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Freedom (Franzen novel)Freedom is a 2010 novel by American author Jonathan Franzen. It was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Freedom received general acclaim from book critics, was ranked one of the best books of 2010 by several publications, and called by some critics the "Great American Novel".
The novel follows the lives of the Berglund family, particularly the parents Patty and Walter, as their lives develop and then their happiness falls apart. Important to their story is a college friend of Walter's and successful rock musician, Richard Katz, who has a love affair with Patty. Walter and Patty's son, Joey, also goes through his own coming-of-age challenges.
Franzen began working on the novel in 2001, following his successful novel The Corrections. The title of the novel was an artifact of his book proposal, where he wanted to write a novel that freed him from the constraints of his previous work. The cover of many editions of the novel includes a cerulean warbler, a songbird, for which Walter works to create an environmental preserve.
Plot
Good Neighbors
The novel opens with a brief look at the Berglund family during their time living in St. Paul, Minnesota, from the perspective of their nosy neighbors. The Berglunds are portrayed as an ideal liberal and middle-class family, and they are among the first families to move into urban St. Paul after years of white flight to the suburbs. Patty Berglund is a charming and youthful homemaker with a self-deprecating sense of humor; her husband Walter is a mild-mannered but principled lawyer with environmentalist advocacies. They have one daughter, Jessica, and one son, Joey, the latter exhibiting a precocious independence and talent for making money. Joey becomes sexually involved with a neighborhood teen named Connie Monaghan and begins to rebel against his mother, going so far as to move in with Connie and her family, making Patty and Walter increasingly unstable. After many unhappy years, and after both Joey and Jessica have gone off to college, Patty and Walter relocate to Washington, D.C., abandoning the neighborhood and house they have worked so hard to improve.
Mistakes Were Made
The second section of the novel is a story-within-a-story, presented as an autobiography written by Patty at her therapist's suggestion. She recalls her youth as a star basketball player, her alienation from her busy Democrat parents and artistically-inclined siblings, and her being date-raped. Instead of attending an East Coast elite college like her siblings, she obtains a varsity scholarship to the University of Minnesota, where she continues her successful basketball career. Through her best friend at the time, a possessive and disturbed girl named Eliza, she meets an attractive indie rock musician named Richard Katz, and his nerdy but kind roommate, Walter Berglund.
Shortly after finally detaching herself from Eliza, Patty suffers a career-ending knee injury, and attempts to woo Richard on a road trip to New York. Failing to do so, she settles down with Walter, who has been patiently courting her for more than a year. Despite being happy with Walter and raising a family with him, Patty is unable to forget her physical attraction to Richard. As a result, nearly twenty years after college, she betrays Walter in a brief affair with Richard during a stay at the Berglunds' vacation house, located on an unnamed lake in Minnesota. She learns that Richard denied her advances decades earlier out of respect for his best friend Walter.
2004
The third section of the novel jumps to the early 2000s, and alternates in viewpoint among Richard, Joey, and Walter.
By 2004, a middle-aged Richard has finally found success as a minor indie rock star, with his breakthrough album Nameless Lake having been secretly inspired by his affair. Uncomfortable with commercial success, he burns through his new-found money. Walter, who has been working in Washington, D.C. for an unorthodox environmental organization called the Cerulean Mountain Trust, calls him to enlist his help for a personal project. Richard learns that the Trust is funded by a coal mining magnate who wants to strip mine a section of West Virginia territory before turning it into a preserve for the cerulean warbler, a songbird. Walter hopes to use some of the Trust's funding for his pet project, a campaign against human overpopulation. Believing that Richard's rock star reputation could greatly help the campaign, Walter meets up with him, and introduces him to Walter's beautiful young assistant, Lalitha. Richard notices that Lalitha appears to be deeply in love with Walter, and also learns from Walter that his marriage with Patty, who has been suffering from depression, is deteriorating.
After navigating many difficulties in relocating obstinate West Virginian families living on the proposed preserve territory, including convincing a body-armor manufacturer for the Iraq War, which Walter greatly opposes, to employ the displaced families, Walter and Lalitha complete the deals required to set up the future warbler preserve. After drinking for the first time in his life, Walter inadvertently declares his love for Lalitha, and they kiss, but stop short of having sex. Now able to use funding for the anti-overpopulation campaign, which they name Free Space, Walter invites Richard back to Washington D.C.. While attempting to show interest in the initiative, Richard reaches out to Patty, and tries to convince her to leave Walter and let him be happy. Patty refuses, and shows Richard the autobiography she wrote as therapy ("Mistakes Were Made"), trying to convince him that she still loves Walter. After reading it, Richard deliberately leaves the manuscript on Walter's desk for him to see. Hurt and enraged, Walter throws Patty out despite her claims that her affair with Richard is done and that she loves him. Lonely and directionless, Patty goes to Jersey City to live with Richard.
Meanwhile, the Berglunds' estranged son, Joey, now studies at the University of Virginia. He initially finds his new life unsatisfactory compared to his younger years in Minnesota; he blames the September 11 attacks and its effects on the people around him. His attempts to break away from his childhood sweetheart Connie fail when he finds himself seeking their intimacy. However, after a Thanksgiving at his roommate Jonathan's family in the D.C. suburbs, Joey meets Jonathan's exceptionally beautiful but mischievous sister Jenna, and is exposed to their father's Zionist politics, which along with increased involvement with neo-conservatives, further alienate Joey from his father. Through Jonathan's father's connections, Joey meets Kenny Bartles, an entrepreneur determined to profit from the ongoing Iraq War. Kenny is subcontracted by LBI for a highly lucrative Department of Defense project, to procure supply trucks to serve in the frontlines. Kenny convinces Joey to invest a large amount up-front, only for Joey to discover that Kenny has dubiously chosen an obsolete truck model for the deal.
At home in Minnesota, Connie suffers from depression, which is worsened by Joey's distant treatment of her. Joey impulsively marries her after she gives him her savings to invest in the subcontract, although he keeps the marriage secret from everyone, especially his parents. However, Joey continues to flirt with Jenna, and during a trip to South America is given a chance to sleep with her; during the act, he unexpectedly suffers impotence, and realizes his true love for Connie. His ensuing exploits in finding truck parts in South America are disastrous, and he is pressured to ship defective parts to fulfill his contract, causing him extreme guilt, which leads him to call his father for advice. Walter is proud of Joey's show of conscience, and Joey decides not to blow the whistle, instead donating much of the proceeds from his subcontract. He also eventually tells both parents about having married Connie, who now happily lives with him.
With Patty gone, Walter and Lalitha become lovers. However, increasingly depressive after his separation from Patty, Walter loses his temper on live TV at the inauguration of the new West Virginian body-armor factory, expressing his contempt for the displaced families and the Trust's corporate backers. He and Lalitha get fired as a result, and are forced to continue the Free Space initiative without the Trust's help, though Walter's speech leads him to become an icon for radicals across the country. They plan a large concert to raise awareness, but without Richard and the Trust the event becomes an echo chamber for already-radicalized youth. While on a road trip with Walter to visit campgrounds across the nation before the concert, Lalitha leaves early to manage the increasing destructiveness of concert attendees, and is killed in a car crash.
Mistakes Were Made (Conclusion)
The penultimate section of the novel is a follow-up chapter to Patty's autobiography, written specifically for Walter. Patty reveals that she has not talked to Walter for six years. She lasted only several months living with Richard, aware of their long-term incompatibility.
For several months after her split with Richard, Patty stays with her college basketball friends, until her father was suddenly diagnosed with cancer. After traveling home to see him again in his final days, Patty visits each of her siblings to negotiate a compromise in the family's heated squabbles over the estate, and gradually redeems her relationship with her family, little though any of them agree with one another. Patty then lives alone in Brooklyn and works at a private school, where she found a passion for teaching and coaching young children. She relates that Joey has been successful in a new sustainable coffee business, while Jessica has focused on a career in publishing, and that Patty's separation from Walter has caused the siblings to become closer to each other despite their differences. Six years after she left Walter, Patty runs into Richard, who is now comfortable with his success. Richard convinces Patty to get in touch with Walter, saying she's good at telling stories, and this motivates her to write a concluding chapter to her autobiography.
Canterbridge Estates Lake
After Lalitha's death, Walter retreats to his family's lakeside house in Minnesota, where the previously unnamed lake has been renamed Canterbridge Estates Lake after a new residential development built across the water from Walter's house. His new neighbors see him as a cranky recluse, obsessed with preventing their house cats from killing birds nesting on his property. One day, Walter, who did not read the manuscript Patty sent him, finds her on the steps of the lakeside house. Despite his rage and confusion, he eventually takes her back, and they rekindle their relationship slowly, spending all of their time together. Patty quickly earns the admiration of Walter's neighbors, but after less than a year, she and Walter move out, returning to her job in New York, where most of her family and their friends also live. According to Walter's wishes, the old lakeside house is turned into a fenced, cat-proof bird sanctuary, named in memory of Lalitha.
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