Freedom by Jonathan Franzen is one of those literary novels that you can tell within the first 50 pages will be nominated for the Pulitzer. But it isn't necessarily Pulitzer material, just something about it. The characters come alive and the plot, always a distant hill top usually difficult to see from the vantage point of the characters, but nonetheless worth it.
I have been working on a novel myself for some time. I have written many, to completion, but the one I have been working on, my nemesis of sorts, very character driven. Full of depth and long back story. Plot available, but not as prominent as the characters. I struggled for several months and then realized my protagonist needs something, a style, maybe a voice, or a herald from somewhere outside of the normal flow of the creek that he stands upon. He finds a diary of his late mother, and this diary is a long life journey beginning when she is just beginning college and continues all the way through her life until her final entry, which is written as her suicide note.
In many ways, I am reminded and inspired about my novel, its wishfulness, when I read Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. Much of what I have read thus far is a brief synopsis of a life on Ramsey Hill, and then the life's autobiography written as an autobiography, rather than a day-to-day journal. It is something...
I continue to read Freedom now at the same time as reading Ray Bradbury's biography. For some reason, maybe due to the fact that on August 22 2010 it was Ray's 90th birthday, but I feel that his end is nearer than we think, and I am getting nostalgic and wanting to indulge in his life before he departs this world.
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