Capture Crossroads Narrated By Jonathan Franzen Available In PDF

Franzen is in peak form, and also back in familiar territory, with this midWestern family drama set in the earlys.
This is apparently the first installment in a planned trilogy, and I am certainly eager to continue the story in Franzen's future volumes.


The family in question is the Hildebrandt family, consisting of parents Russ and Marion and four children Clem, Becky, Perry, and Judson.
The story is told from five points of view, i, e. , from the perspectives of each of the Hildebrandt family members except for the youngest son, Judson,

Briefly:

Russ is the associate pastor at a liberal protestant church who has fallen out of love with his wife and in love with a parishioner.
He is also in competition with a younger, more dynamic pastor, Rick Ambrose, who leads the church's youth group, named "Crossroads.
" The youth group is popular with the local high school kids and is a bit of a personality cult for Rick Ambrose, who focuses more on New Agey psychobabble than on religion.


Marion has a tragic past that she keeps hidden from Russ and the kids, and she is still haunted by it to this day.
In particular, she makes an agreement with an unscrupulous character, which she believes is responsible for all the trouble with her middle son, Perry.


Clem is the oldest of the Hildebrandt children and is a freshman at the University of Illinois.
He is reckless with the feelings of his girlfriend and decides to drop out of school to be drafted into the Vietnam War, much to the chagrin of his pacifist father.


Becky is beautiful, popular, and a good girl, that is, until she falls in love with a musician, Tanner, who already has a girlfriend.
Becky struggles between doing what she knows is the right thing vs, doing what everyone else expects her to do,

Perry is a drug addict and a dealer, His descent into harder and harder drug addiction is accompanied by the onset of severe mental illness, He also risks essentially bankrupting his family,

Franzen's prose is perfect, as usual, He does an excellent job analyzing the psychology of all the characters and paints a realistic picture of family that is falling apart.
I am also intrigued by this portrait of midWestern protestant culture, which is very different from my own upbringing.


Five for each of these five compelling and welldeveloped characters, Pure,senza esagerare.

A me Franzen non sta simpatico ma per la miseria come scrive, Ha questa capacità, questo raccontare, questo addentrarsi nella mente umana, quest'approccio a qualsiasi tema qui la religione che non è mai banale e allo stesso tempo è scorrevole e quotidiano.
E ama le famiglie disfunzionali tanto quanto me, Il suo scandagliare il personaggi, il suo prosare, il suo scegliere le tematiche diverse per ogni libro lo avvicinano quanto più possibile ad uno scrittore classico, in questo caso, a parere mio, al Dostoevskij dei Karamazov.
Uno dei miei classici preferiti e leggendo Corssroads mi sono ritrovata a pensarci spesso, Forse solo io eh, però per piacerti questo romanzo ti deve piacere un po' il mondo classico e un po' il ragionamento filosofico ma non solo.


La famiglia del pastore Hildebrandt è degna di essere raccontata come solo Franzen sa fare, A partire dal pastore stesso fino ad ognuno dei suo quattro figli per non parlare della moglie, con una serie di continui rimandi al passato perfettamente incastrati con il pensiero del personaggio in quell'esatto istante.
Sono tutti e sei odiosi in egual misura, tanto gli adolescenti quanto gli

adulti, non si salva nessuno, tutti credono di essere salvi, come ciascuno di noi a giorni alterni.


È un romanzo di estrema maturità e ho letto che sarà parte di una trilogia, e tutto lo lascia supporre.
Io, fin da ora, non vedo l'ora di sapere dove andranno a finire, anche se Franzen non è uno che lascia grandi speranze.


Ho aperto il primo Nebbiolo della stagione per festeggiare questo libro letto mentre le foglie cominciano a ingiallire, mentre la bora ti fa stringere il giubbotto sulle spalle, mentre l'imbrunire ti trasporta sul divano con una coperta sulle gambe,

Leggetelo quando avete tempo.
Dategli il respiro che merita, come ai vini buoni, Franzen migliora di libro in libro, One of the things I like the most about reading Franzen is the depth of his characters, He really goes in there, to their past, to their every thought, And makes them memorable, people I imagine, people I can see as I walk in a street, I cant read their minds, but if I only could, they would be in a book like this one.
He is classic in the sense that he knows how to build a story that is deep, complicated, and wonderful.

While I was reading this book, something that Flaubert says in one of his letters about writing came to my mind.
He says that writers need to know about everything, they need to study and read, and if they are going to write a story, they have to read constantly.
I feel that in a sense Franzen is that kind of writer, the writer who knows about religion, history, psychology, even brands of guitars Martin and Guild are mentioned, that was kind of great, and everywhere he takes you is with the real world looking in.
Family troubles seem to be his specialty, and the incredible thing is the tension, he never ever looses that, and the result is that you just cant put it down.

Did I mention he is one of my favorite living writers I tried, and I got pretty far, and eventually I came to understand that Franzen's great strength is in the way he forces his characters into situations just slightly too shameful for them to confront, and then he gives them desires that are just slightly too embarrassing for them to acknowledge, and you know what I feel kind of slimed by it.


However masterful the execution of this particularly cramped and small world view may be, I just don't want it in my head.
There is a disdain on the pages for the idea that humans can be more than the sum of their petty grievances and desires.
Crossroads is a welcome immersive, big novel, remarkably taut and involving for its size, But it strikes me as a collage of laughable characters and situations, none of which ring true, Will Matt Groening write the screenplays for the animated The Hildebrandts sitcom series,stars
OMG, too LOOOOOOOONG!!! So welldone, engaging, unpredictable, likeable, at times profound, moving at times, extraordinarily wellcharacterized, dramatic plotpropelling conflict everarising, with stretches of believable, often religious/moralityrelated interiority, steady thirdperson focused on a Hildebrandt family member per chapter, dealing with all the vices and virtues of life, patient narrative pace that's nevertheless always revved up in veering, vervy language, sentences so often starting with some clause creating anticipation for subject and verb, with the locations and psychiatric concerns and some thematics dynamics of generosity as in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men related to DFW grafted into the novel's structure and skin, especially with PerryIQ, drug problem, so smart he's essentially stupid, ultimately tragic.


Really enjoyed reading nearlypages a day, could see the world and these people and care for them, appreciated and admired the novel, but also so often everything seemed to reflect on the author, the characters' insecurities the author's Russ's envy of the cooler Ambrose, and the world so vividly evoked and realistic seemed mechanized if never false, arranged exactly this way by the author lord of that world, each part orchestrated and intentional, rarely inadvertent or intuitive.


The single lingering impression is that Franzen is a masterful author whose mastery is the single lingering impression I don't come away from the book thinking about its themes while otherwise doing dishes etc or with an image imprinted forever in my imagination no matter how vivid the scenes are or a sense of wonder or mystery or elevated perception of the inexhaustible abundance of life I come away thinking Franzen has defended his status as a major American writer.
Which is weird. It's like he gets an A, like he knows the contemporary literary fiction novel production game and plays it so wonderfully well, but there's a grade beyond grades that's unattainable for him, in part because he's too in control, there's not enough room for the reader to cocreate the text

Laughed aloud twice although most of the book is written with a sense of humor, veer and verve the humor is more in the implausibility of every family member undergoing a major life crisis at the exact time.
Will definitely read Crossroads Partand will probably even watch the related series on Netflix or HBO,

Of note, the guitar guy on the cover is playing a blues shuffle in A, like Johnny B.
Goode more than Crossroads Blues, but at least its a blues rhythm form a meaningless superficial cover detail I liked.
This novel might easily be titled The Lying life of Adults, Like Ferrante's novel it's about a dysfunctional family, For me Ferrante's novel was better, more pressing and incisive, closer to the heart and I began to ask myself if I found it a better novel simply because I'm European and not American and so could relate more intimately with Ferrante's world.
There are moments on the news here when you realise how out of kilter America and Europe have become.
Mostly this has to do with how politicised Christianity has become in America, I could understand an American author tackling this topical subject, However, the Christianity in Crossroads is more innocently old school which makes it feel like a very old fashioned environment and novel, thes often seeming more remote in time than the world of The Great Gatsby.

Meaning for the characters is sought almost exclusively in sex or Jesus and often the two are confused with each other.
Mostly the Christian construction characters put on experience is selfserving, The most mature character in Crossroads often seems the youngest son who is six, The characters are all at times deeply unlikeable in their delusions and vanities and resentments, Not that this doesn't make them engaging, Both parents are posturing as adults in reality they are both closer to adolescence emotionally, The two elder children didn't hold enough interest for me, Both are stuffy and selfrighteous and unable to enjoy their youth as if they can't wait to become immature adults.
The adolescent Perry, more interesting and inspiring some of Franzen's best writing, turns to drugs rather than Jesus for meaning and brought the novel more up to date.
I can't say Crossroads ever wowed me but I did look forward to reading it every day, more because of the energy and intelligence and insight with which it's written than the subject and environment.
A buddy read with lovely Elyse,

I'm still mostly locked out of my account here and apologise that I can't respond to comments.
It's super annoying. Two things Jonathan Franzen cant be accused of: lack of humor and lack of words, This book is teeming with both, His humor is subdued where his loquaciousness is glaring but Franzen is an author who knows where hes going with both of them.
If you trust him enough to go along for the ride the essence of the book will stay with you long after the particulars of the narrative have vanished from memory.


I finished this a couple of days ago and already the plot, which comes dangerously close to that of a soap opera, recedes and the question at the core of the book takes center stage: HOW TO BE GOOD.
Halfway into the novel, the middle son of the Hildebrandt family, whose lives and times in the American Midwest of thes Franzen recounts, dares to pose it to both a rabbi and a Lutheran priest: “I suppose what Im asking,” he said, “is whether goodness can ever truly be its own reward, or whether, consciously or not, it always serves some personal instrumentality.
”

The Hildebrandt clan consists of a pair of middleaged parents, three teenagers and a nine year old son.
Russ, the paterfamilias, is the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church in fictional New Prospect, Illinois, Their quest for goodness is not only a personal stance, it is preordained by their ties to church and religion.
They all strive to open the door to their better selves but the results of their efforts dont often match their good intentions.
They strive to connect and sometimes they do, but more often they dont, and the bitterness that ensues further entrenches their selfishness.
Franzen goes to great pains at describing each members said instrumentality that, surprise, isnt very far from that of every other halfway decent human beings out there.


Crossroads is not only the name of the Christian youth group that provides much of the drama in the story, it's also the pivotal point in the Hildebrandts' common history where each one makes lifealtering decisions that, whether they like it or not, are informed by those of the others.
The inexhaustible drama of being part of a family is Franzen territory and once more he revels in its exploration.
I cant say that the parts of the kids resonated with me as much as those of the parents but I admired the precision with which he dissects his characters.


God and sex are all over this book, They serve as these characters primary means of finding harmony and making peace with themselves, God is synonymous to peace here and each member has their place where they go looking for Him, In food or drugs, solitary travel or social climbing, a tour of Europe or farming in Peru, in the safety of a greenleafed Midwestern suburb or in the unpredictability of an Indian reservation in the Arizona desert.


Religion, morality and again sex, are the things these people save for the nine year old, who is probably due for the royal treatment in a future book are constantly preoccupied with.
Theyre trying to reconcile their carnal and spiritual longings, more often than not failing to do so, ending up tormenting themselves, those around them and the occasional reader, with Reverend Russ by far winning the title of Master Torturer.
Franzen observes them with a highbrow detachment that I sometimes found hard to digest, The best moments of the book come when he decides to take the plunge into empathy, In between he gets carried away by his excessive attention to trivial details,

Im thinking now, isnt life just the same A seemingly endless succession of trivialities interrupted at times, for better or worse, from brief heightened states of consciousness Hes a writer who aspires to convey the realities of everyday lives why shouldnt the pace of his books be the same as that of life
I understand the analogy, I really do.
But let me share this: to this day I remember the sensation the last pages of sitelinkFreedom left me with.
I finished that one on a similar November morning in, and the endangered species of the bird that kept popping into that story had also tried my patience.
I was sitting at the same table Im sitting now, in my kitchen, a day filled with the usual chores of a life as ordinary as the lives of Franzens heroes.
But everything had come to a standstill then, until the last word had been read, and when that was done I found myself sobbing, yes sobbing, and could think of nothing else but the power of those words.
Franzen had offered me a few moments of heightened existence and a writer that is capable of offering such a cathartic experience will always have my respect.


He had done it again, to an extent, in sitelinkThe Corrections but he didnt do it now.
Maybe because the ending wasnt really an end but a bridge to the next book of the trilogy he selfmockingly or overambitiously decided to name A Key to All Mythologies.
Despite my grumbling I look forward to finding out if he manages to get hold of such a key, or if his endeavors will be as self delusional as Rev.
Casaubons in Middlemarch or, indeed, as those of his fictional heroes, .