A Reader Writes

posted by Emily Gordon

“But today, more to the point of my writing, what is a “fuckable shame cycle”? And how exactly is Franzen in this what-ever-it-is? Read the previous info on [Emdashes] about Franzen, and the link takes me to a laudatory review of a non-fiction essay of his.”

Hello, reader! You mean shame spiral, right? Oh, you know, that Warner Brothers squiggle people descend into when their self-disgust becomes manifest, like the lie-clouds over the heads of fibbing children in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. In fact, I did spend a minute considering my emphasis, in yesterday’s quickie preview of today’s forthcoming review of the evening, on Franzen’s sexy melancholy over his fierce engagement with the American landscape, his laudably stretchy metaphor of marriage/global warming, and his admission that he does, kinda, think about whether his book will rock the core of society even as he’s writing it.

But I waited on that stuff, because for me last night, Franzen’s frank, extreme likability was a revelation. My sister had long been advocating his early novels, but I, like many of you, began with The Corrections. I really disliked it. Then the Oprah business, which made me angry and combative, and I couldn’t agree with friends who were taking his side. But then, How to Be Alone. These essays were good, they were important, and I got a lot of pleasure from reading them; moreover, I was teaching essay-writing to irony-suffocated, critical-perspective-starved undergraduates. I assigned them some of the Franzen essays and they responded by waking up and writing better essays themselves. Amazing!

So my irk-meter moved from red to neutral, I stopped being mad (though I’ll always be pro-Oprah’s Book Club and any similar enterprises), and there I was in the front row of an auditorium watching him fumbling with the mike and the stand, apologizing for himself and his essay, knowing his schtick is based in truth and that it works and that he’s mostly loved for being smart and sound even more than for being rather adorably broken-winged, and so, I get the Franzen thing now. He read excellently; he’s an appreciative listener; he respects talent and self-transcending endeavor; he’s wrong about Oprah; I’d do him. Sorry if that’s not literary-intellectual enough, but sometimes I think the Pauline has gone out of the responses to artwork we’re allowed. When it comes to writing and reading and (maybe especially) watching someone read, you can’t get away from physical pleasure, in some form or other. But more about all the words later, not to mention the many powers of Zadie Smith; I’m late for Updike!

24 September 2005 | uncategorized |