A tour de force, Freedom should secure Franzen's reputation as one of the finest novelists of his generation. Like The Corrections, this black comedy combines social criticism and political satire. Through Walter Berglund, a lawyer and publicist for a conservation trust, Franzen laments and lambastes the animus that conservatives unleash at critics of the Iraq war; gay marriage; taxes and gas prices that are among the lowest in industrialized democracies; and Mexicans, "who cut their grass and wash their dishes."
If his liberal views are unexceptional, his fatigue at the "ugly rage" on the left as well as right seems spot-on. And his account of mountaintop-removal coal mining; "green employment"; privately funded efforts to save the cerulean warbler; the movement to limit population growth; and corrupt Bush-era military procurement policies is likely to make you laugh with tears in your eyes.
Franzen's beautifully written deconstruction of love, marriage, family, and the fragility of communication and human connection in contemporary America is probing and, at times, profound. Freedom, he reminds us, can generate an intoxicating, innocent, or not so innocent sense of entitlement. As it does in Joey Berglund, a high school student who defies his parents and moves in with his girlfriend's family, next door.
Freedom, of course, can also generate conflict with a desire to address the needs of those you love. As well as anxiety, anger, disappointment, and self-pity.
Patty, a basketball star in college, who is attracted to rock-and-roller Richard Katz, Walter's best friend, believes for more than a moment that she's wasted her life as a housewife and mother.
Walter sometimes sees himself as a man without a controlling narrative, a "reactive pinball," impelled first in one direction and then another by "each new thing he encountered."
