Dysfunctional? No definitely not. “I hate the word,” says Jonathan Franzen: “It's a family. It works fine. ”Nothing to see here. Please go on. The fact that others see him as the author of family novels has always amazed him, he adds. After all, the Greek tragedy is mostly about families. The simultaneous presence of several relatives does not mean much. For the author of the “corrections”, a real family novel is at most the “Buddenbrooks”: “It's about the relationships between family members.” Like Franzen in “Crossroads”, his new novel.
“I'm happy to have an audience,” he says in German to his listeners in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Six years ago he was a guest at the sold-out Schauspielhaus at the Frankfurt Book Fair to present “Freedom”.
Soon it will be book fair again, but there are still transatlantic travel restrictions.
Franzen is therefore connected to the Rolf Liebermann Studio of the NDR in Hamburg from California, from which the network of literary houses adopts image and sound and broadcasts it in many places.
Franz's audience is sitting this Saturday evening in Basel, Leipzig, Munich, Rostock, Zurich and elsewhere.
And listens to the self-irony of the author, who has been working on the second volume of the planned trilogy since the summer and is facing his own crossroads.
A lot to do
He wrote the synopsis for the following volumes in two days. It reads great: “Because there are only two pages.” When he skims through it, however, he notices: “I've already done that.” In “Freedom”, “Innocence” or the “Corrections”. In addition to being dissatisfied with repetition, there is conscientiousness towards what is invented. He was looking forward to saving time with three books on the same characters. After all, he knows who they are. But the second book cannot simply serve as a sequel: “It has to be something of its own as well.” And the characters need time to develop again. Like the author.
So much to do. How good that Franzen can save time elsewhere. This time he paid less attention to the background, he says. He learned from Elena Ferrante that a lot can be left out: “The zeitgeist didn't have to be depicted. He could be part of the consciousness of the characters. ”To learn from women means to learn to win in this novel, which not only adopts an abysmal motto from George Eliot's“ Middlemarch ”, but also some of their sensitive and knowledgeable telling of people around them Interested in religion and progress in England in 1830 or in America around 1970.
Something else may be due to Eliot.
Franzen says he reduced the irony: “It wasn't a conscious decision.” He probably just outgrew the satirical impulse a little.
Ultimately, he goes along with the attitude: "I know better than the figure." That is no longer possible for him: "I lose anger like a tire."