Franzen Crossroads

It is a big deal to me when a new Jonathan Franzen novel comes come out. They seem to come at five-year intervals on average.

I found The Corrections to be an elevated form of fiction when I read it as a young adult. I was enjoying whatever else I had been reading, but then I realized Franzen writes on another level. The depth of the characters he develops and their interactions with each other is sublime.

I enjoyed his subsequent novels, Freedom and Purity. I don't think he could write a bad novel. But Crossroads stands out for having Franzen's masterful writing focus on, as he noted in a recent New Yorker Radio Hour episode, very ordinary characters. Freedom involved a indie rocker and Purity a family's secret fortune. In Crossroads, the characters are vivid and feel real. They suffer and act stupidly. But they are fairly ordinary. The choice of characters makes me wonder if Franzen could write about a family as plain and mine or yours with the same power, and I think the answer is yes. Every human has depth and inner conflict. Each family unit contains strife.

Franzen states that Crossroads in the first book in a planned trilogy. He planned for Crossroads to work as a standalone novel, and it does. That seems wise, because at the rate that he releases novels, that is a 15-year project. Perhaps they will be printed at shorter intervals because the three books are one project. But it pains me as fan to be waiting for him to slowly release his work.

All the Lilacs in Ohio + Gay Erasure

 John Hiatt's "All the Lilacs in Ohio" is a gorgeous song. It is a slice of bar life, a la Piano Man, with a compelling chorus chant of a drunk's love for a woman. Hiatt originally recorded the song twenty years ago in an electric garage band style. But a new acoustic recording with the Jerry Douglas band suits the masterfully written song far better.

The song comes indirectly out of Charles Jackson's 1944 novel The Lost Weekend. The book tells the tale of a severe alcoholic's ups and downs through a Thursday-to-Sunday bender. The protagonist, Don Birnam, is a closeted homosexual and this fragmented element of his life causes him agony and is one of the reasons he drinks. The novel was a bestseller and adapted into a 1945 film that won the Academy Award for best picture.

However, the the film adaptation excised the queer theme because in 1945 it was not acceptable to be gay. This homophobia, internalized and contributing to Don's self-hatred, is absent from the film.

So I am taking a small stand against this 1940s erasure of homosexuality that John Hiatt unknowingly perpetuates decades later. (I have to assume Hiatt is not homophobic.) I have modified the song's pronouns to make it a tale of queer love and infatuation.

All the Lilacs in Ohio

Written by John Hiatt
Inspired by the Film The Lost Weekend, which erased the homosexuality of the protagonist in the Charles Jackson novel on which it is based.

Pronouns modified by this blogger.

Well, you met him there on a New York City stair
You were throwing up on your shoes
Tryin' to write the great book well it really had you shook
With a bad case of wintertime blues

So you drank him down to the ragged side of town
Shared a taxi to carry him home
Then he left his handkerchief there beside you on the seat
As if to emphasize that you were all alone

Smelled like springtime when you were just a boy
And all the lilacs in Ohio
All the lilacs in Ohio, there ya go
In the city streets in the dirty winter snow
All the lilacs in Ohio-hio

Well, he is the love story you speak of
When you talk to Sam at the bar
But it's in the details your story often fails
Yeah, close, but no cigar

You might see your own ass in a double whiskey glass
But you cannot erase his smile
And you'll never write it down, never find him in this town
Of phantom dreams and fingernail files

It was springtime and you were just a boy
And all the lilacs in Ohio
All the lilacs in Ohio, there ya go
In city streets in the dirty winter snow
All the lilacs in Ohio-hio

So you pin his handkerchief to clean white linen sheets
And you unmake your bed and crawl in
You imagine him there and you're tangled in his hair
And he smells like flowers again

And it's springtime and you are just a boy
And all the lilacs in Ohio
All the lilacs in Ohio, there ya go
In the city streets and the dirty winter snow
All the lilacs in Ohio-hio

COVID AIDS SEATBELTS

I have a photo of my father and his brother saying goodbye to my grandmother in 1943 when they were going off to war. They didn’t know if they would return. And today people wouldn’t wear a mask to protect the health of their fellow citizens?

I remember when it became clear last year that COVID was a real crisis and everyone would be affected and have to live differently for some time. My instinct was to do my part for my community and my country. So I followed the guidance. I worked from home. I supported my local restaurants by ordering take out (that one was not a sacrifice for me). I masked up without complaining despite it being actually difficult to secure a mask behind my ears while wearing hearing aids.

These macho men who thought they didn’t need to wear masks or take other precautious aren’t much different from the big segment of sexually promiscuous gay men in the 1980s who refused to take precautions against AIDS. People of all walks of life don’t like to change their lifestyles.

At any rate, I actually don’t think we did too badly with masks. It has taken decades to get a high majority of car passengers to wear seatbelts. Masks caught on over the weeks and months of the pandemic.