I should have clarified: I’m not
reluctant to read Jonathan Franzen’s non-fiction. On the whole I liked two
of his essay collections, How to Be Alone and Farther Away, where
one can find such pieces as “My Father’s Brain” and an unconventional
celebration of Alice Munro. Although I must mention a unique experience I had
with those books. At least a couple of pieces made me think of a specific
scene, at a dinner party. I’m having a conversation with another guest when he suddenly,
inexplicably starts raging. As his volume increases, I start nodding, backing
away slowly, hands raised in fearful placation. Otherwise I thought of his non-fiction as a safe bet: the reader will get finely
crafted sentences and paragraphs, some warm laughs, some silly laughs, and a thoughtful, impassioned take on his reading. Then I picked up The Discomfort Zone (2006), a
memoir in essays.
Franzen
thinks of himself as a novelist first and foremost and once directed attention
to the skimpiness of this book as proof. Memoir isn’t my favorite genre to
begin with. But one simple rule for it I’ve gleaned is to have led an eventful
life. Or to have an event or generative milieu or teeming period to focus on.
Or to have lived through horror. One might add: a mysterious or terrible
affliction, though I’d be less likely to pick those up. Or a notable, strange,
or traumatizing relationship. Years ago I read a review of a memoir by a man
who wrote about a quirk of his: thinking out loud to himself. I’d give that a
try. My own personal tastes, in the rare moments I’m in the mood for the genre:
memoirs by mathematicians, musicians, basketball players, certain writers. I
resist somewhat—a little less as of this writing, I suppose—in the abstract,
thinking that a good writer, drawing directly from his or her past, will find
something that’ll animate the book, no matter how bare the storage facility of
memory may initially appear. But reading The Discomfort Zone, it occurs
to me that ready access to whatever past one has coupled with style isn’t necessarily
a surefire formula. And telling someone else’s story in fiction is a skill
separate from the skill of telling a personal story rooted in fact, one Franzen
doesn’t really demonstrate here. It’s as though absolutely nothing of interest
ever happened to him, not to justify a book on its own merits, anyway. Roll up
the steel door: Sock. Coupon booklet. Rubik’s Cube. Melon rind. It doesn’t
matter so much in fiction because there’s no telling how a writer will transmute
the past, though it certainly doesn’t hurt to enlarge what one draws from by having
wacky and/or sexual adventures. By climbing a mountain and getting carried away
by a river. By following the trail of blood. By living more life. Without the
imaginative process, the reader gets the undistinguished backstory: Born in
Chicago, raised primarily in Missouri. A quiet middle-class life in the
suburbs. Mom, dad. Older bros pop in here and there. Grade school. High school. A church youth
group. College. Intensive German language and literature studies. He meets the
woman who would become his first wife. Later on they divorce. And he goes
birding. The book is indeed skimpy, making it about as long as any of his novels.
Franzen
deserves partial credit because he doesn’t spare himself and allows the reader
to see his unpleasant side throughout the book. And eventually it becomes clear
that it’s a conscious decision.
It was this other side of
Avery—the fact that he so visibly had an other side—that was helping me finally
understand all three dimensions of Kafka: that a man could be a sweet,
sympathetic, comically needy victim and a lascivious, self-aggrandizing,
grudge-bearing bore, and also, crucially, a third thing: a flickering
consciousness, a simultaneity of culpable urge and poignant self-reproach, a
person in process.
When
I mention this standard by which to judge a writer, I think of to what extent,
and in what tone, he or she will detail humiliations, weaknesses, exceptionally
shameful moments, significant character flaws that cause undeniable harm. Franzen
takes a different approach. It begins with the most shocking thing I’ve read in
his work: In the opening essay, “House for Sale,” he expresses his lack
of sympathy after Hurricane Katrina, wondering impatiently how much he should
care when there are so many other disasters in the world to care about. First
of all, the passage isn’t even integrated into the essay well, coming off as an
outburst that ultimately would be better excised altogether. Still, people can never
rid themselves of such thoughts completely. That’s why reason is so vital, as a
gatekeeper, pushing back the impulsive thought, the stupid thought, the
unspeakable thought. As I don’t believe society will ever suffer from an excess
of reason, I try to ensure that it’s a steadfast presence in my work. But other writers devote more space to those thoughts, particularly
if they suspect they're secretly common, to challenge them, presenting the inner conflict
for the reader. I waited for Franzen to do the same. Within the essay, he
doesn’t. Mostly though, in his awkward, ill-timed self-revelations, he
resembles the more innocent oversharer. His own characterization is imbalanced
against his favor and I wasn’t convinced he’s so dislikeable. He has friends,
longterm relationships with women, and what makes him, for instance, seem
annoying as a kid—immaturity, self-centeredness—is part of what it means to be
a kid. Yet the reader is forced to take him at his word.
These
are lengthy essays, six in just under 200 pages. Franzen is a writer who
specializes in constructing a story over hundreds of pages. The problem he has
with a shorter form is the least surprising part of the book: four are at once ungainly
and truncated. I originally read his tribute to Charles Schulz as a taut
heartfelt standalone piece. Expanded and juxtaposed with his own story in the
essay “Two Ponies,” he sacrifices it without getting a better piece out of the
deal. Or in “My Bird Problem,” he attempts to connect all of the following: the
last act of his marriage and his divorce, learning to love his mother at the
end of her life (though he stresses that he has his limits), troubles in a new
relationship, environmental politics, humiliations while out birding, his
embarrassment about being seen birding, climate change and birding, misanthropy
and its softening through birding, veering from one to the next. Halfway
through it, exasperated, I knew he’d fail, in keeping with most of the book,
but by then I was nearly finished anyway.
It's not a total bust. Jonathan
Franzen enters his mom’s house: “I had a Viking sense of entitlement to
whatever provisions I could plunder.” Jonathan Franzen at the beach, irritated
at someone taking pictures of birds: “She kept moving closer, absorbed in her
snapshots, and the flock amoebically distanced itself from her, some of the
gulls hopping a little in their haste, the group murmuring uneasily and finally
breaking into alarm cries as the woman bore down with her pocket digital
camera.” A paragraph:
Birds were what became of
dinosaurs. Those mountains of flesh whose petrified bones were on display at
the Museum of Natural History had done some brilliant retooling over the ages
and could now be found living in the form of orioles in the sycamores across
the street. As solutions to the problem of earthly existence, the dinosaurs had
been pretty great, but blue-headed vireos and yellow warblers and
white-throated sparrows—feather-light, hollow-boned, full of song—were even
greater. Birds were like the dinosaurs’ better selves. They had short lives and
long summers. We all should be so lucky as to leave behind such heirs.
He writes like that throughout. And
one essay joins the other two on my list: “Centrally Located,” about
responsible pranks and literature that succeeds in every way most of the others
don’t. Nevertheless I was glad to get to the last page and out into the open air. The Discomfort Zone is strictly for completists and superfanzens.
I’m
at a dinner party. Not usually my thing. Probably I felt obligated to go. I’m
telling myself to behave, to be agreeable. As much as I can be while still
being real. The
hostess is attending to food and other guests. She’s the one person I know. I
make a decision: instead of standing and looking around, I shall sit on the
couch in the next room and stroke my chin. …Now! I take a seat. I didn’t even
notice there was a man on the other end of the couch. He says hello and remarks
on the gathering. I respond likewise, masking my disappointment that I didn’t
have a chance to be alone for even a second. He begins telling me his life
story. I laugh: He’s really doing this? Fine. I wasn’t occupied and he seems nice
enough. Birth. Mom, dad. Elementary
school. Third grade. Then came fourth grade. The subject of tetherball leads to a personal disclosure there's no need to repeat. Other guests enter the room and join
the conversation. And they’re free to leave it. But this man is talking to me
and I see no polite way out. I look to the entryway: No announcement that food
is ready. Still. I concentrate on suppressing my gut’s roar of hunger, its
rumble of anxiety, and its gentleman’s whistle. Eighth grade. Then High School! Freshman year. 1st
period. Then 2nd period. Then 3rd period. I get up and
stretch. But I can’t just leave. 7th period. 8th period.
What would I be doing otherwise? Looking unapproachable somehow, no doubt. I
should thank him. Other guests seem at ease, knowing I can participate in
conversations too. Winter break, freshman year. Second semester starts. 1st
period. 2nd period. “Oh, enough!” I cry. “I’ll get back to his
fiction already!” Whistle.
