Crossroads is a Career High for Jonathan Franzen

The writer Jonathan Franzen is one of the most controversial white male American authors of the past twenty years. Accused of literary snobbery (the Oprah scandal), https://www.vox.com/culture/22691692/jonathan-franzen-controversy-crossroads-oprah-franzenfreude remarkably tone-deaf misogyny, and known as a difficult interview, nevertheless Franzen continues to create amazing novels peopled with unforgettable characters. His latest, the first in a trilogy thank goodness, is simply wonderful.

“Crossroads” is the name of the youth group at First Reformed church from which pastor Russ Hildebrandt has been relieved of his duties. Ostensibly his sin is that he’s too “preachy,” alienating the high school kids who prefer the younger, hipper assistant, Rick Ambrose. But, in fact, we learn that Russ indiscreetly, in a moment of extreme oversharing, necessary for Crossroads members, has confessed to an impressionable teenage girl, that he no longer sexually desires his wife, Marion.

Marion is proof positive that Franzen is working to dispel his sexist tendencies. She is such a complex, fascinating work in progress. A victim of sexual abuse whose affair with a married man and her subsequent breakdown at its demise landed her in an institution, Marion is a woman who survived by recognizing what she needed to do to live a simpler, safer life and went after it with intention.

In 1971 she and Russ are living outside Chicago in the First Reformed community and raising their four extremely different children, kids battered by the politics of the times, the drawdown of the war in Vietnam, the proliferation of easy access to drugs, the sexual revolution, and the subtle feeling that all is not right between their parents. How these pressures affect each of the children, Clem, Becky, Perry, and Judson, is at the crux of the story.

And then there’s Russ, a mass of contradiction, a man torn between his passion for social justice, his work with the Navajo nation is renowned, and his lust for the natural urges of a middle-aged man enthralled with a newly widowed parish member. His struggles to be a good person, to find solace in prayer to a god who is not listening, to be a good father, come up short when weighed against his vanity and childishness.

Franzen’s superpower is the way he writes interiority. As each of his characters acts out in shocking ways – though not terribly surprising to any reader raised in the white bread ‘70’s suburbs – Franzen allows us deep into their thinking processes, where each grapples with the hypocrisies inherent in the subconscious self, the desire to be other than what appears on the surface. Motivations that might seem inexplicable become clearer when seen in relation to past experiences of cruelty, resentment, humiliation, or deprivation. Reading Franzen is like taking a full semester course of study in Psychology 101.

The humor is wry and biting, just the way I like it. The characters are infuriating and embraceable, so absolutely human. Franzen has taken the myth of the ideal American family and turned it on its head, and I can’t wait to see where he takes them next.

Damnation Spring is a Brilliant Debut by Ash Davidson

Ash Davidson says she spent ten years writing her very first novel “Damnation Spring.” The love and care she put into it shines on every page. This is one of the finest books I have read this year and I am a bit surprised that it seems to be flying under the radar. With so many authors addressing the climate change crises in their fiction, creating not so distant calamitous worlds, (think big Pulitzer Prize-winning names like Anthony Doerr’s “Cloud Cuckoo Land” and Richard Powers’ bewildering “Bewilderment”), few have returned to the roots of the problem or addressed the real and understandable schism that our country finds itself in now between the believers and the deniers.

Informed by her upbringing in Arcata, California, amid the redwood forests which fueled a logging industry that fed, clothed, and housed generations of blue-collar workers, Ms. Davidson breathes real life into the characters she creates and the land they live and work on. She ably elucidates the deeply complicated efforts of those futurists who, with the best of intentions, wish to save people by destroying them.

Rich Gunderson is a fourth-generation logger, skilled and sought after as a climber, a good man, a wonderful husband and father to Colleen and their little boy Chubb. But he has a blind side regarding his profession. He recognizes the fear in Colleen’s eyes every morning when she hands him his lunch sack and sends him off. He’s seen the wounds his co-workers have sustained. His own father died in the woods, and he wants more for Chubb. He also wants to own the land he works rather than enrich someone else.

Colleen’s dreams are simpler. All she wants is a large brood of kids underfoot every day. A born nurturer, Colleen has been plagued with miscarriages, has just buried her still born daughter, and serves as a de-facto midwife in the isolated mountains where it is difficult for women to get to a city doctor. She has born witness to so much sorrow, so many babies deformed or slow to develop. The native women say it’s just their lot in life. Until…

Daniel is a biologist, a brilliant student from the reviled Yurok tribe, once enchanted with Colleen, he left town the second he could, earned his degree, and would never have returned except that his mother is ill with cancer, and he’s been awarded a grant to study the water in the clear mountain rivers that run through the forests. Daniel remembers a time when the waters were pink and thick with salmon during their seasonal spawning before the logging companies began spraying defoliant to make way for trucking roads and access to the biggest trees.

The set up for conflict may seem obvious but the nuanced portrayal of the many actors in this tragedy is perfection. Each character has depth and substance even when behaving abominably. Colleen’s brother-in-law, Eugene, who betrays Rich fueled by greed and jealousy, and Lark, Rich’s seemingly down and out godfather, a widower who scratches out a living in junk after having been injured by falling limbs, have doppelgangers in every small town in America.

“Damnation Spring” is a quintessential portrayal of white working-class angst, the despair of native American tribes who daily lose their habitat to industry, and the frustration of the educated class who may be good at pointing out problems but lack the empathy to follow up with solutions. This wonderful read should be on every book group’s radar this season!

Joy Begets Joy in Ross Gay's Book of Delights

I have always believed that joy begets joy. I have also been accused of seeing the world through rose colored glasses. That’s fine by me. Now that I’ve read poet, professor, and essayist Ross Gay’s “The Book of Delights,” I sense that I’m in the presence of another soulmate. What a perfectly prescient choice for the One Maryland, One Book program and our local library’s video and discussion series.

Mr. Gay exudes a pure joy and a benevolent spirit. To hear him recite his poetry or read his essays is reminiscent of watching Amanda Gorman’s startlingly lovely turn at President Biden’s inauguration. They share a physicality, their bodies sway, and their visages express wonderment as they connect with their audiences.

I happened upon this collection at a low time for me, in the beginning of the covid lockdown, a full year and a half ago. Gay’s words lifted me up. I felt such a kinship with his observations, particularly those that involved nature, growing things, and food. When he speaks of entering a bakery in his hometown, Bayonne, New Jersey, and being overwhelmed with delight at the yeasty smell of the wares, I too, felt overwhelmed with emotion.

I would say that there are no words but, of course, a poet finds those words. They can be so simple but so evocative. My heart swelled when he wrote of holding very still with a red flower in his outstretched hand until the nearby hummingbird dove in and out sucking the nectar. And butterflies? Lightning bugs? Oh my! His description of shepherding a fledgling tomato plant through a crowded airport, garnering fans along the way, is hilarious and wondrous.

Algonquin Press says that this book was written during a tumultuous time. You might think it was covid but no, it was published in 2019. The tumult Ross Gay is feeling is actually the fear, anxiety, and trepidation that weighs down Black men in America. Gay was in Umbria attending a writing workshop when he arrived at the idea of penning a short essay of gratitude for each day of his life over the course of a year. What a brilliant way to fight despair.

An interviewer asked if he had always been this optimistic and he laughed joyously. He spoke a universal truth. No, he never considered himself an optimist at all. But he discovered that practicing delight generates more delight. In the face of inexplicable sorrow and loss, the joy he found in the overlooked beauty of each day boosted his endorphins. Reading this book will boost yours too. I guarantee it.