Die Vorzeigeeltern Patty und Walter Berglund geben ihren Nachbarn in St. Paul plötzlich Rätsel auf: Ihr Sohn zieht zur proletenhaften Familie von nebenan. Der Umweltschützer Walter lässt sich auf einen zweifelhaften Pakt mit der Kohleindustrie ein und Ehefrau Patty verabschiedet sich von ihrem Hausfrauendasein. Und was hat Richard Katz, ehemaliger bester Freund und alternder Rockmusiker, mit all dem zu tun? Jonathan Franzen zeichnet in erneut ein scharfsinniges Gesellschaftsportrait. ist ein bedeutsames Buch über unser Leben in einer immer unübersichtlicher werdenden Welt.
The new novel from the author of The Corrections. 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 neighbour 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, 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 - outre rocker and Walter's old college friend and rival - still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to poor Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become a very different kind of neighbour, 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 too much 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.
El hilo conductor de este volumen de ensayos es el problema de preservar la individualidad y la soledad en una cultura de masas.Aunque abarcan temas tan variados como la publicaciones de carácter sexual o el funcionamiento de una cárcel de máxima seguridad, los textos contienen referentes esenciales en la literatura de Jonathan Franzen. A destacar un polémico texto sobre el destino de la novela.
The winner of THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD, the New York Times No.1 Bestseller and the worldwide literary sensation, The Corrections has established itself as a truly great American novel. After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man -- or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal; bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home. Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, The Corrections brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and globalized greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it announces Jonathan Franzen as one of the most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.
Després de gairebé cinquanta anys exercint com a esposa i mare, l'Enid Lambert està preparada per tenir una mica d'alegria a la vida. Malauradament, l'Alfred, el seu marit, està perdent la salut a ca
