Book Review : Jonathan Franzen - The End of the End of the Earth (2018)
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Ten years ago, Jonathan Franzen was simultaneously one of the most commercially successful living writers and one of the most hated people on the internet. It was a simpler time, before Donald Trump validated white supremacy, conspiracy theories and other reactionary bullshit in media. You could gain considerable toxic clout only for being great at a job that you didn’t seem to particularly enjoy. Someone like Kurt Cobain wouldn’t have thrived in that era.
Franzen wrote uncomfortably truthful novels about modern American living that were so ridiculously detailed, it was easy to forget what made them wonderful when you were done. His books are great in an impersonal way, like a great television series or raunchy personal anecdotes about a friend of a friend often are. He was commercially and critically lauded, but all he ever talked about what how much hated technology and loved the novels of Edith Wharton.
He was a weird dude, but I don’t think anyone ever appreciated that about him. People took his weirdness personal because celebrities are not morally allowed to not like what ordinary people like. While I ignored his most recent novel Purity like most of his readership because it couldn’t find a valid reason to read it, I’ve always kept a soft spot for the guy. He doesn’t seem like a particularly pleasant person, but he’s harmless and sometimes a little goofy.
His latest essay collection The End of the End of the Earth also reminded me that he’s pretty damn great at communicating and expressing himself through symbols and metaphors too. It also made me a little worried for him.
The End of the End of Jonathan Franzen
Funny story: I bought this collection because I thought it contained Jonathan Franzen’s New Yorker essay about his friendship to David Foster Wallace. It does not. The End of the End of the Earth contains essays about bird watching, Jonathan Franzen’s crippling eco anxiety and the odd personal story, often contextualized through Jonathan Franzen’s crippling eco anxiety. It might sound dry, but it isn’t if you’re familiar with the man and his media presence.
There’s also an essay about how fucking rad Edith Wharton is, but let’s not get into it. We already know how he feels about her.
See, Jonathan Franzen is really, really bummed about the state of the environment. Mostly because it kills birds, but not only because of that. My favorite essay is the one the collection is named after. He tells the story of his uncle Walt, who left him 78 000$ in inheritance after his passing. Franzen used that money to go on an Antarctica cruise with his brother. He wanted to see emperor penguins and other stuff you get to see where your balls don’t freeze.
The link between crippling eco anxiety and being Jonathan Franzen is clearer in this essay than it is anywhere else in the collection. Trapped between a melancholy he can’t beat and a future he has no control over, he feels powerless in a present he’s supposed to enjoy. Kind of like normal people do. Now, there is nothing normal about taking a 78 000$ penguin cruise, but that’s the point. You can’t change the way the world bends even if you’d need to.
Jonathan Franzen fears climate changes because he wants beauty to be remembered. That’s maybe not common, but I kind of respect that.
What we do to Jonathan Franzen
There is a lot of self-reflection about public and private image, relinquishing control and the deteriorating state of the internet in that collection too. Unlike most straight white males, Franzen never blames entitled kids for it. In the aptly named opening essay The Essay in Dark Times, he reflect on trying to exert power through writing and failing to over and over again through essay writing. The result is not frustration, but an admission of defeat and humanity.
This is really powerful stuff, because like him or hate him. Jonathan Franzen never makes it about himself. It’s never “look at me, look at what you done to my life.” It’s about the work. It’s about trying to convey thoughts that help and move people through writing, no matter what. He’ll never stop trying to make you see the beauty in his head and in his heart. I admire that about him. It doesn’t matter if you want him to go away, the man still love you because you read.
Now that we’ve accused him of being a monolithic technophobe, Franzen is trying his best to deconstruct himself and the mix of writing brilliant and emotional clumsiness resonated really hard with me sometimes.. In the essay A Friendship about his friendship to author William Vollman, he reflect on his incapacity to reciprocate a friendship that was granted to him by life. A free relationship with someone who arbitrarily decided to be good to him.
The Regulars is another great piece, where he reviews the photographs of bar patrons in Philadelphia and reminisces on his own failures in that city. Franzen praises the photographs, but laments the melancholy people feeling at home in public spaces make him feel. If that doesn’t hit home with you, I don’t know what will. Jonathan Franzen has this disincarnate honesty about him that will make you look uncomfortably at your own flaws. Not unlike his characters will.
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I didn’t care much about the bird stuff. There was a lot of it in The End of the End of the Earth. I got the point that it was his connection to a simpler, contemplative existence and that he’s really trying to help by advocating against climate changes, but the form of these essays was more interesting to me than what they were about. I think the man feels guilty about his success and that he’s looking for a way out of his Ivory Tower in Santa Cruz.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. Guilt is a motherfucker that comes for us all. Especially for people who are great at their job and don’t really enjoy the spoils of it.
Not everything in The End of the End of the Earth will hit home. Especially if you’re an environment advocate. You’ve already heard what he wants to tell you. But when he’s good, Jonathan Franzen is good in this armor piercing way that will hurt you, but leave you alive to feel it. In many ways, I think stepping down from his immense mental constructions and laying himself bare for us was required to heal that relationship. That’s what essays exist for.
Be my friend, Jonathan Franzen. I will drink your wine, listen to your stories, ask questions and I promise not to take you too seriously. Don’t apologize for living in your head. Just show us the kingdom you got up there.
