Among the favorite writers of readers today, or so I’d like to think—along with Asian authors writing in English—is Jonathan Franzen. He has been called “a great American novelist” by Time, and that tiff with Oprah only added to his popularity or notoriety.
Franzen is a generation younger than John Irving but we can detect certain basic similarities and possible influences: a clinical look at sex, understanding of human frailty, a deft way with narrating complicated relationships and with writing about families functional or dys-, and an unflinching look at contemporary American society.
After two minor novels, Franzen hit the big time with “The Corrections,” published in 2001, all about a repressed, middle-aged wife who decides to finally stand up to her troubled husband. The critics were impressed. Franzen followed this up with “Freedom” (too much freedom among Americans); and “Purity” (which took a swipe at communist East Germany).
And now comes “Crossroads ” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2021, 593 pages).
It is 1971, a bitter winter’s day in Chicago. Manual typewriters are still being used. There is no internet yet, no social media. The Vietnam War is still raging but things are going against the Americans, who seem to be in retreat. Names dropped include (the assassinated) Rev. Martin King, Dylan Thomas, and Peter, Paul and Mary; and some rock stars whose names I am not familiar with, although this is my era.
The focus is on Russ Hildebrandt, associate pastor of First Reformed Church, his wife Marion, and their four children: Clem, Becky, Perry and Judson, the youngest, a sweet child and the only one in the family without any hang-ups.
There are the other members of the tight-knit church community with whom the Hildebrandts come into contact, in friendship, love or in conflict. And then there’s the Navajo community, befriended by the liberal pastor Hildebrandt; unbeknownst to him, there is also tension in the Native American camp over divisive environmental issues.
Riveting stories
Flashbacks illuminate the background stories, often riveting, of each member of the Hildebrandt family.
Russ and Marion have been married for 25 years now, Marion being a devoted wife and good mother. She grows fat through the years, however, and Russ loses interest in her.
He is drawn to Frances Cotrell, a flirtatious divorcee who is open to having a new lover, never mind if he is a married pastor.
We learn that Marion had a rough early life, her father died of suicide, and she was forced into a loveless marriage. When she meets Bradley Grant, a captivating (married) car salesman who writes her love sonnets, she goes ape over him, disturbs his family, suffers a nervous breakdown and ends up in a sanatorium.
Marion marries Russ on the rebound and becomes, as we have seen, a faithful wife and model mother. “I kept my mind shut for 25 years,” she tells her psychiatrist. But when she learns about her husband’s relationship with Mrs. Cotrell, she vents her fury upon him.
There is hatred between Russ and Rick Ambrose, a younger, more hip pastor who clicks with the members of Crossroads, the youth fellowship of the church from which the title of the novel is derived. The young idolize Rick but consider Russ old, passé and a real square.
Affairs, drugs and music
Eldest son Clem has a torrid affair with Sharon, a schoolmate at the University of Indiana, but breaks her heart. He is guilt-stricken, disturbed by the close (platonic) ties with sister Becky, and angry at his father for treating his mother “like garbage.”
Clem rebels and decides to enlist in the Vietnam War, to the shock of his father, who considers the war “immoral.”
Sister Becky sets her cap for Tanner Evans, a charismatic lead guitarist of a rock band within the church community. This sets her on a collision course with the bitchy singer Laura Dabronsky, Tanner’s lover. But it turns out he loves Becky more.
Teenaged Perry is the genius of the family, superintelligent but a pothead in school selling drugs to schoolmates. Confronted for his wild ways by his sister Becky, in a truth–telling session within Crossroads, he resolves to do better. But his demons get the better of him and, betrayed by his fellow pushers, Perry runs amok and commits arson.
Franzen shifts the consciousness of each family member from one chapter to another, and he has a knack for creating suspense at the end of each chapter. With “Crossroads” he now has four masterpieces or near-masterpieces. Not a bad score. Faulkner and Hemingway achieved lasting fame with just about the same number of major novels. —contributed INQ
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