Why read novels?
Jonathan Franzen addressed this question in his 1996 Harpers essay under the title Perchance To Dream, which he subsequently revised and re-titled Why Bother?
In this he wrote of how, in his view, “TV has killed the novel of social reportage” and in recent interviews he has reaffirmed this position by saying that TV does what the social novel used to do.
In the essay, he went further by dismissing the supposed advantages of the information age, criticizing the “banal ascendancy of television and the electronic fragmentation of public discourse” which leads to a “tyranny of the literal” and the superficial treatment of complex issues.
The dilemma he presents for socially conscious novelists like him is how to keep the faith and believe that what you are writing is worthwhile. In this, he drew consolation from the wise words of Don DeLillo who wrote to him saying: “Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us”.
Perhaps it’s not too glib to suggest that Franzen’s absorbing new novel – Freedom – is an affirmation of his own freedom to address some of society’s ‘big’ issues. In doing so he is not pretending that works of fiction like this can change the world but they can at least present readers with a deeply considered alternative viewpoint. Continue reading →
For the past three years I have signed up to the Goodreads challenge and set myself a target of reading 50 books a year.
