The End of the End of the Earth: Essays By Jonathan Franzen

summary The End of the End of the Earth: Essays

The essayist, Jonathan Franzen writes, is like “a fire-fighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them.” For the past twenty-five years, even as his novels have earned him worldwide acclaim, Franzen has led a second life as a risk-taking essayist. Now, at a moment when technology has inflamed tribal hatreds and the planet is beset by unnatural calami- ties, he is back with a new collection of essays that recall us to more humane ways of being in the world.

Franzen’s great loves are literature and birds, and The End of the End of the Earth is a passionate argument for both. Where the new media tend to confirm one’s prejudices, he writes, literature “invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you.” Whatever his subject, Franzen’s essays are always skeptical of received opinion, steeped in irony, and frank about his own failings. He’s frank about birds, too (they kill “everything imaginable”), but his reporting and reflections on them—on seabirds in New Zealand, warblers in East Africa, penguins in Antarctica—are both a moving celebration of their beauty and resilience and a call to action to save what we love.

Calm, poignant, carefully argued, full of wit, The End of the End of the Earth provides a welcome breath of hope and reason. The End of the End of the Earth: Essays

Franzent két dolog érdekli. A madarak meg az írás. Szerintem ebben a sorrendben. Ezen kívül még ír más dolgokról, amelyek nem ennyire foglalkoztatják, de hát azok olyanok is. Már el is felejtettem őket. Nekem személy szerint az tetszik jobban, amikor előbbiről értekezik. Edith Wharton kapcsán írja a szerző, hogy ha egy szereplő sóvárog valami után, akkor vele könnyebben tudunk azonosulni, még akkor is, ha különben ellenszenves alakról van szó. Talán mert a vágyakozás mintázatait felismerjük és respektáljuk, tudunk szorítani kielégüléséért, minden mástól függetlenül. Na, itt is ilyesmi lehet a helyzet: ha én nem is vagyok oda a madármegfigyelésért*, de más dolgokért oda vagyok meg vissza, és az író mániáiban nem nehéz saját mániáim tükörképét felfedeznem. Meg aztán Franzen olyan jól ír (ez egy ilyen állandó eposzi jelzője lehetne Franzennek: jól író Franzen), egy császárpingvinnel való találkozást is olyan ízletesen tud tálalni, hogy az ember látja maga előtt az egészet. Öröm olvasni.

És emellett Franzennek van még egy remek (ezúttal kifejezetten esszéírói értelemben remek) tulajdonsága: hogy van érzéke a léptékekhez. A Védjük meg, amit szeretünk c. írásában ki is fejti, mi a baj a nagy léptékekkel: amikor mindenki a klímaváltozás elháríthatatlan és katasztrofális, de időben távoli apokalipszisére koncentrál, akkor elfelejti, hogy akár most is tehetne valamit, olyat, ami igenis számít. Nem eldobni egy papírpoharat vagy kicserélni az izzókat energiatakarékosra, nos, igen, ezeket meg lehet vagy meg kell tenni, de ezzel nem vagyunk sokkal előrébb. De csengőt rakni a macskánk nyakára, vagy nyugodt fészkelőhelyet kialakítani a kertben a madaraknak, az most rögtön teszi jobbá a saját kis világunkat. Mégpedig úgy, hogy az eredményét is látjuk, tehát megkapjuk a szükséges visszacsatolást. Mostanában a legtöbb esszéista meg véleményvezér mintha a világot akarná megváltani: kozmikus katasztrófákat akadályoz meg univerzális meglátásaival, a mindent mentené meg, mert alább nem adja. Közben meg nem látja, ami az orra előtt van. Talán ezt tanulhatják meg a kezdő írók is Franzentől, a léptéket. Hogy lehet írni arról is, ami éppen itt van, konkrétan, nem csak a félelmeink vagy vágyaink által idevetítve. Egy rigóról, egy különös pintyről, bármiről. A pici dolgokról. És ha jól van megírva, a pici dolog úgyis nagyobb lesz önmagánál.

* Bár egyszer, vagy másfél évtizede első polgári szolgálatért kapott juttatásom nem elenyésző százalékát elherdálva vásároltam egy madárhatározót. Tulajdonképpen abban a szent pillanatban megbántam, túlságosan költséges felbuzdulásnak éreztem, és ezzel kapcsolatos bűntudatomat csak úgy tudtam kezelni, hogy elhitettem magammal, ez egyfajta égőáldozat a rendszeres fizetés oltárán, ami majd az apád-anyád ide jöjjön! mintájára épp tündéri nagyvonalúságával vonzza be a még több pénzt. Ez korlátozottan teljesült ugyan, de ez a madárhatározó per pillanat is az ablakpárkányon hever, mert bármikor szükség lehet rá, ugye, követezésképpen életem egyik legjobb könyves befektetésének bizonyult. 230 The two prevalent themes in this collection of essays by the celebrated fiction writer are climate change and birds. They often crop up in tandem too, and sometimes unexpectedly interrupt the discourse on another subject. Birds are certainly the author’s passion, they represent his hobby (he’s a lister he says, keeping records of every bird he sees and sub-dividing his lists to ensure he can track his captures by timeline) and global warming and all its resultant ills seems to be the nightmare scenario he’s long feared but now accepts as inevitable.

To me, there was rather too much of both subjects here and I was particularly irked when one or another upset the flow of an essay I was particularly enjoying. Those I liked best involve people he remembers fondly and reflections on time spent with them; he’s really good at isolating precisely what it is about these people that made such an impression on him. In Manhattan 1981, A Friendship the title essay itself these are the elements that stood out for me. Of course everything is well written, you’d expect no less, but there weren’t enough pieces here that really grabbed me. What I was left with was an impression of a man with relatively narrow interests and an unhealthy habit of sharing rather too many of his twitching adventures.

If you’re particularly intrigued by these subjects or you just want to spend some time in the hands of an expert wordsmith then this is certainly a collection worth seeking out. Or maybe read the pieces over a prolonged period, in between and amongst other books you’re playing with – it might just be that the total immersion I executed just isn’t the best way to experience this collection.

My sincere thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for supplying a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 230 Sigh. Franzen can write. He is intelligent. His nonfiction is just not my cup of tea. There is an authorial distance I find offputting but I understand why he might write with that distance. As a whole, the collection is uneven. There is a set of rules for the novelist that feels like he jotted some ideas on a napkin and included them in the book. The essay on Edith Wharton.... yikes. He spends quite some time discussing that she was unattractive and like, has he seen male writers throughout history? Let’s not throw stones from glass houses. If you like Franzen’s writing you will like this collection. He loves birds A LOT. He loves birds the way I love Beyoncé. 230 ”If you stand in a forest in Southeast Asia, you may hear and then begin to feel, in your chest, a deep rhythmic whooshing. It sounds meteorological, but it’s the wingbeats of Great Hornbills flying in to land in a fruiting tree. They have massive yellow bills and hefty white thighs; they look like a cross between a toucan and a giant panda. As they clamber around in the tree, placidly eating fruit, you may find yourself crying out with the rarest of all emotions: pure joy. It has nothing to do with what you want or what you possess. It’s the sheer gorgeous fact of the Great Hornbill, which couldn’t care less about you.”

I always love those moments when something reminds me of how insubstantial I am, compared to the forces of nature. The ultimate feeling of insignificance for me was to see, in a flash of lightning, a tornado, in all its beautiful glory, just off the road from where I was riding in a car. The sight of this destructive power of swirling winds inspired instant terror and awe, and as the lightning faded, the terror for me increased exponentially with the descending of complete and utter darkness. I was so unnerved I buckled my seatbelt (this was the 1980s) as if that act would shield me from the onslaught of such a power entity.

I’ve been remiss about reading Jonathan Franzen novels. I’ve liked what I have read. He has a self-deprecating style that allows me to see the human in the writer, even as he dazzles me with insightful prose. He questions his own beliefs and is a master at disputing both sides of an argument within himself. This could lead to indecision, but that doesn’t seem to be an insurmountable hazard for him. He still continues to move forward, even as he keeps a tongue pressed into his cheek to remind himself that he could be completely wrong in his assessment.

Franzen is a Bird Lister, and winged beasts figure prominently into these sixteen essays. As a gently mad book collector, I am always excited to find someone whom I can perceive to be more insane than myself. These bird listers go to great, sometimes dangerous, lengths to check a bird off their list. Franzen’s excitement at seeing a Jamaican Blackbird, or an Opal-rumped Tanager, or a Saint Lucia Black Finch are equal to my own excitement at finding a rare Graham Greene, or a bright copy of a Virginia Woolf vastly underpriced, or say an interesting appearing book by an author I’ve never heard of before. Of course, I slide my new acquisition onto my bookshelf, while he hopefully retains at least a mental image of the bird he has spotted. He might be slightly more mad than I.

Franzen’s girlfriend offers to go with him anywhere in the world. He suggests the idea of going to Antarctica, which he regrets almost immediately. He is unsure why, out of all the destinations in the world, he chose to torture her with the idea of attempting to vanquish the frozen, southern extremes of the planet. ”By this point, I, too, had a developed a vague aversion to the trip, an inability to recall why I’d proposed Antarctica in the first place. The idea of ‘seeing it before it melts’ was dismal and self-canceling: why not just wait for it to melt and cross itself off the list of travel destinations?”

I like the practicality of waiting for Antarctica to melt and crossing it off the bucket list. I’ve become more annoyed with the whole concept of a bucket list in recent years. This list has become a grand piano, suspended over my head, ready to fall on me the moment I show any weakness or hesitation in accepting an opportunity to cross something off the list. The list is not stagnant, either. As I cross things off, more things are added. It is a list that can not be conquered; by design, I am destined to fail.

The book is not all about birds, who are harbingers of the end of the end of the earth, as his title suggests, or about climate change. He also talks about his relationship with William Vollmann and his reverence for one of my favorite writers, Edith Wharton. He drops in a few mentions of writers like Rachel Cusk, whom I have not read, and Karl Ove Knausgaard, whom I have not read enough of. If I read a grouping of essays and don’t come away with an expanded book reading list (which is in some ways worse than a bucket list), I am disappointed.

Moreover, Franzen delves into the research of Sherry Turkle, who explores the impact that technology is having on who we are. ”Our rapturous submission to digital technology has led to an atrophying of human capacities like empathy and self-reflection, and the time has come to reassert ourselves, behave like adults, and put technology in its place.”

I have recently started feeling better about our future relationship with technology. I’ve heard more and more dissatisfaction coming from people twenty plus years younger than myself, so it isn’t just nervous old fuddy duddies, like me, who are starting to understand the diminishing returns of more advanced technology. It is the same theory as being rich. Once you reach a certain level of comfort, your happiness meter starts to plummet with the more money you acquire. What most people find is that you are happier when you are comfortable financially, which could be equated to reaching that level where technology is helping to improve your life. The trouble begins when money starts to rule your every thought or when technology begins to take over your life.

The big questions that Jonathan Franzen seems to be seeking answers to in writing these essays are, can we adapt our thinking enough to save the birds, save the planet, and in the process liberate ourselves from our own destruction? The environment should not be a political issue. Scientists are in agreement about the starkness of the facts. We should not be putting ourselves in a position where nature can bring her absolute worst against us. The tornados, the wildfires, the hurricanes, the torrential rains, the droughts are all punishments, increasing in frequency and velocity, as we continue to abuse this lovely, lovely blue planet. We, whether we want to accept the task or not, are the elected stewards, and we must make better, tougher, more responsible decisions going forward.

I want to thank Farrar, Straus, Giroux for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten 230 Before you denigrate yourself for picking up a collection of essays instead of a novel, Franzen makes a brazen argument early on in The End of the End of the Earth for its importance (the essay's) in our lives & in Litland as a whole. An essay is a mirror to the writer, to society, to the reader. He gives it a valid worth; these little nuggins are all worth their weight in gold.

Please go read The Corrections. &, yeah, even Freedom has its good parts. But essays? Like what personal stuff, apart from the writer's autobiography (there's a little bit of that, obviously), do I really need to take away? Jeez, the more I read about affluence, and a sustained type of it, the more I'm left peeved. Like, I will listen to you, buddy. Even admire the way your argument is meticulously flouncy but in serious (ahem, masterful) prose. It is your right, your privilege, Mr. Franzen, to explore the theme of birds/birdwatching to Death, as well as: global warming, Sep. 11, travelogues, bird statistics (like those of an impatient kiddo with his computer-like wealth of useless info about dinosaurs, distant cousins to birds), literary critiques. He gives us a few tidbits on the writer's way and even littler on his own poetics.

Still, what an amazing writer. Impressive organization of factoids, of subjects he finds fascinating. (In this world of Trump & hate and HUMAN (not raptor or seagull) migration. 230

Dude, no. stick to fiction. He's just so annoyingly condescending about birds and people and everything. I loved Crossroads and I wanted more so I came to this one and it's like thinking something is water when you're thirsty and taking a big drink only to realize it's actually like stale sprite someone mixed with soap 230 By any measure, Jonathan Franzen is a fortunate man. For one thing, he has a God-given talent for writing (both fiction and non-). He has not been without controversy, but has managed to rise above it and when he churns out one of his lengthy, involving novels every seven years or so, is rewarded with a loyal readership. Another way in which he is lucky is that he has an all consuming passion -- he loves birds. Anyone favored with such an interest can be considered lucky. Having something to aim for, to pursue, gives life flavor and brightness. Because of his success as an author, he has time as well as means to pursue this passion, and many of these essays share his experiences in far flung places if only to add to his list of birds he has encountered. He knows as much as can be known about the habits and fates of his winged quarry, whether they be in Albania or even Antarctica. But I must admit that since I don't share his enthusiasm to his extent (who does?), I enjoyed more the personal glimpses into his life that he intermittently shares. I liked finding out the fate of his misplaced suitcase in the Jet Blue terminal at JFK more than his quest to track down the Saint Lucia Oriole. 230 Birds, birds, birds, birds, birds, and more birds - listen to the cover, not the blurb: Most of these texts deal with the before-mentioned flying animals, how they are threatened, what it means to Franzen to be a birdwatcher, and why birds are generally awesome. In my opinion, Franzen is also generally awesome, but the bird overload in this essay collection was really testing my patience. There is nothing wrong with writing about your favorite animal, but the book marketing appears to make an effort to gloss over the fact that the author has one main focus here, or at least that he talks about different issues like climate change, tourism and friendship while always bringing birds into the equation. Some texts, like Ten Rules for a Novelist, don't quite fit into the overall collection. Unfortunately, I had the impression that the concept of the book lacked stringency.

The upside: Franzen is just a great, great writer. If you're not into birds though, this book can be a tough read. 230 I don't feel the need to read every essay in this collection, but I do feel the need to defend Edith Wharton's honor. I also have a personal anecdote about running into Franzen...or Franzen running into me.

In 2012, which was the 150th anniversary of Wharton's birth, Franzen wrote a piece about her for The New Yorker entitled A Rooting Interest. For what it's worth, I am a Wharton fanatic. I wrote my MA thesis on her, I've read almost every secondary source about her that was published before 2010, and I have been to The Mount twice. While at The Mount, I got mistaken for a docent while I was talking to a fellow fan about her, which was embarrassing and flattering in equal measure. All of this is to say that EW is one person I feel I can say I know a lot about.

With this in mind, I can say honestly that Franzen's article about Wharton is without a doubt the most egregiously misogynistic piece by a male author written about a female author that I have ever read in my life. His entire thesis is that Edith would have been a better writer if she'd been sexier. He goes into a ridiculous pseudo-intellectual analysis about her facial features, draws silly conclusions about her sex life, and even denigrates the titles of her novels! My hands trembled the entire time I read it--to say nothing of the plentiful inaccuracies throughout. I have seldom been more furious reading an article about a famous author before or since. And this trashy article is included in this collection.

Franzen doesn't exactly have the best record when it comes to women. He's the only guest Oprah un-invited from her show, he's denigrated Jennifer Weiner and women's fiction in general, and he ran into me a few years ago.

Yes, ran into me. I mean that literally, not as a figure of speech. This is a story that must be told.

I work at a university, and I had just stepped out of the campus Starbucks. I turned my head to the left and was about to walk in that direction when a man walked into me with such gusto that he almost knocked me down. I said excuse me, but he showed no reaction; he and a woman who was clearly a professor just kept walking onward as if I did not exist. What an asshole, I thought to myself. I walked on for a few steps before I did a double take.

I knew the man was familiar, and then I realized it was Jonathan Franzen. There were posters all over campus advertising his talk, which was about to take place. I checked my watch, and sure enough he was heading to the library at the correct time. Wow, I thought, maybe I should introduce myself. I mean, he is a famous author. As soon as this thought occurred to me, however, I remembered his dickish interviews on Today and CBS This Morning and his stupid article on Edith Wharton--to say nothing of his almost knocking me down--and I decided, Bleh, I have better things to do. I went my way, and he went his.

I can't speak for everything the man has written, but A Rooting Interest is less legitimate than The National Inquirer, and his manners are, ehem, lacking.

—————-
NOTE: When I said this story “must be told,” I meant it must be told because it’s funny and illustrative of his arrogance and obliviousness—two qualities that are also evident in his writing. I’ve received some pretty cruel and enraged accusations that I’m trying to accuse him of a #metoo moment. That could not be farther from the truth. I think he’s a jackass, not a lecher. 230 la fine della mia pazienza

Caro Franzen, posso chiamarti Jon? Come fanno i tuoi amici?
Sai che ti ho letto con interesse in Forte movimento,
con amore in Zona disagio,
con moderata passione in Le Correzioni
e con trepidazione in Libertà,
un poco meno motivata in Più lontano ancora,
già con Purity abbiamo avuto i nostri attriti,
ma con questa raccolta di articoli, che mi spiace dirti ho letto insieme a quella di Amis, quindi paragonandovi di continuo, mi hai davvero reso difficile restare sveglia.

Mi piaceva il tuo entusiasmo, ma adesso mi sembra fanatismo,
mi interessava il tuo punto di vista, ma ora non lo distinguo da quello della mia portinaia,
oltretutto è ormai stantio il tuo stupore di fronte al macello del pianeta,
e i neanche tanto sottili riferimenti alla tua amicizia con DFW ora cominciano a essere un tantino forzati,
come uno sfigato che per farsi notare racconti alle ragazze di essere amico del capitano della squadra di calcio del liceo...
infine devo confessarti che del birdwatching a me interessa meno di nulla,
quindi temo che le nostre strade si divideranno qui.

Non volermente, ci ho provato in tutti i modi a seguirti, ma la classificazione degli uccelli per il mero piacere di stilare un elenco a me sembra una roba ossessiva assai, e per ascoltare contenuti anali di questa portata solitamente prendo una parcella, mai che me li sia inflitti gratis o addirittura pagando, come nel tuo caso.

Ti saluto e ti auguro un buon proseguimento nelle tue attività, spero di leggere presto una recensione del tuo prossimo romanzo dove non si parli di ecologia e di uccelli e forse potremo rivederci, fino ad allora addio. 230