The Bright Altar

In my first year of high school my father bought a new car and decided that the old one would be handed over to me. At the time it didn’t seem like a groundbreaking event, but the significance of having a car all to myself began to grow and within a few weeks that old car had become the crucible of my teenage life, its four tires elevated to wings that lifted me to a whole new realm of freedom. Though he was not writing of cars and teenagers, Charles Dickens described it well: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light…it was the spring of hope.’

Returning to a later century, poet Stephen Dunn says it another way. Dunn is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, including the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winning Different Hours. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, and the American Poetry Review. He has for many years been the Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. One poem from his 1989 book, Between Angels is about flying free, that part of youth that, car or not everyone can relate to. The poet has zeroed in on an experience most common to teenagers and their cars, but in a broader sense his poetry is a reflection of the social, cultural, and psychological territory of the American middle class.

THE SACRED

After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he’d chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

Freedom

Jonathan Franzen just might be the hottest name in publishing this month. His long-awaited new novel flooded bookstore shelves at the end of last month, with people lined up to grab a copy of Mr Franzen’s first book since his 2001 National Book Award winner, The Corrections. Nine years is a long wait, but I will waste no time in saying that it was worth the wait. The new book is Freedom, and should surprise no one if it too racks up a list of prizes.

But why the nine years between books? Some of the reasons come out in the Time magazine cover story by Lev Grossman, which appeared last August 23. Franzen described the writing process as even more difficult than the seven years he spent writing The Corrections. In his words, “It was a bitch. It really was.” There is always some backlash to success, and Franzen’s post-National Book Award days were no exception. His situation was also complicated by a flap he had with Oprah Winfrey after she picked his book for her book club. He took a beating in the press for what commentators described as disrespectful remarks about Ms Winfrey. In the end, she uninvited him from her show, though left her all-important ‘Oprah’s Book Club’ seal on The Corrections.

Progress on Freedom was further held up by problems of theme and voice. The writer began with the idea of a novel about the environment written in the first person. That didn’t work for him, so he dropped it. It may then have been the death of his best friend, novelist David Foster Wallace that lifted Franzen over the hump and gave him the energy and inspiration he needed to finish Freedom.

This is a huge novel in the sense of its characters and its themes. Again, as he did in The Corrections, Franzen builds his story around a family. But the singular is misleading here, because the incredible depth of the story involves the people of four families. Basically, Freedom is the story of Patty and Walter Berglund, their long marriage, their emotional struggles and the myth of ‘freedom’ that we Americans hold so dear, and by which our values have become so ignominiously distorted. It is a novel too, of politics and environment, and how one has mercilessly plundered the other.

To employ that word again, huge is an apt term for Franzen’s canvas. It is almost misleading to say that the book is about Patty and Walter Berglund, because Franzen’s lens is so wide. He gives us not only the minute facets and multi-layers of their lives, but their entire culture, political conditions and social history as well. Grossman in his Time interview used a particularly good phrase to describe the Franzen perspective: ‘…a devotee of the wide-shot, the all-embracing, way-we-live-now novel.’

Franzen has the rare skill of making his characters and pages gripping without resorting to slam dunk plot maneuvers. He writes in a way that puts the reader on tenterhooks in merely following a description of someone boiling water or setting out the cups and saucers. The writer shapes his words and story fully aware of the need to hold onto his reader, that the distractions for a reader today are pounding on every door and window. Television, cell phones, email and Internet are the novelist’s competition in today’s world, and Franzen seems well equipped to take them on. The characters in his books are densely, almost microscopically conceived, in a way that we never for a moment question their authenticity. There are times when their presence on the page is as real as the person on the other side of the bed. It is these characters that bind us to a story sprawling, diverse and crossing decades as effortlessly as state lines.

Beneath all the supporting themes in Freedom, more driving than sub-themes of environment, celebrity, gentrification, politics and personal freedom, is the love story of the two central characters. In the words of Patty Berglund, theirs is “a terrible confusion of the heart,”

This is a great novel which will probably win for Franzen another armload of awards—Oprah has already put her sticker on the book, passing out copies to her studio audience—but it must be said that portions of the book slip into soap box sermonizing by the author. A number of Walter’s passions are those of Franzen himself, and we see the writer behind the Walter persona. Anyone who has read one or two Franzen interviews could most likely tell you that the writer, like Walter Berglund, is vehemently against such things as free roaming bird-killing cats, consumerism, iPods and texting. But these sometime appearances of the writer speaking through his characters is not anything that seriously impairs the achievement of an impressively crafted novel of astonishing dimension.

Buy it or borrow it; read it and then try to convince someone you were bored. Little likelihood such will be the case.

Winter Park

A Saturday in town…

It was too late to drive back to the beach on Friday night, so I stayed in town and spent today with my sister. Maitland and Winter Park are interesting places to spend time, so finding things to do was no problem, and it provided the chance to knockabout with my sister, always a pleasure.

There was a farmer’s market in Winter Park, and a visit several years ago guaranteed there would be a lot to see. Even without the farmer’s market, Winter Park is a beautiful little ‘town’ to stroll through, window shop and maybe have a bite of lunch or a cool drink. No mistaking the fact that it is a posh area geared toward people who don’t mind spending a little money, but you don’t have to spend anything to enjoy an hour or two of walking around.

The farmer’s market is a dazzling array of fruit, vegetables, plants, flowers and herbs. There are places to have smoothies, coffee or tea, and a fairly wide selection of things like breads, bagels and other such, plus cheeses, honey, jams and jellies, and even a counter lined with exotic kinds of quiche. There was one vendor featuring homemade relishes and pickled vegetables that I couldn’t get past without sampling a bunch of different relishes. They were all knock out good and I ended up buying three jars—pickled red peppers, pickled corn relish and cabbage salad—all made with fresh ingredients, all pure, all chemical-free.

Later, at Barnes & Noble my sister bought the delightful book by Clyde Edgerton, Walking Across Egypt, and I got a copy of the just released Jonathan Frazen novel, Freedom.

Turning beachward in mid-afternoon, I filled up the gas tank, paying 21¢ a gallon LESS than what the same gas costs at the beach.

Back at the beach, I discovered it crawling-jumping-hopping with weekend visitors. And how I long for Tuesday, the return to a quiet beach empty of people.