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Freedom
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Freedom (2010) (edit title/settings)

by Jonathan Franzen (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

From the National Book Award-winning author of "The Corrections," a darkly comedic novel, set during George W. Bush administration, about a troubled American family.

Summary edit see section history

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job.... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter’s dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter’s college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become “a very different kind of neighbor,” an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street’s attentive eyes? In his first novel since "The Corrections", Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. "Freedom" comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom ’s intensely realized characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

Characters edit see section history

Show all 103 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • “Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.”
  • “Then again, there had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds.”
  • “Behind her you could see the baby-encumbered preparations for a morning of baby-encumbered errands; ahead of her, an afternoon of public radio, the Silver Palate Cookbook, cloth diapers, drywall compound, and latex paint; and then Goodnight Moon, then zinfandel. She was already fully the thing that was just starting to happen to the rest of the street.”
  • “How elaborate did a kitchen water filter actually need to be? Did your 240 sometimes not go into overdrive when you pushed the overdrive button? Was it better to offer panhandlers food, or nothing? Was it possible to raise unprecedentedly confident, happy, brilliant kids while working full-time? Could coffee beans be ground the night before you used them, or did this have to be done in the morning? Had anybody in the history of St. Paul ever had a positive experience with a roofer? What about a good Volvo mechanic? Did your 240 have that problem with the sticky parking-brake cable? And that enigmatically labeled dashboard switch that made such a satisfying Swedish click but seemed not to be connected to anything: what was that? / For all queries, Patty Berglund was a resource, a sunny carrier of sociocultural pollen, and affable bee. She was one of the few stay-at-home moms in Ramsey Hill and was famously averse to speaking well of herself or ill of anybody else.”
  • “Things live or they don't live, but it's not all poisoned with resentment and neurosis and ideology. It's a relief from my own neurotic anger.”
    Walter
  • “He could see this person so clearly, it was like standing outside himself. He was the person who'd handled his own shit to get his wedding ring back. This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones.”
    Narrator, about Joey
  • “'The girls all come for publishing and art and nonprofits,' he said. 'The guys come for money and music. There's a selection bias there. The girls are good and interesting, the guys are all assholes like me. You shouldn't take it personally.'”
    Richard (on dating in New York)
  • “It was the season of migration, of flight and song and sex.”
  • “The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage”
  • “People came to this country for either money of freedom. If you don't have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can't afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life if that's what you want to do.”
    Walter
  • “...the difference is that birds are only killing because they have to eat. They're not doing it angrily, they're not doing it wantonly. It's not neurotic. To me that's what makes nature peaceful. Things live or they don't live, but it's not all poisoned with resentment and neurosis and ideology.”
    Walter
  • “But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.”
Show all 12 quotes from this book

Organizations edit see section history

  • Cerulean Mountain Trust: An conservation organization that Walter works for.
  • 3M: Walter begins his career as a lawyer for 3M.
  • RISEN: Restore Iraqi Secular Enterprise Now
  • Free Space: Created by Walter and Lalitha, this organization seeks to bring awareness to global overpopulation.
  • LBI: A Halliburton-esque megacorporation

First Sentence edit see section history

The news about Walter Berglund wasn't picked up locally --he and Patty had moved away to Washington two years earlier and meant nothing to St. Paul now --but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the New York Times, Walter had made quite a mess of his professional life out there in the nation's capitol.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Good Neighbors
Mistakes Were Made: Autobiography of Patty Berglund by Patty Berglund (Composed at Her Therapist's Suggestion)
Chapter 1. Agreeable
Chapter 2. Best Friends
Chapter 3. Free Markets Foster
Competition
2004
Mountaintop Removal
Womanland
The Nice Man's Anger
Enough Already
Bad News
The Fiend of Washington
Mistakes Were Made (Conclusion): A Sort of Letter to Her Reader by Patty Berglund
Chapter 4: Six Years
Canterbridge Estates Lake

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

Errata edit see section history

About 8,000 copies of an early edition contain errors (spelling and punctuation) and were sold before the mistakes were discovered by HarperCollins.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 3 of 10 in Library Journal's Top Ten 2010. (community list)
This book is in Amazon Book Club Picks. (authoritative list)
This book is in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)
This is book 69 of 70 in Oprah's Book Club. (authoritative list)
This is book 8 of 11 in Publishers Weekly Bestselling Novels in 2010. (authoritative list)
This book is in New York Times 10 Best Books of 2010. (authoritative list)
This book is in American Library Association Notable Books for Adults. (authoritative list)
This book is in Rainy Day Books (Staff Picks for 2010). (community list)
This book is in Time Magazine's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2010. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Jonathan Franzen (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Country: USA
Publication Date: August 31, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-15846-0
Page Count: 562

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3556.R352 F74 2010
  • Dewey: 813/.54 22

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Contains graphic sexual content.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • The Corrections
  • Strong Motion
  • Infinite Jest
  • The Marriage Plot
  • Middlesex
  • The Virgin Suicides

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • War and Peace

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

   
  • War and Peace

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history

   
  • War and Peace

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