jonathan franzen

ok, so terry gross interviewed mr franzen on fresh air last evening....and i must say that there is a lot not to like about this fellow........a reality that must be true about many writers......that one can adore the prose despite the curmudgeon from which those words hath sprung......mr franzen has published a new book, one that brings together embarassments from his youth, his failed marriage and his love of birdwatching........this is not new ground for franzen.......he published a piece in the new yorker a while back that must have been his test balloon for this project........and having read that piece, and heard his interview....and i am not surprised that his marriage failed.......there was a point in the interview when terry gross (and who couldn't love terry gross) commented on a letter that his mother wrote to him in college, in response to a series of correspondence between franzen and both his parents about his decision to pursue a writing career.......he freely admitted that he hadn't read the letter at the time, simply kept it in keeping with his archival instincts...but i digress from terry, who cooed about how sweet the letter had been.....to which franzen spouted all manner of disagreement as to her motives and cowardice and general lack of suitability to be his mother.....or so it seemed to me, as the only mother in the room.......and as i thought of the author's words later on in the evening, as i couldn't sleep.......i recalled blanket words of advice to women that one reads occassionally in magazines appealing to woman of marriagable age........a man that is not nice to his own mother is a bad bet for a husband......plain and simple.......and a reality that cannot be changed by even the wiliest woman.......i must dig up the article that franzen wrote not long after the corrections came out.....again a piece published in the new yorker...about his father's demise from Alzheimers disease....this piece brought me to tears....and i recall being unable to finish it it a single sitting.....thinking back, franzen did not portray his mother kindly in that article, either...no sympathy for the woman who cared for his father during difficult times.........giving us some insight into the notion of the dysfunction that made his first novel so famous.......can we really blame our parents for the total of our own personal misadjustments?......or is dysfunction such a complicated combination of genetics, environment, birth order, and cantankerousness on the part of everybody involved that there can be no blame leveled in any direction?........i really feel a kinship to this woman, franzen's mean mamma........what a thankless job it must have been to have raised such a vitriolic child......i say this in anger, i suppose.......maybe after a good night's sleep tonight mr franzen and his contempt for his mamma will not grate so much on my brain.....surely this fine writer must harbor some tender feelings toward his mother.......and i suspect that if looked closely and carefully at himself in the mirror, he would see that much of what he is, for better or for worse, is thanks to his mother, not in spite of her