Purity

Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Purity, is fresh in my mind. Because his breakout novel was great and his followup was good, I will read anything he publishes.

Spoiler: Purity aka Pip is a recent college graduate laden with $130,000 in student loans and self doubt. She is very close with her troubled mother, who has never revealed the identity of Purity's dad. But the mother's identify is far more interesting than the father's. The mother changed her identity when Purity was born to escape her family and her billion dollar inheritance.

That is the secret that the novel very cleverly dances around. Pip doesn't believe her mentally ill roommate's claim that the Germans sharing their Oakland squatter house are spies. How beautifully implausible. No less plausible is it for Pip to move into her father's house when neither father nor daughter know that they are family, unless you consider an Eastern German bred Julian Assange type's twisted hope that Pip's father with seduce her.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is the best novel I've read in recent years. I am grateful she wrote a book as powerful as her breakout, The Secret History--a book that turned me upside down.

There is something The Goldfinch has that Purity lacks. What is it? What makes the difference between a good novel and a great one? I feel like Franzen reaches for greatness, but only Tartt achieves it.

Is it because Andreas's suicide in Purity feel contrived, but every word of The Goldfinches feels true? I would suggest that Franzen fails at writing from a 23-year old girl's perspective. But heck, DONNA Tartt's masterpieces are written from the point of view of young men.

Yeah, I love The Goldfinch.

The Breaks

I'd been eagerly anticipating new novels lately from Jonathan Franzen, Paul Russell, and James Howard Kunstler. While waiting, my itch for some lit lead me to look back through Richard Price's catalog. The internet says he is most known for Clockers and The Wire, but I know him best from the awfully good novel a professor gave all her students as an end of semester gift.

That novel, Lush Life, starts with what to me is very cliche--a novel about a struggling writer living in New York City--yet paints a rich masterpiece of a great city in flux and the souls bumbling through it.

The Breaks, on the other hand, is about Peter Keller and his quarter life crisis. He's a lower middle class Jew from the Bronx who just graduated from an upstate college (first in his family), but fails to get into the law school of his choice and moves back home. He scores sky high on his second attempt at the entrance exam, but by then he's lost his legal aspirations and drifts for a year through dead end jobs.

Peter on a whim moves back to his upstate college town and through friendship with the English Department Chair, lands a job teaching Freshman Comp. He is completely unprepared to teach, but through his resourcefulness, intelligence, and knack for performing to a crowd, is fairly successful. The Chair welcomes him to continue teaching next semester and enroll as a graduate student if he wishes.

He begins dating Kim Fonseca, a single mother 5 years his senior. To his surprise, he gets on fairly well with Anthony, the 5 year old son. The trouble is that the abusive husband she is separated from is Tony Fonseca, an eccentric professor and failed writer in Peter's own English Department. Peter is scared shitless that Tony will find out and harm him, but they become friends and Tony assures him he has no problem with the relationship. But Tony is a sour character that burns a hole through the pages as Peter tries to find some footing in the world. Long story short, Kim returns to Tony despite the likelihood of continued abuse. Peter breaks the fucker's collarbone, but that does not stop Kim from resuming her marriage to him.

As the novel closes, Peter remains somewhat aimless. He is intent on fleeing to New York City to try acting and comedy, but the Chair seems to have convinced him to at least finish his semester of teaching. I don't know where that leaves him. Can he remain in his college town with Kim and Tony together again? He certainly took a respectable stand against Tony's abuse, and that is worth something. Maybe Tony and Kim will flee, leaving Peter to grow roots in the town. The damn book should have an epilogue.

Now I am on to the new Franzen novel.