Post-postmodernism in contemporary American fiction: An analysis of
Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the
Goon Squad
Bachelor’s Thesis Literary Studies
Faculty of Humanities
University of Utrecht
June, 2012
Susan Potgieter 3506886
Supervisor: Dr. Susanne Knittel
Table of Contents
Introduction_____________________________________________________3
Post-postmodern theory___________________________________________5
Chapter 2 Freedom
“It’s not about the bird. It is much bigger than that.”____________________12
Chapter 3 A Visit from the Goon Squad
“It’s not about music. It’s about reach.”_______________________________19
Conclusion______________________________________________________24
Works Cited_____________________________________________________26
2
Introduction
In the last decade there has been a growing discomfort by theorists and novelists about
postmodernity and its characteristics in relation to contemporary fiction. The problems of
postmodernity according to these theorists are that postmodernity creates “a language with no
meaning, cynicism without belief, virtual communities without human connection, rebellion without
change.”1 Theorists declare the postmodern era ‘dead’ and talk ironically about a ‘postmodern
wake.’2 They feel that there is a need for a new way of looking at literature and announce a new era:
post-postmodernism.
My thesis is as follows: The post-postmodern novels try to bridge the gap between text and reality.
This is done by promoting a political engagement of the reader. The novels focus on ecological and
social problems. On a narrative level, the characters’ history is elaborately told, and the reader gets a
strong sense of their actions and motives. Post-postmodern novelists try to do re-engage with the
world by promoting a direct political engagement. An engagement with the social world is
emphasized more by post-postmodern novelists than by postmodern novelists. This political
engagement occurs in different forms and focuses on different problems in the modern, twenty-firstcentury world. A social turn can be seen by the growing discomfort of the uses of social media, how it
alienates people and how it becomes a substitute for real face-to-face contact.
I will analyze Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom (2010) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon
Squad (2010) in the context of post-postmodern theory. I will look at these two novels as tests cases
for the potentials and limits of the term ‘post-postmodernism.’ Both novels focus on the United
States in the 2000-s, but also shift back to the 1980’s and ‘90’s, where A Visit also dramatizes a
futuristic New York set in the 2020-s. The novels deal with a lot of different cities around the world.
Besides traveling across the United States, they respectively come past Buenos Aires, Poland, Iraq,
India, Israel and Italy and South Africa. Both novels focus on characterization but in different ways.
Freedom offers the reader elaborate family histories that travel back two generations. A Visit is more
focused on showing character development, by presenting characters at various moments in their
lives. In my thesis I will argue that this focus on characters and their history is a form of ‘political
engagement’ and criticism of the alienation in society the twenty-first century. By reading Freedom
and A Visit as test cases for post-postmodernism, I will describe at what points these novels ‘fit’ this
movement, and where they differ from it.
1
Robert L. McLaughlin, “Post-postmodern Discontent: Contemporary Fiction and the Social World,” Symploke
12.1-2 (2004): 66.
2
Charles B. Harris, “PoMo’s Wake, I.,” American Book Review 23.2 (2002): 1.
3
Freedom and A Visit from the Goon Squad do something different than the novels in the preceding
decade. The texts try to connect with the reader and advocate an engagement with the ecological
and social world and try to tell the reader how to live life in the twenty-first century. This is an
important development in relation to the literary movement of postmodernism that precedes postpostmodernism. These novels seem to make the point that people need to care about the world
again. They emphasize participation in culture, society, technology and politics.
In the first chapter I will explain post-postmodern theory, its aim and characteristics. In order to
define this relatively new perspective I will first turn to describing postmodern theory. What
becomes clear is that post-postmodernism bears similarities to its predecessor but adds emphasis on
a link to the real world beyond the novel. This is done by addressing and encoding warnings about
ecological disasters and social problems occurring in the twenty-first century. In the second chapter
an analysis of Freedom shows the post-postmodern characteristics, but also the (re)turn to realism.
The novel focuses on characters and their point of views. The story is about ecological problems. The
third chapter concerns A Visit from the Goon Squad. This novel focuses on social and
communicational problems. The form of the novel is fragmented, the chapters are dissimilar in point
of view, narrative style, location and time period but this novel too revolves around its characters.
Abbreviations
A complete list of works cited is included at the end of this thesis. References to Freedom and A Visit
from the Goon Squad are cited in the running text. All references to these novels are from the
following editions and are signaled by the abbreviations below:
F
Franzen, Jonathan. Freedom. London: Fourth Estate, 2011.
V
Egan, Jennifer. A Visit from the Goon Squad. London: Corsoir, 2011.
I’d like to thank Dr. Susanne Knittel for her help in supervising this thesis.
4
Post-postmodern theory
Postmodern literature; interpretation problems
Postmodernism has been defined by various critics in different art forms which has led to completely
contradictory definitions. For theorist Hans Bertens postmodernism refers to ‘a complex of antimodernist artistic strategies which emerged in the 1950s and developed momentum in the course of
the 1960s.’3 Looking at modernism in painting and architecture, the focus lies on self-reflection and
anti-representational techniques. Postmodernism in these art forms turns away from self-reflection
and focuses on representational practices. For literature the movement is contrary: postmodern
literature is a move away from narrative, representation and a turn towards self-reflection and
aesthetic autonomy.4 Depending on the artistic discipline, postmodernism is either a radicalization of
the self-reflexive moment within modernism, a turning away from narrative and representation, or
an explicit return to narrative and representation. Bertens argues that, if there is a common
denominator in all the different postmodernisms of different art forms and times, it is that they all
reflect a crisis of representation: ‘a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real, in the
widest sense.’5 However, crisis of representation is also a modernist issue. In 1936, two decades
before the presumed postmodern era, Walter Benjamin argued in his essay “The Storyteller” that
‘The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.’6
Already in the modernist era, Benjamin signaled a ‘decay’ in storytelling and representational
possibilities. The postmodern characteristics according to Hans Bertens were apparently also a
problem in modernist literature. It becomes clear that it is very difficult to assign with any certainty
characteristics to postmodernism.
Linda Hutcheon tries to overcome this problem of definition by arguing that one should be very
specific when talking about postmodernism in fiction: ‘the term postmodernism, when used in
fiction, should … best be reserved to describe fiction that is at once metafictional and historical in its
echoes of the texts and contexts of the past.’7 Hutcheon calls postmodern literature ‘historiographic
metafiction.’ Historiographic metafiction is characterized by ‘intense self-reflexivity and a claim
3
Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern: A History (London: Routledge, 1995), 3.
Bertens, Idea of the Postmodern, 3-4.
5
Ibidem, 11.
6
Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” (1936): 2-3, accessed May 27, 2012,
[http://slought.org/files/downloads/events/SF_1331-Benjamin.pdf].
7
Linda Hutcheon, “Historiographic Metafiction. Parody and the Intertextuality of History,” in Intertextuality and
American Fiction (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989), 3, accessed May 27, 2012,
[https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/10252/1/TSpace0167.pdf].
4
5
towards historical events and personages.’8 Her definition of postmodernist literature is thus very
limited, and it leaves out novels that are considered postmodern by other theorists, because they do
not include historical events or characters. Hutcheon argues that historiographic metafiction
incorporates the domains of literature, history and theory, in the sense that it has a theoretical selfawareness of history and fiction as human constructs.9 Postmodern theory is informed by history and
fiction as a construction made by humans. For Hutcheon this means that ‘the familiar humanist
separation of art and life (or human imagination and order versus chaos and disorder) no longer
holds.’10 Because history and fiction are both human constructs, the distinction between art and life
is uncertain.
Postmodernism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and apolitical. Hutcheon counters this
accusation by arguing that historiographic metafiction is not ahistorical:
When its critics attack postmodernism for being what they see as ahistorical (as do Eagleton,
Jameson, and Newman), what is being referred to as "postmodern'' suddenly becomes unclear,
for surely historiographic metafiction, like postmodernist architecture and painting, is overtly
and resolutely historical-though, admittedly, in an ironic and problematic way that
acknowledges that history is not the transparent record of any sure "truth." 11
Firstly, historiographic metafiction is historical in the sense that through its (ironic) reworking of the
past, i.e. historical characters or stories, it connects the literary text to the historical one, in such a
way that you cannot be sure what ´real´ is anymore. Secondly, historiographic metafiction is
historical in the sense that it foregrounds the idea of history as a narrative, an argument that Hayden
White makes in “The Historical Text as Literary Artefact.”12 Historiographic metafiction makes claims
to both the literary and historical discourse. The past did really exist, but we can only know this past
through texts and therein lies its connection to the literary.13 Hutcheon ‘admits’ that historiographic
metafiction problematizes the idea that history and language are pure representations of reality.
Instead, historiographic metafiction shows that there is no transparent record of ‘truth.’ The
theorists that Hutcheon mentions, Terry Eagleton and Frederic Jameson, are critics whose thoughts
are deeply rooted in Marxist tradition. Marxist criticism seems to conflict with postmodern theory in
8
Linda Hutcheon, Poetics of Postmodernism; History, Theory, Fiction (Oxon: Routledge, 1988), 5.
Hutcheon, Poetics of Postmodernism, 5.
10
Ibidem, 7.
11
Ibidem, 10.
12
Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artefact,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism. 2nd
edition, ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), 1536 -1553.
13
Hutcheon, “Historiographic Metafiction,” 10.
9
6
its basic assumptions. Eagleton and Jameson argue that postmodernism is characterized by its
disinterest in politics.14
Hans Bertens’ very broad definition, which could also apply to modernism, and Linda Hutcheon’s
specific idea about postmodernism in fiction show that it is very difficult to theorize and circumscribe
postmodernism. In Beginning Theory Peter Barry formulates a ‘working definition’ of postmodernism
and sums up what postmodernist critics do in actual practice. Postmodern critics foreground
‘intertextual elements, like parody, pastiche and allusion, in all of which there is a large extend of
reference between one text and the other, rather than between the text and a safely external
reality.’15 A technique used in postmodern fiction to foreground self-reflection of the novel is
metafiction. The technique of metafiction functions as a reflection for the reader on the fictitious
nature of literature or as a focus on the artificiality of the story.16 Metafiction foregrounds the
artificiality of the novel and therefore the novel is directed to itself and not to the worldly discourse,
hence the assertion that postmodernism is ahistorical and apolitical.
The end of postmodernism?
There are critics who claim that the end of postmodernity has come. Charles B. Harris gives in his
article “PoMo’s Wake, I” the following statement:
Postmodernism is dead. Long live postmodernism. Although PoMo’s wake has dragged on for
several years now, the corpse remains suspiciously lively. ... It continues to walk among us, not
only prompting frequent sightings … but producing offspring, another generation of novelists
whose fiction, while bearing clear family resemblances, has staked out new directions of its
own—following in the wake of the wake, as it were. 17
Even though ‘PoMo’ has been declared dead by Harris and even buried by philosopher Alan Kirby,18 it
did not end, but evolved into something new, just like modernist characteristics were used in
postmodern fiction. One can also argue that it is useless to declare a movement ‘dead’ and that is
more accurate to state that postmodernism is no longer the dominant movement, and that a new
dominant form is emerging.
14
Geoffrey Kantaris, “Avant-garde / Modernism / Postmodernism,” (seminar paper published online, 1997),
accessed 28 May 2012, [http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/egk10/notes/postmodernism.htm].
15
Peter Barry, “Postmodernism,” in Beginning Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 87.
16
Ann Rigney & Kiene Brillenburg Wurth, Het leven van teksten (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,
2008), 409.
17
Harris, “PoMo’s Wake, 1.
18
Alan Kirby, “The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond, ” Philosophy Now 58 November/December (2006):
accessed 29 May, 2012,
[http://www.philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond].
7
With the occurrence of postmodernism we saw that this movement intensified modernist
techniques. This is also the case with post-postmodern fiction. Harris, as well as McLaughlin in “PostPostmodern Discontent,” argues that it is a matter of emphasis between postmodernism and postpostmodernism, rather than a clear distinction: ‘The emphasis among … the post-postmodernists is
less on self-conscious wordplay and the violation of narrative conventions and more on representing
the world we all more or less share.’19 According to McLaughlin and Harris, post-postmodern
novelists are more concerned with constituting a world that resembles our own, rather than
constructing an experimental novel that breaks with previous forms of literature.
Of course, the term ‘post-postmodernism’ does not go without its own set of difficulties. By re-using
the terms ‘modernism’ and ‘postmodernism,’ the movement of post-postmodernism invokes all
these connotations and interpretation problems that come with these previous terms. Earlier use of
the term post-postmodernism mock the fashion-driven need for new terminology. In 1975 the New
Yorker, for instance, published a satirical “letter to the literary critic” mocking the rapid succession of
literary fashions and toying with “Post-Post-Modernism” as a term for the movement after
postmodernism.20 But within one year after the New Yorker publication the term was used with
increasing seriousness by literary critics like Alan Wilde, Kimberly Benston and Charles Altieri.21 As
architect Tom Turner states in his work City as a Landscape: a Post-postmodern View of Design and
Planning: “Let us embrace post-postmodernism—and pray for a better name.”22
Post-postmodern theory
According to Stephen J. Burn, author of Franzen at the End of Postmodernism, the new novelists grew
up in a world dominated by a postmodern perspective and are influenced by postmodern critique.23
This influence can be seen in the way post-postmodernists on the one hand work with postmodernist
techniques, and on the other hand take them in a new direction. Burn argues that the ‘legacy’ of
postmodernism can be seen in the way post-postmodernists look back to postmodernism and
dramatize its roots within this movement.24 This is done by allusions to literary ancestors and the
continuing ambition to produce encyclopedic masterpieces.25 Post-postmodern novels focus more on
19
McLaughlin, “Post-postmodern Discontent,” 66.
Stephen J. Burn, Jonathan Franzen at the End of Postmodernism (London: Continuum, 2008), 17.
21
Burn, Jonathan Franzen, 17-18.
22
Tom Turner, City as Landscape: A Post-Postmodern View of Design and Planning (London: E & F Spon, 1996),
10.
23
A study about post-postmodernism that unfortunately has not been proved useful is: Nicoline Timmer, Do
You Feel It Too? The Post-Postmodern Syndrome in American Fiction at the Turn of the Millenium (Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 2010).
24
Burn, 19.
25
Ibidem, 20.
20
8
a conventional plot than postmodern novels. In post-postmodern novels, ‘the balance between the
importance of form and something closer to a conventional plot grounded in a recognizable world is
weighted toward plot to a much greater degree than in the work of postmodernists.’26
The post-postmodern novelists are informed by the postmodern critique of the ‘naïve’ belief that
language can be a true mirror of reality, made famous by Jacques Derrida’s ‘there is nothing outside
the text.’27 Yet, they are suspicious of the logical climax of this critique, according to Burn. The
consequences of this are both aesthetic and political:
From an aesthetic standpoint, this means that metafictional techniques are employed with less
regularity and toward different ends by post-postmodernists, and so their fictions tend to
produce hybrid novelistic forms. From a political point of view, this means that the younger
novelist more obviously address the idea of a real world beyond the problems raised by
nonreferential systems of discourse.28
The aesthetic difference lies within the use of postmodern features in post-postmodern novels. Postpostmodern novels do employ postmodern techniques but less often than postmodern novels. Postpostmodernists also use these techniques to a different extent and in a less self-referential way. The
metafictional devices used in the novels are not intended to distance the reader from reality, but
support a better understanding of the characters and the various ways to express oneself with all the
different possibilities the twenty-first century offers. We will see examples of this in A Visit from the
Goon Squad.
From a political point of view, the post-postmodern novelists refer to a real world beyond the book.
Post-postmodernists are aware of the things postmodernism has taught us; that we can only know
the world through language and layers of representations. This knowledge is shown by giving
different perspectives of the same account, where the subjective accounts are all equally valuable.
Their aim is not to only problematize the idea of truth and show that one can never acquire reality in
a transparent way, but mainly to find a solution for this representational problem.
To re-engage with the world beyond the book, the post-postmodern novelists foreground problems
occurring in the twenty-first century.29 They encode warnings about the environmental future by
focusing on for example ecological problems, or by addressing the ‘question of an engagement with
the social world.’30 Freedom focuses on global issues concerning nature and its resources,
26
Ibidem, 20.
Ibidem, 20.
28
Ibidem, 20-21.
29
Ibidem, 21.
30
Ibidem, 22.
27
9
endangered species and overpopulation. A Visit from the Goon Squad deals with social alienation
and the consequences of the extensive use of social media. By addressing ecological problems, postpostmodernism resembles ecocriticism. In her introduction to the landmark 1996 collection The
Ecocriticism Reader, Cheryll Glotfelty proposes that ecocriticism might be defined most simply as:
‘the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment.’31 Ecocritics take on
‘an earth-centred approach to literary studies’.32 They deal with the distinction between culture and
nature (where does culture end and nature begins?) and re-read canonical works with attention to
the representation of the natural world. Ecocritical reading turns ‘the conventional manner of
reading inside out.’33 In more conventional reading strategies the outer world would function as a
setting or as a signifier for the inner world and feelings of the character. Just like Peter Barry argues
in Beginning Theory: ‘A storm is a storm’ for ecocritics, and not a metaphor for the inner turmoil or
anger of a character.34 Post-postmodernists also focus on ecological problems, but ‘the earth’ is not
the center of their novels, but just one of the ways, next to social and economic problems, to
advocate an engagement of the reader.
Post-postmodern novels put more emphasis on characters than postmodern novels do. Burn argues
that ‘each successive major literary movement in the past 100 years has routinely announced that it
had a more tenacious grasp on character than its predecessor.’35 For example, Virginia Woolf accused
the Edwardian novelists of not being interested in the character itself. And, in parallel, John Barth
claimed that his postmodernism rediscovered characterization, something that modernism neglected
to do.36 In short, the turn to characterization is not as straightforward as it seems. The difference in
postmodern characterization and post-postmodern characterization lies in the degree of personal
history that is given by the author, and according to Burn, this is linked to alternative treatments of
time. 37 This alternative treatment of time is dramatized by the use analepses, a ‘flashing back’ to an
earlier point in the story. The characters’ history is explained, so the reader gets a fuller sense of
their choices and motivations. An alternative treatment of time can also result in prolepses, a point
that is not regarded by Burn. This ‘flashing forward in time’ is less regularly used in fiction than
analepsis, and is considered to be more experimental, because the novelists dramatize events that lie
in the future and have not happened yet.
31
Cheryll Glotfelty & Harold Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader. Landmarks in Literary Ecology (Georgia:
University of Georgia Press, 1996), xviii.
32
Glotfelty & Fromm, Ecocriticism Reader, xviii.
33
Peter Barry, “Ecocriticism,” in Beginning Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 250.
34
Barry, “Ecocriticism,” 250.
35
Burn, Jonathan Franzen, 23.
36
Ibidem.
37
Ibidem, 24.
10
According to Burn, the younger generation of writers believes more in ‘the shaping influence of
temporal process’ - the idea that things that happened to you in the past make a difference to who
you are in the present.38 The new novelists believe in the genetic inheritance of earlier generations.
Ursula K. Heise argues that ‘postmodernist novels focus on the moment or the narrative present at
the expense of larger temporal developments.’39 Post-postmodernism centers on these ‘larger
temporal developments’ by putting extensive family histories forward, and by explaining certain
traits of characters as inherited. This notion is portrayed in the extensive dramatization of family
histories.
Ultimately, the difference between postmodern novels and post-postmodern novels is a matter of
emphasis on specific characteristics, rather than a clear distinction. Metafictional techniques are less
frequently employed in post-postmodern fiction and to a non-ironic, self-referential extent. Postpostmodern novels advocate a political engagement by addressing ecological and social problems. A
new generation of writers focuses more on characterization by giving extensive family histories to
clarify certain actions.
38
Ibidem, 25.
Ursulu K. Heise, Chronoschisms: Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 64.
39
11
Chapter 2
Freedom
“It’s not about the bird. It is much bigger than that.”40
In “American Writing Today” novelist William T. Vollmann urges contemporary writers to address
‘important human problems’ and argues that the novelists should try to ‘seek for solutions for those
problems.’41 The novel Freedom deals with problems concerning the twenty-first century. The planet
is overpopulated, nature and wildlife are in decay and nature’s resources are becoming scarce. The
novel advocates a responsibility from the reader by showing that these problems start with decisions
made in the private sphere. Despite the fact that Freedom is written in a realistic style, I will argue
that the novel is post-postmodern because it deals with the legacy of postmodernism. Franzen does
not employ postmodern characteristics like Jennifer Egan does in A Visit from the Goon Squad (which
we are going to see in the next chapter), and represents one end of the post-postmodern spectrum.
Form
Comprising over 500 pages, Freedom is a lengthy novel. It shows the life and problems of Walter and
Patty Berglund and their children, Jessica and Joey. The novel begins with an introduction of the
Berglund family by their gossip-loving neighbors in St. Paul, Minnesota. The reader gets an outside
view of the family, who are popular, liberal, but not very knowable. The family eventually falls apart
when their son Joey moves in with the next-door neighbors the Monaghans, a Republican workingclass family. The section that follows is an inside view and autobiographical manuscript by Patty
Berglund, “Mistakes Were Made,” composed at her therapist’s suggestion. After Patty’s lengthy
digression of all her mistakes, the novel skips two years ahead to 2004 and continues with chapter
about Richard Katz, Walter’s college friend and now a successful rock-musician. After that Joey
Berglund is the protagonist of the following chapter, then Walter. This sequence of chapters about
Richard, Joey and Walter repeats itself and then follows a letter from Patty ‘to her reader’. The novel
ends with a perspective from the neighbors in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
Perspectivism in Freedom
The novel changes in perspective between the different protagonists of the story. With this structure
the reader gets a good idea about the actions and statements of the characters. Certain actions in
the novel get a different meaning when the perspective shifts. For instance, according to the gossipy
40
41
Jonathan Franzen, Freedom (London: Fourth Estate, 2011), 210.
William T. Vollmann, “American Writing Today: A Diagnosis of the Disease,” Conjunctions 15 (1990): 358.
12
neighbors, the decline of the Berglunds is caused by Joey’s moving out, however the reason for Patty
is her guilt over her affair with Richard. A second example is when Joey, after moving out, visits his
parents and tells them about the contract he signed for LBI - a company that gains profit from the
invasion in Iraq. Walter is enraged by Joey’s decision to go into business with LBI and gets even
angrier by Joey’s ‘Republican smirk’ (F, 326). The reader is willing to go with along Walter’s point of
view, because at this point in the novel Joey has made a lot of morally ambiguous choices. About 100
pages later, the reader gets to know that Joey ‘smiled fiercely to keep himself from crying’ (F 404). He
did care about his father’s opinion, but was too proud to tell him so. Another example of the change
of meaning when the perspective shifts is when Patty shares her experience about the road trip she
and Richard took, before Walter and Patty got together. Patty was disappointed that Richard did not
want to sleep with her. Patty interprets this as a complete lack of Richard’s interest for her. Even
though Richard is a notorious womanizer, this lack of interest is not difficult to perceive because he
has been very unpleasant to Patty. The reader is willing to go with Patty’s account, but later we find
out that Richard was interested and that he actually did like her. He, however, would not sleep with
her for the sake of Walter, who was already in love with her at that time. In these three cases,
Franzen has led the reader to a certain assumption, only to insert a later scene that forces to discard
these presuppositions. The reader’s first ideas, that Joey is the center of the family and that his
departure destabilizes it; the judgment that Joey is not interested in what his father thinks; and the
idea of Richard as someone who does not care about his friends, have to be revised when the reader
gets to know the point of the view of the character concerning the (revised) premise.
There is no hierarchy in the different subjective perspectives of the characters. Different and
differing truths exist next to each other. This is a turn away from postmodern novels, where an
unreliable narrator often is the protagonist of the story. The unreliable narrator undermines the idea
of one truth and problematizes the distinction between the fictive world and what is happening
inside the head of the narrator. By contrast, in Freedom every character is evenly reliable and
therefore their perspectives constitute equally reliable truths. The novel does problematize the idea
of one certain truth: Instead of giving one perspective that undermines the idea of one truth that
destabilizes the distinction between the real world and the subjective accounts of it, Freedom
establishes equally acceptable truths by giving different subjective accounts of the same occurrence.
Analepses and characterization in Freedom
The novel is not in chronological order and shifts back and forth in time through analepses. By way of
these analepses, the characterization and development of the characters are foregrounded. In
postmodern novels, the tendency seems to be that the reader only gets to know parts of the history
13
of characters when the ‘dramatic necessity of the novel’s present dredges them up.´42 In Freedom,
the thoughts and actions of the characters are explained by employing a flashback. For instance,
Walter Berglund is enraged by Coyle Mathis, a citizen from West-Virginia. Walter’s anger is explained
by the memory of his alcoholic father and brothers. Even though Walter is reminded of his father
when confronted by Coyle Mathis, a construction like this is considered an analepsis because the
content of the memory happened earlier in time than the moment of recollection.
Realism in Freedom
References and allusions to books are a key to understanding Franzen’s shifting aesthetic
preoccupations.43 In Freedom Patty reads Tolstoy’s War and Peace on recommendation of Walter.
The love triangle between Patty, Walter and Richard resembles the triangle between Natasha, Andrei
and Pierre depicted in Tolstoy´s late nineteenth-century novel.44 The allusion to War and Peace
shows a shift in aesthetic preferences with regard to Franzen’s earlier novels. In Franzen’s second
novel Strong Motions (1992) protagonist Renée throws away her books. The list she makes is eclectic,
but in a broad outline, the list offers a snapshot of 35 years of mainly American literature.45 The list of
books can be seen as a preoccupation of Franzen with the generation of American authors that
directly preceded him. In Franzen’s bestseller The Corrections (2002) Chip Lambert sells his
theoretical books: ‘his feminists, his formalists, his structuralists, his poststructuralists, his Freudians,
and his queers …. [he] sold them all.46 In this act of selling the books of representatives of academic
criticism (in order to fund Chip’s relationship with his girlfriend) Franzen seems to suggest that
‘sensuous existence’ is more favorable than academic theory.47 With these allusions Franzen’s novels
establish a dialogue with earlier books. In Strong Motions Franzen tries to align himself with
American (post)modern predecessors and in The Corrections he rejects academic theory. In relation
to Franzen’s earlier novels, the act of recommending and reading (instead of the disposing or selling)
the novel War and Peace tells the reader that Franzen’s preference now lies with Realism.
Jeremy Green, the author of Late Postmodernism, has also pointed to this realistic turn in Franzen’s
novels. He argues that Franzen takes up the ‘task of grounding a reconciliation with realism – a
qualified retreat from the postmodernist literary tradition with which he tried to align himself early
42
Burn, Jonathan Franzen, 24.
Ibidem, 92.
44
James Lever, “So long, Lalitha,” review of Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, London Review of Books, vol. 32 No.
19, 7 October 2010, accessed 29 May, 2012, [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n19/james-lever/so-long-lalitha].
45
Burn, 30.
46
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (London: Harper Perennial, 2007), 92.
47
Burn, 91-92.
43
14
in his career.’48 Realism in literature is a movement that is as hard to describe as postmodernism, and
therefore the characteristics ascribed to this movement are vague and superficial. Broadly speaking,
in realistic literature the focus lies on everyday life, ‘fundamentally, realism is the portrayal of life
with fidelity.’49 The realist author is concerned with the ‘here and now, with everyday events, with
his own environment and with the movements (e.g. political, social,) of his time.’50 Franzen similarly
is preoccupied with these concerns. In an interview he states: ‘I look carefully at certain situations in
the world and try to render them honestly.’51 In Freedom he portrays the everyday life of the
Berglunds who vocalizes ideas about the environment and politics. The reader learns a lot about the
characters, which is something that is also constructed in realist novels. Franzen’s style in Freedom
has more to do with realism, than with the experimental, postmodern narrative style. Still, the novel
interacts with the legacy of postmodernism and can be seen as a novel that is on the ‘realistic side’ of
the spectrum of post-postmodernism.
Story
Walter Berglund is the moral conscience of the novel. He is introduced in the first chapter by his
neighbors as a car-hating cyclist and ‘greener than Greenpeace’ (F 3). He gives lengthy rants about
the problems in the world caused by human intervention. His ideas are countered by other
characters in the novel, mostly by his Republican son Joey, his wife Patty and his skeptical friend
Richard Katz.
Global problems, private decisions
Freedom shows that a lot of global problems start in the private sphere of the nucelar family. The
first example of this is having children. To Walter, overpopulation is the cause of a lot of global
problems: ‘The final cause is too many damn people on the planet’ (F 219). Walter links the
overpopulation to ‘global carbon emissions, and genocide and famine in Africa, and the radicalized
dead-end underclass in the Arab worlds, and overfishing of the oceans, illegal Israeli settlements, the
Han Chinese overrunning Tibet, a hundred million poor people in nuclear Pakistan’ (F 220). He argues
that ‘there’s hardly a problem in the world that wouldn’t be solved or at least tremendously
alleviated by having fewer people’ (F 220). By having children, one is, according to Walter, directly
responsible for all the large scale problems occurring on the other end of the world. Walter himself
has two children, which makes him guilty as well.. A second example of a decision with large
48
Jeremy Green, Late Postmodernism: American Fiction at the Millenium (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 10.
J. A. Cuddon, Literary Terms and Literary Theory (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 729.
50
J. A. Cuddon, Literary Terms, 730.
51
Emily Gould, “Interview with Jonathan Franzen,” GoodReads September (2010), accessed May 28, 2012,
[http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/546.Jonathan_Franzen].
49
15
consequence is the choice of what you eat. When Walter and Lalitha are celebrating the realization
of their Warbler Park with a dinner, Walter goes through the menu by visualizing everything that’s
wrong with the dishes that are available in the West-Virginian restaurant:
Between the horrors of bovine methane, the lakes of watershed-devastating excrement
generated by pig and chicken farms, the catastrophic overfishing of the oceans, the ecological
nightmare of farmed shrimp and salmon, the antibiotic orgy of dairy-cow factories, and the fuel
squandered by the globalization of produce, there was little he could ever order in good
conscience besides potatoes, beans, and freshwater-farmed tilapia (F 306).
This reflection is quoted from the chapter “The Nice Man’s Anger,” which obviously refers to Walter’s
state of mind. Walter’s rant should be read with skepticism, because despite the fact that he knows
about all the ‘horrors’ and ‘nightmares’ that come with eating meat and fish, he eventually says ‘Fuck
it, … I’m going to have the rib eye’ (F 306). Thirdly, a decision made within the family that can have
large consequences for the environment is having a cat for a pet. For Walter, cats are like soldiers:
‘Subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of
killers as cat owners stroke their animals’ lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs’ (F 548). The
apparently innocent choice of having a cat is compared to the military. Walter focuses on ‘their claws
and fangs’ and address cats only as ‘killers.’ Cats kill birds and for Walter owning a cat means
responsibility for the killing of birds: every day one million song-birds are murdered by cats (F 545).
With these examples of having children, eating meat and fish, and owning a cat, the novel shows that
global influence begins at an individual level. The choices a person makes resonate throughout the
world and eventually become a local, national or global problem. By stating that global problems
start within the family, the novel advocates agency for humans. It shows that with the choices you
make every day you can eventually change the world. But the novel is not naïve about the advocacy
of making responsible choices. Walter’s character functions as the novel’s conscience, yet his
character is not free of guilt. He has two children (he refers to them as ‘offspring’) and he too eats
meat and fish. His own actions undermine his ideals. If the novel wants to encourage people to do
something good for the world, it also shows that it is very hard to do so.
Corporate considerations
Not only is it difficult to make the right decisions, the chapter “The Nice Man’s Anger” also shows the
complexity of the underlying system in a capitalist Western society. Walter tries to do something
good for the environment, but he gets entangled with large companies whose main goal is to gain
more profit. Eventually, the Warbler Park Reserve he tries to create for the cerulean warbler, an
16
endangered bird species, commissioned by billionaire Vincent Haven, isn’t the goal in itself, not for
Haven and eventually nor for Walter. Al though Haven is truly concerned with ‘the pretty little bird’
(F 300) he also has other motives to buy a lot of land in West Virginia: to drill ‘the shit out of it’ (F
216) for natural gas extraction.
To ensure the land for the Warbler Park, the landscape will be submitted to mountaintop removal, a
highly controversial method of coal mining, where the summit of a mountain is blasted away to
reveal underlying coal seams. For Walter the mountaintop removal in combination with the
conservation of nature is about a ‘new paradigm, green economy and science-based reclamation’ (F
472). However, the media focus on the fact that:
the Cerulean Mountain Trust was in bed with the coal industry and the defense contractor LBI,
was allowing large-scale MTR on it supposedly pristine reserve, was hated by local
environmentalists, had displaced salt-of-the-earth country people from their ancestral homes,
and had been founded and funded by a publicity-shy energy mogul, Vincent Haven, who, with
the connivance of the Bush administration, was destroying other parts of West Virginia by
drilling gas wells (F 473).
The media focuses on the negative effects of mountaintop removal and the fact that to ensure the
land in West-Virginia, Walter’s Trust had to make deals with companies with dubious goals. Just like
the different meanings an occurrence can have on the level of the characters, here too a shift of
meaning that takes place when the perspective changes from Walter to the public. Both perspectives
can be true, as the ‘new paradigm’ does not rule out the negative effects of mountaintop removal.
The mountaintop removal is not the only questionable action Walter and Lalitha have to accept in
order to free the land in Wyoming County. The surface rights of the land are for ninety-eight percent
owned by three large companies. The remaining land is inhabited by the friends and family of Coyle
Mathis, an embodiment of ‘the pure negative spirit of backcountry West Virginia’ (295). In order to
get Mathis and his ‘clan’ to move out of Forster Hollow, he is offered a large amount of money per
acre for their land, and for him and the other families a job is created at a subsidiary of LBI, ArDee
Enterprises, who had won a big contract to supply the high-grade body armor that would protect
American forces in the war with Iraq. Walter is not very satisfied with this solution. He has ‘a low
opinion of the Bush-Cheney venture in Iraq and an even lower opinion of the moral hygiene of
defense contractors’ (F 301). So in order to get the families to move out of Forster Hollow, they are
offered a job at a company that gains wealth from a war that was started for questionable motives,
in Walter’s words, for ‘politics and profits’ (F 403).
17
“The Nice Man’s Anger” makes clear that every decision revolves around politics, in the sense that
every decision is about gaining more wealth or power for one person or a large group. Every decision
that is made, what you eat, how many children you have and what kind of pet you own is escalated
and eventually causes global problems. The novel advocates agency in global problems by showing
the origins to be in the private sphere. The novel however also shows that, on a global scale, every
decision can be compromised and turned against itself.
18
Chapter 3
A Visit from the Goon Squad
“It’s not about music. It’s about reach.”52
Freedom addresses the reader by dramatizing ecological problems such as near-extinct species and a
decline of the world’s resources. The novel tries to engage the reader with the world by focusing on
the idea that all these problems start in the private sphere of the family. A Visit from the Goon Squad,
Jennifer Egan’s mosaic-like novel, tries to engage the reader by focusing on problems caused by
media, with an emphasis on online social media platforms. Through (social) media, people are easily
deceived, and one cannot be sure if the ‘facts’ and information that are transmitted are genuine.
Whereas Freedom has a more realistic style, A Visit from the Goon Squad is experimental and belongs
to the other side of the post-postmodern spectrum.
Form
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a collection of thirteen chapters. The novel deals with a lot of
characters, but two of them can be considered to be the main characters: Bennie Salazar and Sasha
Blake. The novel opens with a chapter about Sasha in which her boss Bennie Salazar is briefly
mentioned. Bennie is the protagonist of the second chapter. This structure, introducing a character
through the perspective of another character, ranging from close friends or family to people who
only met each other once, is repeated throughout the novel. Both characters, Bennie and Sasha,
reappear in the novel discontinuously at different stages in their life. The novel shifts back and forth
in time and gives different points of view in different tones.
Perspectivism in A Visit from the Goon Squad
By shifting the perspective between characters a different light is shed on them in every chapter. In
the first chapter, narrated from Sasha’s perspective, she introduces her boss Bennie Salazar as
someone who ‘sprinkled gold flakes into his coffee – as an aphrodisiac, she suspected – and sprayed
pesticide in his armpits’ (V 5). The reader gets a very odd idea about Benny because of this particular
given information. This introduction constitutes a certain view of the character that has to be revised
later in the novels. Even though it is still very odd that someone sprays pesticide under his armpits,
the readers learn that Bennie does this after a lice epidemic at his son’s school. Bennie eats the gold
flakes as if they are Viagra pills.
52
Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad (London: Corsoir, 2011), 319.
19
Sasha is likewise portrayed by various characters in the novel. In the first chapter she is the
protagonist. At this time, she is 35 years old and in therapy for kleptomania. She has a one-nightstand with Alex, a man whom she met on the Internet. The reader gets to know her as a
psychologically damaged and depressed woman. This view is emphasized by Bennie’s portrayal of
Sasha in the second chapter, who does not see her as an independent person and wonders why she
is not married and does not have children at the age of thirty-five (V 29). In the next chapters Sasha is
portrayed through the eyes of her best friend in college (who died after an accident), by her uncle
(when she is a teenager and a runaway from home, living in Italy), and eventually by her daughter,
after she has finally married. All these accounts of Sasha at various times in her life give her character
great depth. The reader gains considerable insight into her life and in her problems. The fragmented
form of the novel constitutes this depth, because we get know her at various times in her life
through different people.
Metafiction, prolepses and characterization
By shifting in tone, time and place fast and often and as well as by using metafictional techniques the
reader gets, paradoxically enough, deep insight in the characters. Rather than being inundated by the
novel’s experimental and fragmented form, the characters’ psyches are put to the fore. For instance,
the PowerPoint slides written by the 12-year-old Allison Blake foreground the artificiality of the
novel, but also function for the little girl to tell a story in her own way; a slide journal (V 261). The
unusual style of expression does not get in the way of her characterization, but instead offers an
extra dimension. Other examples are expressions in a second-person narrative and via an article that
is highly annotated with personal remarks. These PowerPoint slides and the annotated article
foreground the artificiality of novel: the PowerPoint slides offer a look into the construction of
stories, and the annotations show an insight in the way the story is written by the author.
In A Visit from the Goon Squad prolepses are employed. In chapter 4, which takes place in Africa, the
reader learns that the future son of an African warrior will become the husband of Lulu, the future
daughter of a New York based publicist ‘thirty-five years from now, in 2008’ (V 64-65). This technique
is used several times more in this specific chapter. The reader is told that Rolph, the son of a record
label ‘mogul,’ will kill himself at the age of 28 and that Lou’s daughter Charlie has to undergo multiple
operations to reconstruct her nose, which is damaged by extensive cocaine abuse (V 84-85). These
facts about Lulu and her future husband are given several chapters before she herself is a protagonist
of a chapter. This shows the reader that the development of the character is an important theme in
the novel.
20
A Visit is more overtly than Freedom in dialogue with postmodernism by employing metafictional
techniques and an experimental plot structure. Freedom has a lot to do with realism in style and is on
the realistic side of the spectrum of post-postmodernism, whereas A Visit from the Goon Squad, on
the other hand, can be considered to be on the experimental side of post-postmodernism. The
novels have the problems they portray in the twenty-first century in common.
Story
The final chapter “Pure Language” shows a dystopian New York set in the 2020’s. This science-fiction
touch to the chapter functions as a warning. It shows were we are headed and what the
consequences of our extensive use of social media are. The chapter’s protagonist is Alex. Everyone
owns a handset, and young people represent the new ‘handset employee’: paperless, deskless,
commuteless, and theoretically omnipresent’ (V 325). For babies and young children the ‘kiddie’
handset ‘Starfish’ has been created, a handset with features like finger drawing, GPS systems for
babies just learning to walk and ‘PicMail’ (320). There are voices against the owning of a handset for
babies and young children. Alex and his wife for instance does not let their daughter touch a handset.
But these oppositions are not commonly heard in this chapter. The general premise is that in the
future babies and children will own handsets and that this is not a good innovation.
Through the wire
People in the 2020-s function as ‘parrots’ in that they get paid by commercial businesses to express
their ‘sincere’ feelings about a certain product or artist. All information known about people is stored
in an online database and available for large companies to both use and abuse. Because of this, the
‘parrots’ can come by their knowledge quite easily. The instigation of parrots has to be concealed,
because when it is revealed that someone is paid for their positive expressions their credibility is
destroyed and the public is disgusted. Alex, who has agreed to function as a parrot to promote the
artist Scotty Hausmann, cannot even tell his wife that he now functions as a parrot for Bennie
Salazar:
He’d spent the afternoon trying – and failing – to tell Rebecca what he’d agreed to do for
Bennie Salazar. Bennie had never used the word ‘parrot’; since the Bloggescandals, the term
had become an obscenity. Even the financial disclosure statements that political bloggers were
required to post hadn’t stemmed the suspicion that people’s opinions weren’t really their own.
‘Who’s paying you?’ was a retort that might follow any bout of enthusiasms, along with
laughter – who would let themselves be bought? But Alex had promised Bennie fifty parrots to
create ‘authentic’ word of mouth for Scotty Hausmann’s first live concert, to be held in Lower
Manhattan next month (V 322).
21
Telling someone what you really feel has been made impossible. Because it is concealed and secret
when someone made a deal with a large company to create ‘authentic’ advertising, one cannot be
sure if someone means what he says or if he gets paid for it. When someone is truly enthusiastic, he
is received with skepticism, followed by the question ‘Who’s paying you?’ Even when someone wants
to be honest, this is overruled because of the communication via handsets. Alex is not able to tell his
wife in person but instead he thinks he wants to ‘T’ (text) the information. This shows that real
communication goes through to the handsets, just like the ‘real’ instigation of the parrots.
The language used for communication via the handset is degenerated to a sort of baby version of
English. ‘U hav sum nAms 4 me?’ is what Lulu asks Alex, or ‘Nu job in th wrks. Big $ pos. pls kEp opn
mind.’ is what Alex wants to confess to his wife. According to Lulu, one of the new handset
employees, the language through the handset and the instigation of parrots is pure: ‘no philosophy,
no metaphors, no judgments’ (V 329). It shows a breakdown of language, represented by the
younger generation. Metaphors are not used by this new generation. Words like ‘friend,’ ‘real,’ and
‘identity’ are words that have no meaning outside quotation marks anymore (V, 331). This is due to
the overuse of these terms on the internet. For instance, Alex has the contact information from over
15000 ‘friends’ on his handset, so it clear that the word friend has been devalued by sheer mass.
(Public) Relations
All characters are connected with each other and are either part of Bennie’s circle of family, friends
and acquaintances or Sasha’s social environment.53 The novel’s structure shows these connections
too. The first chapter, set in around 2007, is about Sasha, who has a date with Alex and tells him
about her boss, Bennie Salazar. In the last chapter Alex and Bennie finally meet, not through Sasha,
but through the playgroup of their children (V 324). Even though the time difference between
chapter 1 and 13 is fifteen years, chronologically the last chapter of the novel follows the first
directly. The closeness of Bennie and Alex is resembled in the form of the novel. So in theory, the
characters are all closely connected with each other. But emotionally everyone stands far apart from
each other. People communicate mostly via the handset, so almost all the time a technological
device is in between people. Furthermore, truth is not told face to face anymore, but through these
handsets, and in a deteriorated language.
Not only are social media deceiving, the media in general are. La Doll, a successful New York publicist
arranges that the public idea about genocide leader General B. changes positively. By arranging that
53
For a complete visual representation of the character’s relations, go to:
[http://www.arbeiderspers.nl/web/Vertaalde-fictie/Vertaalde-fictie-artikel-pagina/Bezoek-van-deknokploeg.html]
22
B. is photographed with a baby blue hat on and getting him associating him up with a young
American actress leads to the change in the news reports about the General. La Doll is well aware of
what she is doing, but for her the large paycheck counts more than the ethical questions she is (not)
dealing with.
23
Conclusion
I have used Freedom and A Visit from the Goon Squad as tests cases for post-postmodern theory, as
explained by Stephen J. Burn. Several characteristics of this theory correspond with the novels and at
some point the novels take different directions. The term post-postmodernism has proved to be
useful in that it invokes characteristics of postmodernism. At the same time it also shows that it takes
a different route from its predecessor. Still, we should not hope for the movement after postpostmodernism to be called post-postpostmodernism. Freedom and A Visit have proven to be useful
to gain a better understanding of the post-postmodernism movement.
Both novels motivate an agency of the reader by addressing problems occurring in the twenty-first
century. Freedom deals with the decline of nature’s resources and the extinction of a bird species.
The cause of these problems is overpopulation. Every choice a person makes effects the world on a
large scale, how many children you have, what you eat and what kind of pet you have. All these
choices are made within the private sphere and consider the family as its point of origin. In A Visit, all
the character communicate through a handset device, which controls their lives. People are
alienated from each other by these devices, because they cannot talk properly to each other
anymore. Truth is told via these handsets, albeit in a deteriorated language that resembles baby talk.
The novels differ in style; Freedom employs a realistic style, whereas A Visit is more experimental by
using prolepses and metafictional techniques.
What is lacking in the post-postmodern theory described by Stephen J. Burn, is the focus on powerrelations from a Marxist perspective. In both novels these underlying structures of capitalistic society
define how people interact with each other. In both novels, the underlying capitalistic structures of
society are affecting the characters in their personal lives. The companies that are portrayed act
immorally in order to gain profit. LBI and ArDee enterprises in Freedom profit from the war in Iraq
and hire 20-year-old Joey to supply useless tank materials to deliver to the American troops in Iraq.
In A Visit characters are bought by companies to recommend and praise their products. The novels
show the worst sides of capitalism and the way in which these companies convince people to make
immoral decisions. Interference by conglomerates is thus inevitable. Walter is exposed to ArDee
when he tries to establish the Warbler Park, Joey gets entangled with LBI when he wants to earn
money quickly. Alex in A Visit is convinced by Bennie Salazar to function as a ‘parrot’ to advertise for
a musical client of his, and sells information about his friends and contacts to Bennie’s company. The
characters under investigation in this thesis, except for Walter, choose to go into business with these
enterprises, but it becomes clear that capitalistic society makes it fairly easy and above all very
24
lucrative to make an immoral decision. It would be productive to explore this Marxist perspective in
other contemporary novels as well.
In relation to power relations in capitalistic society, it is also interesting to further research the use of
media in contemporary novels. We saw in the two novels that media can be deceiving and that they
have a large influence on people. The media (especially the papers) in Freedom shape the idea of the
public about mountaintop removal and these reports result in Walter having a lot of problems
realizing his project. In A Visit, the cunning publicist La Doll creates a different imago for genocide
leader general B. by publishing photographs of him with a baby blue hat and with a young American
movie actress. Eventually the public opinion about him changes and people start to believe that he
was not bad as a leader. It would be interesting to see if this critical note regarding the media is also
portrayed in other contemporary novels.
What is important to note here is that these novels are not nostalgic in their wish for a better world.
Both novels portray a pessimistic view on society, and the characters make extensive use of
technological devices. However, not all innovations of the twenty-first century are necessarily bad.
Walter, for instance, states that he is happy that he lives in this time, because women are
independent and strong (F 293). In A Visit the use of social media and the new technologies that
come with these devices are overused and this overuse functions as a warning for the future, rather
than as an encouragement for the complete disappearance of mobile phones.
My thesis can function as a starting point for other research. In the introduction of this thesis I
mentioned postmodernism in different art forms and it would be interesting to see if for instance in
painting or architecture there is also a turn to a political engagement. What would be interesting too
is researching why there is an urge from post-postmodern novelists to interact with their readers and
try to advocate a human agency in their novels. Which development or events in recent history
changed their attitude towards literature and art?
25
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