pains to show you what a cool cat he is, that's why.) Franzen's a different animal here, is all I can say'or, perhaps more aptly: I come to strange realizations about the big grump I've always loved. I was drawn to The Discomfort Zone because he can be so incisive about his family [see his other essays in How to Be Alone and in Farther Away, which I read and enjoyed in last year's blog-coma] and, consequently, himself; that is, I saw The Discomfort Zone as a back door into The Corrections and partly into Freedom. This is Franzen, I told myself, unadorned'no excuse of fiction to cover it up. This is, perhaps, the curmudgeon explained, if obliquely. (Why do you read memoirs, Sasha?)

Reading The Discomfort Zone, however, I'm reminded of how much I have always hated the man's digressions. In The Corrections, it was Lithuanian shenanigans; in Freedom, it was the goddamned environment and the frakking birds everywhere. I understand now, however, that this is how Franzen's mind works: Franzen, I've found, shies away from an indulgent narrative about families'about his family, here in particular. Snidely, I think: His essays need to have reach'they shouldn't only be about the Franzens. And so: Family dynamics should naturally draw on Snoopy and its creator. An awkward adolescence'too enlightening, really: who knew Franzen was such a big dorkus?'dignified by an examination of the youth group he belonged to. Selling the house his mother had spent nearly a lifetime to build'a house full, no doubt, of his mother's disappoints'should lead to a dissection of real estate in America. And, goddammit, troubles with his wife should veer into bird-watching in them good ol' United States.

Perhaps he's living up to that irritating moniker, "a personal history"'that this wasn't indulgent and navel-gazing, that this wasn't a book of essays that focused merely on one's self. This was broad; this tackled Big Issues. But come on, Jon: Your family is the story, your patent uncoolness is the story, your heartaches and your disappointments are the story. Stop trying to distract me with ducks, dammit. I loved him best when he let go, when he so baldly talked about what made him tick. I loved it when he was earnest, if clumsy: I've always maintained that Franzen possesses such heart, all the better because it is so unexpected'and it's no different here. More of that, please.

A tiny voice in my head sneers that this is just about what interests me. I tell that tiny voice that it is mostly right: I wanted a more personal Franzen'I found that in How to Be Alone, and I found that in about one and a half essays in The Discomfort Zone. What these have in common, aside from the family as touchstone: Language and literature, the wielding and the imbibing of. I will argue, though, that those remain personal. That is: I found a more personal Franzen than what we normally see and read. In much the same way I can't seem to sever my private life from my reading life when I blab here, Franzen assures me that the books one devours and the life one tries so very hard to lead are intricately, if irrevocably, connected. So, you know: More of that, please.

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[ cross-posted ]