Last night, acclaimed author and easy target Jonathan Franzen read from his new novel, Purity, in front of a crowd at Town Hall that was three times larger than the one Rand Paul drew last month. Franzen seemed genuinely nervous to read in front of so many people, but after he took off his jacket and started to speak instead of just looking at the crowd and saying “Yeah, wow, I’m curiously nervous here,” he started to loosen up.
The section he read from Purity sounded gorgeous and triggered my brain’s what’s gonna happen next?? response. He told the story not of Pip, the novel’s protagonist, but of a German girl named Clelia. The action was set in East Germany sometime shortly after WWII. After getting into a fight with her evil, ill mother, Clelia eventually falls in love with a Leave It to Beaver-type American guy who saves her from a potential rape and ends up asking her to follow him back to America where they could see about getting married.
That short summary I just wrote is a big part of Franzen’s PR problem. It’s really hard to make him sound good without sending up approximately three red flags in the minds of readers who are sensitive to the gender dynamics involved whenever a white dude writes from the perspective of a young woman.
Did Franzen write from the perspective of a young girl who was in danger of being raped? Yes. Did he have her call her mother a “dirty whore,” and have her say things like, “I would have crawled on my knees to America to be with him?” Yes. But the details were well-observed, the language he used throughout was sonorous, and the characters’ actions in the scenes he read made sense given the situation.
My respect for Franzen ticked up one notch during the Q&A, when he proved himself to be—at least on this particular evening—a charmingly self-deprecating, quick-witted, smart, and deferential person. (Hard to believe, if you’ve read the headlines.)
One questioner stood up and asked a vague question about the “concepts” Franzen thought he was trying to discuss or think about in Purity. After saying that he thinks mostly about characters—not concepts—when he writes, Franzen spoke to the spirit of the question.
He referenced his recent interview with Terry Gross, wherein she said that she didn’t think a woman would ever ask a man to pee sitting down, as one apparently does in the book. Noting that moment, Franzen went on to say that people who think Purity is some “vicious parody of out-of-control feminism” say that only if they’re not “paying attention to the character or to the character’s relationship with the other [characters]” in the book.
Say what you will of that answer, but the fact that he was willing to see what the questioner was really asking and then address the person’s concerns outright—despite the fact that he totally didn’t have to—made me think that he welcomes conversations about gender and fiction, and that he isn’t just an insufferable bucket of male tears.
Other things I did not expect Franzen to say:
On Taylor Swift:
“I’m not a student of Taylor Swift. So I have no strong feelings. I like that she stood up for artists getting properly paid for their work. That’s the biggest problem I have with the internet, which I’m on for several hours a day. So, go, Taylor Swift!”
On the kinds of binoculars he uses when birdwatching:
“10 x 42 Swarovskies. I don’t find the 10 power shaky.”
On why his early books were so angry:
He was going through a divorce.
On mistakes:
“God bless mistakes, because a lot of people would be out of work if people didn’t make them.”
