The Anti-Freedom, or Why I Love Owl

Part of the problem I had with Jonathan Franzen's 2010 novel, Freedom, was how he depicted his midwestern characters, the Berglund family.  Despite being one himself by birth, Franzen mocks them to the point that we're never able to take the Berglunds' travails seriously. It's not really Franzen's fault if he's been assimilated into liberal North American pretentiaratti culture: we, the cultured urbanites of the coasts are inherently better, only we understand the world, we are the beautiful, the cultured, the very epitome of civilisation. And those people in the middle, except for maybe in Chicago (quite frankly, we don't know, we don't do Chicago), well, they're simple, blinded by Jesus; they just don't get it.

It reminds me of a Corn Flakes ad campaign in the early 90s. In it a trucker, presented with a bowl of cereal, says he isn't interested. The cereal looks plain, boring, kind of like the Prairies. Then he tries a spoonful. He changes his tune; they're delicious, unadorned, straight-forward, just like the people on the Prairies. Surprise: they're Corn Flakes!

It was with this in mind that I picked up Chuck Klosterman's novel, Downtown Owl. I'm still not sure what possessed me to do so, especially after reading the dust jacket

Somewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn't there. Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls.

And then there's the dustjacket photo of Klosterman. He looks like your typical east coast bearded liberal. And he writes for New York-based magazines.  It must have been the fact that he's the author of a book called Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs that got me interested. 

Either way, I'm happy my adventurous side won out. Downtown Owl is a fantastic novel. It actually has very little to do with the dust jacket, which appears to be a case of overzealousness by Klosterman's publisher to appeal to the liberal elite pretentiaratti. 

Owl is most certainly there, somewhere in the North Dakota plain. It's not much, to be true, but it is something. The novel is set in 1983-84. Punk never happened in Owl (it barely happened in most major inland North American cities).  And cable? As the recent hullaballoo about MTV's 30th anniversary shows, cable was a pretty new thing in the early '80s.  The people of Owl do get pop culture. One character, the high school football coach, is obsessed with George Orwell and his novel 1984, for obvious reasons -- the titular year is about to dawn. Only one man, a semi-legendary outlaw by the name of Gordon Kahl, hates the government (though the men of Owl don't support him).  Only one man, the football coach, knocks up teenagers. Both are secondary characters.

The novel is a prescient, touching, and profound examination of life in a small town in North Dakota in the early 80s.  Rather than a town populated by simpletons, Klosterman's characters are realistic, profound and believable. Chuck Klosterman is no Jonathan Franzen. And Downtown Owl is no Freedom.

Comments

[Azor]

I'm a big Klosterman fan. He is bearded, and he does live in New York, but he's certainly not the typical East Coast elitist. He is from North Dakota (his first book was a nonfiction account of growing up in North Dakota and liking heavy metal music). I'm looking forward to his next novel: "The Visible Man" out next month.

[Aaron R]

I'm 117 pages in to Freedom. I also grew up about 4 miles from Jonathan Franzen's home in St. Louis County, though he is roughly 13 years older than I am. I've lived in San Francisco for 10 years. It's not New York. But it's certainly an epicenter of the "liberal North American pretentiaratti culture" you describe.

So far I simply don't perceive the mocking of the Berglunds. Maybe in the remaining 400+ pages I'll be overwhelmed by it. In the first 117 pages I've sensed ample scorn heaped on Patty's Westchester County parents, who are more concerned with their careers and political connections than their daughter's rape. I've seen a graduate-school age Walter Berglund's impeccable niceness and lack of assertiveness juxtaposed against Richard Katz, who hails from Yonkers. But whether that constitutes mockery or simply an accurate depiction of two different personality types, not to mention the statistical likelihood of how a young man from Hibbing, Minnesota vs. one from Yonkers is likely to behave, seems at least open to debate.

I spent 13 summers working in a town not far from Hibbing. And I'll tell you that Hibbing is overwhelmingly more likely to produce Walter Berglunds than Rishard Katzs. You can equate depictions of over-the-top midwestern concern for the impact of your actions on others with being a naive rube. You can see a lack of assertiveness as implying that someone is an idiot or lacks spine. Or you could see it as rendering the truth with some dramatic license for effect. At least that's what I see.

[John Matthew Barlow]

Thanks for reading. I appreciate the comments.

I thought the scorn that Franzen begins to heap on the Berglunds comes later in the story, I can't recall where the story is on p. 117, but as the kids grow up, Patty becomes a caricature and then Walter becomes almost pathetic, at least in my reading. I was profoundly disappointed by Freedom, I thought it started off brilliantly, I must say, and I The Corrections remains one my favourite novels, but it just started to flag as it got more and more bloated.

But the points about concern for your actions and a lack of assertiveness, I don't think either are signs of idiocy or rubishness, in fact, I think the world could use more of that, especially on the coasts.

Cheers.