Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen

Patty Berglund (nee Emerson)

Walter Berglund Patty's husband
Richard Katz Walter's friend, and at times Patty's lover, but that's complicated.

Joey Berglund
Janice Berglund ... son and daughter of Patty and Walter

From p.200 , on which Richard (a successful musician and songwriter currently broke due to his own behavior) is being "interviewed" by the son of a wealthy customer for whom he is building a rooftop deck in Manhattan:

Q. What do you think of the MP3 revolution?

A. Ah, revolution, wow. It's great to hear the word "revolution" again. It's great that a song now costs exactly the same as a pack of gum and lasts exactly the same amount of time before it loses its flavor and you have to spend another buck. That era which finally ended whenever, yesterday--you know, that era when we pretended rock was the scourge of conformity and consumerism, instead of its anointed handmaid--that era was really irritating to me. I think it's good for the honesty of rock and roll and good for the country in general that we can finally see Bob Dylan and Iggy Pop for what they really were: as manufacturers of wintergreen Chiclets.

Q. So you're saying that rock has lost its subversive edge?

A. I'm saying it never had any subversive edge. It was always wintergreen Chiclets, we just enjoyed pretending otherwise.

Q. What about when Dylan went electric?

A. If you're going to talk about ancient history, let's go back to the French Revolution. Remember when, I forget his name, but that rocker who wrote the "Marseillaise," Jean Jacques Whoever--remember when his song started getting all that airplay in 1792, and suddenly the peasantry rose up and overthrew the aristocracy? There was a song that changed the world. Attitude was what the peasants were missing. They already had everything else--humiliating servitude, grinding poverty, unpayable debts, horrific working conditions. But without a song, man, it added up to nothing. The sansculotte style was what really changed the world. 

I read this book slowly, from about the middle of January to yesterday (5 March 2014). It is, I think, a fairly decent characterization of our time. The characters are a little bit unbelievable, perhaps a little too cardboard-cutout for their own good, but nonetheless they all represent a bit of what makes up America in the early 21st century. The plot is well done, made up of the points of view of the main characters in a way that kept me interested -- because each of these people are quite intense, and they can begin to wear you out.

Should there be anyone here to read it, this book might be a good reference for future inhabitants of Earth.

American Bloomsbury, by Susan Cheever

An audio book.

This book is an account of the lives and interactions of some of the denizens of Concord, Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century. These are none other than Margaret Fuller, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and various members of their respective families.

I had not realized how close together all of these worthies had lived, excepting possibly Thoreau and Emerson. Furthermore, I had known little or nothing of Alcott, except that she was the author of Little Women, and Fuller was only a familiar name.

Cheever has written an interesting and useful account here, which highlights a time of intellectual brilliance in the young United States, in the time leading up to the Civil War. The story continues through that war, in which Alcott worked as a battlefield nurse. (Whitman is also mentioned in this account, of which I am reminded, for he also nursed the wou8nded in that grisly theatre.)

This might have been a little heavy for the driving-and-listening environment. When piloting the car becomes a little thrilling, one's attention tends to wander. Nevertheless, I'm not sure I would have had the motivation to finish this book from paper (a judgement on me and my dismal attention span, not on Cheever or her book), so I'm glad to have gleaned what I did by listening.

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

A novel. Copyright 2001 by Jonathan Franzen.

Among other things, this is the story of the Lambert Family, of St. Jude, a fictional place that may be intended to make us think of St. Paul, MN. Alfred and Enid are the parents of Gary, Chip, and Denise. This novel moves back and forth in time, seemingly without effort, and illuminates the corners of all their lives, from the time when Alfred and Enid were very young to when they are, in the end, rather old.

This is a thoughtful and well-written story of American culture and life, and a useful picture of the world and the USA at the beginning of the 21st century.

I look forward to reading more from Franzen.

Here's a review from the NY Times dated, ominously, 9 Sept. 2001.

Idiot America, by Charles Pierce

Doubleday 2009  ISBN# 978-0-7679-2614-0

"We've been attacked by the educated, intelligent segment of our culture."

The Three Great Premises 

1. Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.
2. Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.
3. Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

On Cranks

From p. 36

The barriers that once forced American cranks to adapt or withdraw--or even merely to defend--their ideas all have fallen. It is considered impolite to raise them again, almost un-American, since we are all entitled to our opinions. 

Conspiracy Theories 

From p. 80 - 83

[Daniel Patrick] Moynihan argued that the Warren Commission's capital mistake from the start was the failure to recognize that Americans were not predisposed to believe it.

...70 percent of the American people did not believe the conclusion of the Warren Commission...This percentage has not changed substantially since ... 1964...

...we have kept the Kennedy assassination as a conspiracy theory, rather than accepting it as an actual conspiracy. Once we believe in the latter, it becomes a deadening weight on the conscience. It loses its charm. Accepting it as a reality means we probably are obligated to do something about it, and that we have chosen, en masse, not to.

The revelation of an actual conspiracy--the Iran-Contra matter, say--has come to have a rather deadening effect on American politics and culture. It runs through stages. There is disbelief. Then the whole thing dies in banality. It's too hard to understand, and it's Just One More Damn Thing that proves not that something called "government" is controlled by a secret conspiracy, but that "government" itself is the conspiracy. This is commonplace and boring, and it leads to distrust and to apathy, and not, as it is supposed to do, to public outrage and reform. There is no "Us." There is only a "Them." There's no game if there's only the other team playing.

...the Iran-Contra affair had no ... effect. (Remarkably, several of its architects even returned ... in 2001, eager to reassert their fantastical visions.) ... It is little more than a footnote in history...  

...We entertain ourselves with skepticism or, at worst, cynicism. But we govern ourselves with apathy or, at worst, credulity. 

Some Reviews

• http://observer.com/2009/06/the-dunce-confederacy/

• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/06/11/741342/-The-Three-Great-Premises-of-Idiot-America

• http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Book-Review-Idiot-America-How-Stupidity-Became-887347.php   "Idiot America is very much biased from the left and I'm not impressed."