DEAR JONATHAN FRANZEN,
Okay, so when that whole Oprah book club thing blew up a year ago, I was totally on your side at first. "Who wants Oprah's cream and tangerine corporate log on their book? Go Jonathan Franzen!" is what I thought at first. Then I heard what most major media outlets were handing out as the whole story: that you had, in a New Yorker essay a few years ago, claimed that you were going to write the ultimate novel that could meld the family narrative (which is almost always pitched as women's lit, and subsequently, less important) with the intellectual, post-modern manly book that apparently the world was expecting you to write. That "The Corrections" was to be this very book, and when a major bastion of mainstream femininity wanted to include you in her pantheon of lady lit books you backpedaled. That your actions in doing so pretty much told all Oprah viewers that your book wasn't for them, or perhaps for any woman at all. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that that was totally bunk.
Despite this backlash you've been experiencing, I picked up a copy of your collection of essays, "How to Be Alone." I can't lie; I like it an awful lot. I'm starting to change my mind about you, but very slowly. For example, I have a lot of sympathy for somebody like you: ridiculously smart, overwraught, and self-involved. For somebody like me. Your introduction gives me the sense that you had little control over the image you were given in the media coverage of your debacle, and I can certainly praise you for admitting that something you had published before was overly indulgent, difficult to read, and perhaps a bit masturbatory. That's great. I don't think most people can admit to being wrong the way you did, even if you only did it in another book of yours rather than in interviews. Also, given the way you write about privacy in the opening essay leads me to believe that some of the "distant pageantry" of celebrity freaked you out when it ceased to be distant.
Still, though, I'm still pretty damn offended by the way you treated the women of the world, and I'm rather inclined to hold you to this regardless of how helplessly daft and brainy and pale you seem. I guess you worry me more than every other white, male, young, and brilliant novelist with a new illuminating, soon-to-be-cannoninzed manuscript under his arm because I was trapped by a similar sense of pride when I first heard about your situation. That is to say, if I had also just published a book that Oprah wanted for her book club, my first impulse would have been to write her a rather snide letter of rejection. Believe me, I'm not proud of the implications of such a reaction, and I'm fighting myself for it constantly now. Oh, to be overly educated and lonely, with nothing to keep us warm at night but our pride and our six figure advances. Please, no.
That said, I'm interested to finish your book of essays. I think maybe you should get some hobbies. Something nautical might put you at ease, although collecting stamps or gemstones could also be worthwhile. I'm sorry if I sound like a young wisenheimer, but I really do think you deserve a taste of your own wackiness.
Sarah E.S.
Okay, so when that whole Oprah book club thing blew up a year ago, I was totally on your side at first. "Who wants Oprah's cream and tangerine corporate log on their book? Go Jonathan Franzen!" is what I thought at first. Then I heard what most major media outlets were handing out as the whole story: that you had, in a New Yorker essay a few years ago, claimed that you were going to write the ultimate novel that could meld the family narrative (which is almost always pitched as women's lit, and subsequently, less important) with the intellectual, post-modern manly book that apparently the world was expecting you to write. That "The Corrections" was to be this very book, and when a major bastion of mainstream femininity wanted to include you in her pantheon of lady lit books you backpedaled. That your actions in doing so pretty much told all Oprah viewers that your book wasn't for them, or perhaps for any woman at all. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that that was totally bunk.
Despite this backlash you've been experiencing, I picked up a copy of your collection of essays, "How to Be Alone." I can't lie; I like it an awful lot. I'm starting to change my mind about you, but very slowly. For example, I have a lot of sympathy for somebody like you: ridiculously smart, overwraught, and self-involved. For somebody like me. Your introduction gives me the sense that you had little control over the image you were given in the media coverage of your debacle, and I can certainly praise you for admitting that something you had published before was overly indulgent, difficult to read, and perhaps a bit masturbatory. That's great. I don't think most people can admit to being wrong the way you did, even if you only did it in another book of yours rather than in interviews. Also, given the way you write about privacy in the opening essay leads me to believe that some of the "distant pageantry" of celebrity freaked you out when it ceased to be distant.
Still, though, I'm still pretty damn offended by the way you treated the women of the world, and I'm rather inclined to hold you to this regardless of how helplessly daft and brainy and pale you seem. I guess you worry me more than every other white, male, young, and brilliant novelist with a new illuminating, soon-to-be-cannoninzed manuscript under his arm because I was trapped by a similar sense of pride when I first heard about your situation. That is to say, if I had also just published a book that Oprah wanted for her book club, my first impulse would have been to write her a rather snide letter of rejection. Believe me, I'm not proud of the implications of such a reaction, and I'm fighting myself for it constantly now. Oh, to be overly educated and lonely, with nothing to keep us warm at night but our pride and our six figure advances. Please, no.
That said, I'm interested to finish your book of essays. I think maybe you should get some hobbies. Something nautical might put you at ease, although collecting stamps or gemstones could also be worthwhile. I'm sorry if I sound like a young wisenheimer, but I really do think you deserve a taste of your own wackiness.
Sarah E.S.
<< Home