The PenOpticon

The Discomfort Zone

HarperCollins, 197 pages, $29.95

Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel/memoir, The Discomfort Zone covers some of the same territory as his widely acclaimed Corrections, but does so in a very different fashion. While Corrections is more self-consciously literary and academically hip in its execution, The Discomfort Zone (with the exception of a questionable foray into the realm of German modernism) draws more upon the popular culture of Franzen’s (and, I confess, my own) youth. In Corrections, Franzen boldly expects the reader to “get” (and possibly get rid of) Foucault and the bastions of Critical Theory, but The Discomfort Zone is layered with the gentler – and sometimes more profound – wisdom of Charles M. Shultz’s Peanuts. Even the novel’s opening line “There’d been a storm that evening in St. Louis” is a riff on the venerable Snoopy’s “It was a dark and stormy night”. Unlike Snoopy, however, Franzen follows through with a beautifully written, funny, smart – and sometimes uncomfortable – ramble through a life that was forged “in the middle of the country in the middle of the golden age of the American middle class”. Even the protagonist’s neighborhood, Webster Groves, was “in the middle of this middle”.

Growing up in the middle, under the under the watchful eyes of his parents, and figuratively, under the panoptic gaze an entire country, Jonathan does seem to embody the spirit of Charley Brown. He is too young to join older siblings in embracing the 60’s, but old enough record and critique the status quo he is forced to endure. All is revealed through well-executed flashbacks as he faces the bothersome and emotional task of putting his deceased mother’s home up for sale.

It should be noted this is Franzen’s first major work since spurning Oprah (out of fear for his literary reputation) when she tried to select Corrections for her coveted Book of the Month honour. As such, it is tempting to examine The Discomfort Zone as a kind of explication or justification of Franzen’s now legendary million-dollar bit of “Good grief!”. Perhaps, Franzen’s choice of Charley Brown as a kind of patron saint within the novel is a clue to his response. Jonathan is a good egg who makes mistakes, a forty-something man who can still be taken in by the vague promises of a pretty, blonde realtor, an excruciatingly self-conscious man who worries about how a new found love of birding will sit with his friends.

The form of the book may also provide a clue to Franzen’s current thinking about his past literary foibles. Weighing in at just under 200 pages, its brevity and levity seems to blur the line between novel and memoir and contrasts with the much longer Corrections. The brevity of this latest work is also deceptive because its disparate, episodic structure explores many “zones” and provides the reader with many views into Jonathan’s character. The end result depends partly upon how one wishes to assemble the pieces. Admittedly — some of those pieces – such as the narrator’s college memory of an intense exploration of German literature, may be more challenging to integrate than others. After all, not everyone is still wringing their hands over whether Kafka’s Joseph K was innocent or guilty. At the same time, because Jonathan’s life is enigmatic in its own way and emblematic of the late boomer generation, this novel will appeal to twenty-something “children” who stand to learn something new about their ever-so-strange parents. The Discomfort Zone will also hold up to multiple readings and bring a smile to the face of anyone struggling to survive on the frowning side of forty.

Finally, and however unlikely, it would be interesting if Oprah decided to give Franzen another chance. The Discomfort Zone succeeds in prying open a crack or two in the shell of Franzen’s precious literary reputation, but in so doing, the book reveals much that is funny and deep and achingly human.

The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell

In this hype-driven world where inventive genius is often displaced by package design and product-placement consultants, it can be instructive and enjoyable to amble through history to gaze over the shoulder of a great 19th century inventor. Reluctant Genius, Charlotte Gray’s new biography of Alexander Graham Bell effortlessly puts the reader into the inventor’s life along with his wife Mabel, the remarkable Bell family and a diverse cast of supporting characters. Drawing on primary sources such as the Bell family papers, diaries and letters spanning 140 years, Gray portrays much more than just the technical hurdles of Bell’s life as an inventor. The author is equally concerned with Bell’s emotional life and human foibles and she portrays the complexity of his life with objectivity and tact. This is particularly evident in her account of Bell’s unusual relationship with Hellen Keller and the strain it caused for Mabel and their children.

The text is thorough but fast-paced. It begins with Bell’s childhood years in Edinburgh where Alec and his brothers first invented a “speaking machine” in answer to their father’s challenge and ends with the inventor’s attempts to perfect a hydrofoil. And yes, of course — Bell’s telephone and related inventions are also vividly rendered. However, this biography’s main accomplishment is that it succeeds in transforming the oft-seen image of Bell as the aging, grey-haired, “Father of the Telephone” into the complex, passionate and driven man that appears on the book’s cover.

Gray’s life of Bell rings true.

Reluctant Genius, 478 pages
Harper-Collins Publishers Limited
Release Date: August 2006

Over the years Thomas King has made it his business to jump across borders that separate countries, cultures, professions and literary genres. Born in the U.S. to Greek and Cherokee parents, King has lived and worked in Canada since 1980. He currently teaches English at the University of Guelph, Ontario, but is well known for his CBC radio show, the Dead Dog Cafe, a growing collection of critically acclaimed fiction and engaging works of criticism such as The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. In 2002 he jumped across literary boundaries once more, publishing Dreadfulwater Shows Up, under the pseudonym, Hartley Goodweather. As some predicted, his main character, Thumps Dreadfulwater, was destined to become a series character. Thumps will appear in King’s second Dreadful water mystery, Red Power Murders, in March 2006.

The new novel depicts the complex convergence of past and present enemies and friends in the small town of Chinook, South Dakota. When Noah Ridge, a renowned Indian activist makes an unlikely stop in town as part of a book tour, Thumps is hired to photograph the event and is also deputized by the local Sheriff to watch over Ridge. After living and working for many years “under the radar”, Thumps is brought face to face with numerous ghosts from his past. From the beginning, we see that he is not comfortable with his situation: he wants desperately to escape, but his rusting Volvo will only start when it wants to; he wants to get warm, but while suffering the snow and wind of a Midwest winter he can’t seem to find a coat that will do the job. His physical and psychological discomfort increases when he is swept into a swirl of old memories, new murders and disappearances. In addition to these crimes, he must also solve — or at least examine — the enigma of his own life. King’s plot is convoluted and must be held together with a cast of characters that is almost Dostoyevskian in number. However, the story moves along nicely most of the time and the text is studded with an assortment of memorable characters: Duke Hockney is the local Sheriff, old and tough, with a dry sense of humour and very little patience for fools. Moses Blood is a Native elder whose instructive story-telling abilities bring clarity and humour to Thump’s troubled mind. The Red Power Murders also brims with familiar and esoteric literary and culture references. Some of these are cleverly expressed by unlikely characters such as Cooley Small Elk, an unemployed security guard who seems to have been modeled after Jasper Friendly Bear (from King’s Dead Dog Cafe radio days). In fact, the novel features a number of subtexts and snatches of conversation that could almost have been uttered by some of King’s university colleagues. These gentle pokes at academia combined with a more general critique of Red Power Movement (or any movement) politics and personalities give the novel additional depth. While King’s writing holds up better in novels such as Truth and Bright Water and Green Grass Running Water, by writing in a different genre with a new pen name, the author continues to spin stories that are more than the sum of their parts.

The Red Power Murders, 317 pages
Harper-Collins Publishers Limited
Release Date: March 2006