I did not mean to be absent all this time. Between the polar vortex and the month turning into the snowiest February on record (and in the top ten of snowiest months on record), I’ve been shoveling snow or recovering from shoveling snow pretty much every day. I’ve heard a number of climate change doubters try to use all this as proof that climate change isn’t happening. But weather is not climate.
I have read and listened to some interviews with climate experts who indicate that polar vortexes (vortices?) might actually become more frequent as the climate continues to warm. With the Arctic ice melting, the jet stream is becoming more erratic. A warmer arctic is still cold, and the various ways air pressure used to work to keep the jet stream stable and the worst of the cold up in the Arctic is breaking down. As it continues to break down, it becomes more likely that while winter in Minnesota is overall warmer, there will be more frequent outbreaks of extreme cold. Yay.
So it was with great interest that I read The End of the End of the Earth by Jonathan Franzen. I have not read Franzen before. I know he gets knocked on a lot, sticks his foot in it, stirs the hornet’s nest and all that. But he is also an avid birder and I thought these essays might see him taking a hard line against climate change and the damage it is doing to the world’s bird populations. It would give us common ground I thought and I could appreciate his writing and care for the birds and environment.
Was I ever wrong.
His writing is lovely, don’t get me wrong on that. Smooth, strong prose that flows along with barely a hiccup except for the occasional $10 word he likes to toss out now and then. But I can forgive the $10 words because if you’ve got the vocabulary you shouldn’t be ashamed to use it. So I really liked his writing. It’s him I didn’t like.
I tried, I really tried to not be offended by what often felt like condescension. I tried to ignore the ego that was forever looming up behind the text. But the Bubble World he lives in that makes him so utterly clueless about anything that is not a bird or himself is so gobsmacking irritating that I often caught myself wondering how someone so smart could be so stupid.
He jets around the world to exotic places to go birdwatching. He insists over and over that checking birds off his “life list” is not the point of these trips. The point is to experience other places and cultures through looking for birds. I have no trouble with this. What I had problems with is that pretty much every essay was more about checking off the birds than about the experience and the culture. He’s either a hypocrite, deep in denial and self-justification, or has no idea how to write about anything other than himself. It is entirely possible that all three are true.
The real kicker though was in the titular essay. His uncle died and left him a nice chunk of change. He decided since it was an unlooked for windfall he would really splurge on a big vacation. And he would even take his girlfriend with him. She was living in California at the moment taking care of her mother who had dementia. Franzen remarks that his girlfriend was so grateful to him for being understanding about why she needed to move to California that she said she would go on vacation wherever he wanted to. Whoa, wait. Back the truck up. Did I read that right? Yes, yes I did. And Franzen changed from being irritating into a giant turd. He cemented it when, knowing his girlfriend’s idea of vacation was relaxing on a beach, he booked them on a National Geographic expedition to Antarctica. She ended up not going and Franzen took his brother instead.
As if all that wasn’t enough, the whole climate change aspect of the book was disappointing. Franzen is bothered by climate change, he even gets worked up that climate change was not talked about on the National Geographic cruise until the very last day on ship during a sparsely attended lecture on the topic. But yet he claims there is nothing he can do personally to make a difference. The cruise that used millions of gallons of fuel a day, the airplanes he travels in around the world to see his precious birds—the ship would still sail and the planes still fly even if he wasn’t on them so why not be on them?
I would have thought he would have much to say about the effects of climate change and loss of avian habitat. But he thinks that birds will be just fine. They can fly after all so they can move to more hospitable places. Seriously. He says this even as he writes about the thousands of albatross killed every year by fishing boats and the shrinking fish populations the birds feed on. Where does he think they are going to relocate to when all their food is gone? He is terrifyingly fatalistic about it all and in spite of his love of birds, doesn’t do them any favors.
Well, now I have read Jonathan Franzen and I can rest easy about never ever reading him again. Like I said, lovely prose. But the first class schmuck behind the words makes it impossible to enjoy.
He does sound like a total prat
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butimbeautiful, yup, you’ve got that right!
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Or even a complete tosser! Thanks for this, I’ll not bother ever reading anything by him as it sounds like my blood pressure wouldn’t stand it.
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pingingforthewest, yep. The high blood pressure is not worth it. 🙂
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Wow. Sounded interesting at first, but I would probably have similar reaction to yours, so now I don’t even want to read it.
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Jeane, I had such high hopes for the essays and was so frustrated by his fatalistic attitude and his self-centeredness.
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I also find it difficult to blog regularly. Sorry that you have been hit so hard this winter. Here on Long Island we have been having a mild winter. The climate change deniers always seem to amaze me. Weather is indeed different from climate.
I also have not read Frazen but I would like to give him a try.
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I am glad I am not the only one Brian Joseph! I envy you your mild winter. The first half here was mild and the second half is making up for it. I work with someone who doesn’t “believe” in climate change and I just don’t understand since they are really smart. If you give Franzen a try I hope you find him more enjoyable than I did. As I said, his prose is lovely. Maybe his fiction is better than is nonfiction?
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I met Franzen once; he had a nephew at Kenyon College, where I work, and he came to do a reading and a smaller presentation on being a writer. I went to both and found him charming, erudite, and clueless in the way that those of us who work in the Ivory Tower tend to be, with some extra on top.
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Jeanne, I am goad to hear he is charming in person. His cluelessness was so deep in these essays that I wound up in a state of near perpetual irritation while reading him. I expected more from him regarding climate change given his love of birds so was greatly disappointed.
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I have never heard of Franzen, but I really like your straight forward totally honest review.
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Thanks wonderer! I managed to get myself a little worked up 🙂
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Sometimes that’s not a bad thing…
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Heheh Although I haven’t read any of his non-fiction in quantity (simply an essay or two, on topics that I was interested in already, rather than reading because he was the author) I have read most of his fiction and have felt the criticisms levied against him could have been levied against many male writers (but he was a convenient target, already targeted). The anecdote you’ve shared about the vacation thing, though, that does seem rather schmucky. Or, at best, self-interested? Did you have the sense he was being honest, revelatory, about the whole thing, willing to display poor judgement/behaviour?
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buriedinprint, I got the feeling that he was patting himself on the back for being so understanding about his girlfriend’s need to take care of her mom. And then when he chose Antarctica he admitted he knew she wouldn’t like it but thought it seemed like a good adventure and hoped she would think so too. He even delayed the vacation for a year because his girlfriend said her mom was in no state to be left. But I think she was trying to get out of going on the vacation. In the end it worked since Franzen took his brother. But he booked the vacation without asking her first and was disappointed when he couldn’t convince her to be excited about it.
Is is fiction less self-centered than is nonfiction? Or is there still a sense of his ego hiding in there and a certain level of cluelessness about life outside the Franzen-verse? Since I did like his writing if you say his fiction is good I might consider trying it sometime.
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Hahhaha, well this checks out with what I already knew of Franzen. I’m not at all surprised. Every time he does an interview or a profile or anything, he comes off so massively lacking in self-awareness. It’s amazing.
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I was surprised not surprised given all the things I have heard about him. I tried to keep an open mind but he really is a wonder
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I’m not surprised this this at all either. I have read one of his novels and it was okay. I didn’t hate it. But in interviews he does come across as condescending to say the least.
Climate does not equal weather. I wish people would get that through their heads! “Weird” weather events are becoming more and more frequent and it’s scary. We just had one of the wettest Februaries on record in the Knoxville area and there was flooding all over on Saturday. We were fine at my house but others weren’t so lucky. Anyway, I’m sorry this book didn’t meet your expectations.
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Yeah, I’m not inclined at all now to give his fiction a try. There are too many other books on my list and I’m not getting any younger!
I hope you are drying out a little from all your wet weather. We got a week long break from snow but will be getting close to foot this coming weekend and the forecasters are promising more by the middle of next week. At this rate it is going to be June before it all melts!
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Your post made me laugh, thank you! It just confirms my impression of Franzen. We are here on the other spectrum of weird weather events, enjoying 65F in February… this is totally crazy… I wish I could send warm vibes your way. We’re worrying that plants will bud too early and be killed off by sudden re-freeze or lack of rain.
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Glad to do a good service on this one 🙂 Wow! Your weather has been warm! I hope your plants are being smart and not budding early.
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“It’s him I didn’t like.” Ha! Same here. As for the weather, it’s been similar in my area, except we haven’t gotten much snow. It’s just been unusually cold. It’s depressing to think climate change is going to make winters like this one more common.
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Heh AMB, I tried to like him, I reserved judgment for so long, but there came a point when I thought, who am I kidding? I hope you are warming up a little. We are getting incrementally warmer but the snow keeps piling up and up and up. Sigh.
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It’s getting incrementally warmer here too, and by Sunday it should reach 60 degrees! We’ll see if that actually happens, though. Every day has been colder than predicted.
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