A novel choice for personal historians & family history buffs

The new best selling novel by Jonathan Franzen spotlights the inner workings of a modern American family making its way through the perils and pressures of contemporary society. Its focus on families, and more particularly parenting, makes it an ideal reading choice for personal historians, personal history buffs and those seeking to understand and explain family dynamics.

Much like his first novel, "The Corrections", and much like the early novels of the recently passed John Updike, Franzen's "Freedom" holds a mirror to modern culture by peering through the magnifying glass at what - from the outside anyway - should pass for a typical nuclear family. What we find, of course, is that the family is riven by regret, conflict and jealousy which, though universal, results in behaviors that are peculiar and attach very much to their own time.

Like Tolstoy
It is, perhaps, as Tolstoy wrote: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" - the famous opening line from "Anna Karenina". Franzen shows his own knowledge of the Russian greats when one of his own tortured characters finds parallels to her own life in "War and Peace" - and emulates the doubtful choices of one of that novel's characters (I say no more to avoid spoiling the plot!).

The novel is being hailed as a modern masterpiece, although some critics wonder why a male writer is receiving so much acclaim in making the family the centerpiece of a great story when more than one female writer has done the same to much more muted reviews. This criticism gains some force from the fact that a fair chunk of "Freedom" is written from the point of view (and in the voice of) a female character: Feminist 'Franzenfreude' Over Raves For 'Freedom'.

For us personal historians and family history buffs, Franzen may seem an odd choice to be the voice of the embattled modern family. Childless himself, and with his own marriage at the wrecking yard, he says his parents taught him all he needed to know:

"My parents were in their own way so unsatisfied, so angry about so many things, that it was impossible for a sensitive kid not to internalize their view of the world," he says. "It resulted in my being this strangely middle-aged 14- and 15-year-old."

The Oprah Incident
Of course, Jonathan Franzen became really famous (he was already known as a great writer) ten years ago when he expressed reservations about his best-selling novel "The Corrections" being featured (and recommended) by Oprah Winfrey. He was troubled by the "schmaltzy" company that the novel would keep on that particular book club shelf.

Oprah promptly canceled her TV interview with Franzen and Franzen was forever branded a literary snob. (That controversy didn't seem to do either of them any harm - possibly in the way that all modern scandals seem to prove the truth of the old Nietzschean aphorism: "What does not kill me makes me stronger".)

"Freedom" is set in the post 9/11 years under President Bush. The book is not overtly political, although the events of the following decade do feature and politics is a source of discussion by the characters and sometimes their plot motivations. Franzen says of one of the main characters, Walter, the book's moral center perhaps:

"Walter is a portrait in the displacement of unspeakable rage about what's going on in his family through speakable rage about what's going on in his country," Franzen says, in a recent interview at NPR.

When Families Fall Apart
For me, the main subject of the book - if it has a main subject - might be family relationships and parenting and what it looks like when, at least for a time, it all falls apart. Long suppressed desires and impulses and unresolved character issues can fester then bubble to the surface in bitter pustules that poison ordinary relations.

And "Freedom" is just like life. It's long. It's messy. It's complicated. There's so much regret mixed in with the stuff to be proud of. And I won't spoil the ending by giving away how (if at all) things resolve themselves. That would be beside the point.

Because as personal historians and family history buffs, "Freedom" tells us that life is a process, not an outcome. That decisions within families are motivated by multiple causes, not all of them laudatory. That good people can do bad things and that no one thing a person does in life can truly define that life.

And although "Freedom" is darker than many of us would like to imagine our own lives and the lives being lived over our side fences, it tells the truth of our collective, human clumsiness. But at the end of the day, pustules notwithstanding, we are all we have.

Jane Lehmann-Shafron co-founded Your Story Here Family History Video, a documentary production company that specializes in video biography and family history documentary. Based in Orange County CA, her award-winning films have been featured in festivals in the United States and Canada. She can be contacted on 949 742-2755 or through her website.