What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
There's this novel, in case you hadn't heard; actually, it's a N O V E L, by a N O V E L I S T named Jonathan Franzen who also wrote a definitive-seeming literary tome on the '90s called The Corrections. This one is about the decade just past. It's called FREEDOM. Some people L O V E this book, and others are annoyed by it and kind of actually hate it.
I can't bring myself to read it for a number of reasons. My expert literary friends, for instance, are sharply divided. One, a celebrity novelist, won't hear another word about the Great Franzen Debate, convinced that FREEDOM is the best contemporary realist novel written in at least thirty years. Another, a brilliant English professor, considers the book -- and, it's fair to say, Franzen as a writer -- deeply flawed and fundamentally dissatisfying.
But the biggest reason I can't read FREEDOM is that I just know that the book is full of stuff about the 2000s that, ultimately, isn't worth reading or relearning or revisiting in any way -- at least for me, but probably, if my gut is right, for us. I've set out to write novels before, and I've even completed a few, but the most recent effort remains basically hamstrung by this serious problem about the world that's emerged from the '00s: is it worth getting inside, capturing, laying bare, bottling into a subtle and complex perfume, in the way any serious novel that's also worth reading manages to do?
That might sound like a pretty clever way for a would-be novelist to apologize to himself for writer's block, but I'm cool with admitting it because this feeling about the '00s is present elsewhere, outside the world of fiction. I've talked about it and others have danced around it and I think in general there's a lot of secret dismay about it that isn't being mentioned out in the open. A group of friends reaffirmed for a number of months, a year or so ago, that they'd start a blog symposium looking back at the '00s. It never happened -- blogs being blogs, is one answer, but another answer is -- we're better off silently learning the lessons and moving on, productively, diligently..."before it's too late," as a writer prepared to ditch his high-handed pretensions make a few bucks churning out genre fiction might add.
On the other hand...I could just ask, here, now. Now that this decade is behind us -- numerically speaking, if still in no other sense -- what's worth telling ourselves about what life in the '00s was, and what it meant?
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Jul '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
To me, the '00's are about one thing: the resurgence of a militant 7th-Century death cult and the West's flaccid inability to to recognize that threat for what it is.
Jun '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
James, if I understand what you are asking, it may be that it is still too soon for any sort of definitive cultural perspective on the decade of the 00's, at least, if you mean in the sense we look back almost nostalgically on the 80's or maybe 90's. (Aside: Alas the Walkman is no more). The 00's were in many ways a serious, "grown-up" decade, that changed how many look at the world. People can try to ignore these lessons, and many will succeed. But the reticence may be because people don't want to deal with a period that really hasn't ended yet (calendar aside). There is something to be said about "silently learning the lessons and moving on, productively." If that is actually happening, I see that as a positive. Whether than can translate into a fiction work that sells books, I don't know. Someday, I'm sure somebody will write the equivalent of The Grapes of Wrath for the common era. How many are willing to read it may be another story though.
May '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
Boy, I admit that I haven't read Franzen because I can't stand the way he comes across in interviews and the identities of most of those I read who praise him to the skies.
I also admit a bias against old single men who cohabitate for years instead of getting married. But there I am old-fashioned, I know.
Jul '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
Duane Oyen: Boy, I admit that I haven't read Franzen because I can't stand the way he comes across in interviews and the identities of most of those I read who praise him to the skies.
I also admit a bias against old single men who cohabitate for years instead of getting married. But there I am old-fashioned, I know. · Oct 25 at 2:36pm
Well, we agree on something, Duane. How often have I counselled single women in cohabitating relationships not to let a feckless male to waste the best years of their lives? Manhattan is awash in wonderful 40-something women who failed to realize just how fast time flies.
Jun '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
I have a couple of comments.
First, having tried to read The Corrections, I haven't the slightest interest in reading Freedom. After 150 pages of The Corrections I found that I disliked every character, so I closed it and went on to another book. I wouldn't want to be stranded on a desert island with a bunch of people I don't like. I feel the same way about books--why voluntarily waste brain cells on disgusting people.
Second, on the bigger issue, I dislike "contemporary" books filled with all sorts of contemporary references, which is why I tend to gravitate toward historical fiction. The perspective that time gives an author allows the writer to focus on the characters and the real issues. Alan Furst's WWII spy novels or Willa Cather's novels are good examples. You feel like you're there, but not because the writer felt compelled to describe the hub caps on the cars or how to hitch a wagon. Death Comes for the Archibishop is a great example. Enough detail, but not too much, and a sensitive portrayal of the characters.
And I also agree with Duane. Franzen seems like a real putz.
Edited on Oct 25, 2010 at 2:58pmAug '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
Kenneth you speak the truth. It feels like a mistake to luxuriate in the fictions when the truths are so impending. There are a bunch of books in my library that sit there, Dom Delillo and others of such supposed import, uncracked. They are lonesome among the histories,both contemporary and otherwise.
But then we are sitting in this cyberlounge which isn't particularly crowded, kvetching about "what's important". Maybe bloggers just don't read much fiction, being more involved in the interaction of the real, present situation.
Edited on Oct 25, 2010 at 3:08pmJun '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
James, is it even possible to chase the zeitgeist and live it at the same time?
Aug '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
In the words of Tom Townsend in "Metropolitan", "I don't read novels, I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelist's ideas as well as the critic's thinking." Sounds like a good approach for such a widely-reviewed book.
May '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
The first phrase that came to my mind r.e. the Oughts is, "Cognitive Dissonance." That is, they were a time in which all sorts of bills were coming due, and everyone was busy pretending that something altogether different was going on. This culminated in the orgy of wishful thinking and denial that was the Two-Year Democratic Reich, which we might also call The Extinguishing Behavior of the Vanities.
This past decade has been nothing but one public Kabuki play after another. Those of us with a clue could do naught but shake our heads and wonder when it would all end, and in what kind of disaster. This new decade brings the answer, in the form of the Tea Party, an apparent awakening to the rot everywhere eating away at the foundations, and a sense of urgency among at least some portion of the population. Here in California the citizens are still captivated by the Kabuki, as they prepare to return to the governorship the author of our imminent public pension implosion. Elsewhere people seem to have tired of it, but I don't know whether there are enough Americans ready to face reality to bring about change.
Oct '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
A strange mixture of the unfulfilled and the unexpected...Y2K, 9/11 and the aftermath, the manufactured financial bubble that "nobody could see coming", the wizard of O, and soon Nov 2nd. All I can say is "curiouser and curiouser".
Aug '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
That's why Denis Dutton is so important to the efficient zeitgeistmeister. ALDaily rules !
Aug '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
The oughts for me are the decade into which my children were born. They are the years during which I began to seriously consider the world into which they had been born.... which I seriously began to think about the world into which they had been born....
May '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
The '00s mark the rise of Fox News and the slow turn of the tide against political correctness. The decade wasn't all bad.
Batman got a film reboot that took comic heroes to a dramatic level not witnessed since the original Superman. The Dark Knight is an incredible film.
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, The Guild and other shows have proven the profitability of made-for-internet "TV" shows. Every entertainment industry has been forced to adjust to internet and emerging technologies. Television shows are aired online and regularly involve community sites where fans interact with makers. Musicians can distribute their own songs to millions with little cost. Affordable HD-TVs are one reason movie theater attendance is down. The video game industry has greatly expanded its market (mid-thirties is now the median age of gamers), moves ever closer to photo-realism, and increasingly blends with the film industry.
We went from cellphones to smartphones. Think about that for a minute. It was not a small step.
Edited on Oct 25, 2010 at 5:21pmRe: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
Aaron Miller: We went from cellphones to smartphones. Think about that for a minute. It was not a small step. · Oct 25 at 5:18pm
Edited on Oct 25 at 05:21 pm
Such a giant leap inward that now space seems...beside the point? Anti-social? I read someone remark recently that the Chilean miners were our time's astronauts -- the little group of humans far away from the world that made the world gasp together and watch. The miners, too, were deep inward.
Aug '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
I wouldn't say bloggers are involved. I'd say bloggers are blogging. On this site, only Dave and Claire transmit routinely from afar. Claire posts stuff about Turkey. I, who am not there, post counterstuff. I don't see any third party butting in with "When I was in Afyon, I told the mayor, I said boy, I said, your town's name means opium. What gives? And another thing: can't anybody in the Middle East shave?"
But on the Oughts: there's nothing to write about. Same as the 20th century: the great political force was and is self-hatred. In the 20th century it was famines and gulags; now it's environmentalism and sharia; take yer pick. To the Oughts I award the edge, but a slim slim one, in Federal tax breaks for solar panels on bike helmets.
Aug '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
Not interested in the Franzen novel at all. I couldn't finish his previous book. Hated every character in it. When I found myself hoping a character might die every time I turned a page, I figured it was time to put the book away.
Jul '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
Yikes, that book sounds awful. I really have no interest in reading much fiction, let alone most of the rubbish that are modern novels. I prefer older fiction by people who actually lived exciting lives. 1984 and Animal Farm had teeth! They were not only page-turning fiction, but some of the best political satire of the century. George Orwell fought in the trenches against the Fascists and was nearly liquidated by the NKVD for his troubles. He took a sniper's bullet through the neck that nearly cost him his life. Mind you, that was all before his best writing. Same deal with Arthur Koestler who was nearly executed as a prisoner under Franco. Darkness at Noon is fantastic! But these modern, self-absorbed novels are just dull, Maybe it's just me, but a good rule of thumb for becoming a great fiction writer is either to be a repentant former Communist or someone who came close to death on many occasions.
May '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
The issue is the self-absorption, of course. Reading a good novel is a terrific way to spend some leisure hours, and everyone's taste is different. I do prefer more real stories about real people, and the self-absorbed tend not to create real people that one cares to read about.
Go grab some Andrew Klavan between non-fiction tomes. And the word is out that Mr. Lileks is soon to be e-publishing the long unavailable Falling Up the Stairs, which laugh-out-loud tome (spiritual offspring of, say, a romance between Max Wilk and PJ O'Rourke) introduced the world to the Alimentary Information League. Good for what ails you.
Aug '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
James,
I am inclined to agree with your celebrity novelist friend regarding the merits of Freedom. I have only read the small slice of Freedom published by the New Yorker, but I distinctly remember truly enjoying that piece. Franzen may well be a putz, but the putz can write. I finished that piece, closed the magazine, and said to myself, that dude is bad-ass.
I agree with Kenneth regarding the meaning of the 'OOs: we entered the decade divided and we were deeply wounded by the murderous attacks of 9/11.
We were deeply wounded, our vunerablility was exposed. 9/11 (and later, Hurricane Katrina) shocked out of our self-induced stupor.
I think much of the '00s has been spent trying to find our way back to that dream-land.
Now obviously this is a futile effort that as a nation we must abandon, but until we do we cannot close the books on the '00s. Maybe then someone will write well regarding the '00s.
I love good writing, I cannot live each day like it is St. Crispin's Day, and reading well helps me escape the daily grind.
May '10
Re: What's Worth Knowing About Life in the '00s?
Well, this is the final straw. Debate over, I don't care if he is the new PG Wodehouse:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/jonathan-franzen-goes-to-washington-meets-president-barack-obama_b14985