{"id":3356,"date":"2010-09-19T15:01:57","date_gmt":"2010-09-19T23:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2010-09-19T15:04:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T23:04:00","slug":"freedom-a-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/19\/freedom-a-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom-A Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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"The most traumatic events ever to befall the longtime front man of the Traumatics had been (1) receiving a Grammy nomination, (2) hearing his music played on National Public Radio, and (3) deducing, from December sales figures, that Nameless Lake had made the perfect little Christmas gift to leave beneath tastefully trimmed trees in several hundred thousand NPR-listening households.\u00c2\u00a0 The Grammy nomination had been a particularly disorienting embarrassment."<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Once upon a time you listened to records to know which way the wind blew.<\/p>\n

That’s a direct reference to the Bob Dylan song.\u00c2\u00a0 Dylan grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, which figures so prominently in Jonathan Franzen’s "Freedom"<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I don’t think many people will read "Freedom".\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly nowhere near the number who buy it.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s long.\u00c2\u00a0 And the paragraphs can be endless.\u00c2\u00a0 And there are words you don’t know.\u00c2\u00a0 And who’s got the time to spend with a tome in a world full of instant gratification, where stimulation is a click away on the Internet.<\/p>\n

In the fifties, the goal was to write the Great American Novel.<\/p>\n

In the sixties, it was to make a great album.<\/p>\n

I’m not exactly sure what the goal is today.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably to be a tech entrepreneur.\u00c2\u00a0 Create an app that is on everybody’s phone that rains down millions.\u00c2\u00a0 Or to make a YouTube video that goes viral.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s not to make a great album.<\/p>\n

In the days of yore, musicians were on the cover of "Time" and "Newsweek".\u00c2\u00a0 That’s an impossibility today. "Newsweek" is analytical, leaving the everyday news to the Net.\u00c2\u00a0 And even though "Time" soldiers on, it means ever less.\u00c2\u00a0 And why put GaGa on the cover to appeal to an audience that doesn’t want to read the magazine anyway?<\/p>\n

And the reason musical artists were on the cover of newsweeklies was because they had something to say, honest and unfiltered.\u00c2\u00a0 We were drawn to them for their truth in the hope it would rub off on us and inspire us to live better lives.<\/p>\n

But now commercialization reigns.\u00c2\u00a0 How can I get the largest audience and make the most money instantly? Values are irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 Moral character is unspoken of, except in megachurches where the pastors live like the rock stars of yore, flying around in private jets, asking for donations while preaching that the end of the world is near, so follow me to salvation.<\/p>\n

I didn’t love "The Corrections".\u00c2\u00a0 And I read not a whit of the hype on "Freedom".\u00c2\u00a0 But I decided to read the book because it was anointed as great, and Jonathan Franzen is such a hatable character.<\/p>\n

I’m not saying I’d turn down dinner with the author, but I wouldn’t expect it to be good.\u00c2\u00a0 I wouldn’t expect him to become all warm and fuzzy, reminiscing about the past, pledging to partake in some mundane activity in the future.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be akin to meeting Jimmy Page.\u00c2\u00a0 The old Jimmy Page.\u00c2\u00a0 The seventies star who dripped candle wax on teenagers and had contempt for the media.<\/p>\n

You see great art does not usually come from lovable people.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather it comes from the hurt, the disenfranchised, those with something to prove.\u00c2\u00a0 And most of these artists never make it.\u00c2\u00a0 And most of those who do live sullied lives of drug abuse and financial misfortune.\u00c2\u00a0 But wanting to be them, wannabes now take shortcuts, desiring the rewards and only tolerating the process.<\/p>\n

GaGa’s outfits?\u00c2\u00a0 Been done better before.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, kiddies may not be aware of Bowie and Madonna or even Alice Cooper’s theatrics, but that does not mean the latter were not innovators, did not stun us with their limit-testing that we couldn’t conceive of.\u00c2\u00a0 GaGa’s building her career, cementing her success.\u00c2\u00a0 And what is her message?\u00c2\u00a0 Be like me?\u00c2\u00a0 Sell out, change yourself, whore yourself out to get the rewards?<\/p>\n

And I’m only focusing on GaGa because she’s successful, in the public eye.\u00c2\u00a0 Worse are the complete wannabes, who haven’t practiced long enough to be good and are bitter that they’ve never gotten their just rewards.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t wait for these people to give up and go to law school.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s where they belong.\u00c2\u00a0 In the workaday world, earning enough cash to overpay to see their heroes in concert.<\/p>\n

And most of these heroes are laughable.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially the oldsters trying to look young as they play forty year old warhorses to fans nearing retirement age and their kids who they drag to the show to illustrate what great music is.<\/p>\n

We live in a fucked up country.\u00c2\u00a0 The level of ignorance is horrifying.\u00c2\u00a0 The rich and powerful have their agendas and the poor are just pawns in their game.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t want taxes on rich people do you, one day you too might be rich!<\/p>\n

And how exactly are you going to get rich?\u00c2\u00a0 Be an NBA star?\u00c2\u00a0 Have a role in a reality show?\u00c2\u00a0 How many slots for that are there?<\/p>\n

Or go to the state school where courses have been canceled and you can’t graduate in four years while the rich go to esteemed institutions that perpetuate the ruling class.\u00c2\u00a0 The gulf is ever-widening.\u00c2\u00a0 Even the right wing paper of record recognizes this, but the poor and religious don’t read "The Wall Street Journal", they just watch buffoons like Glenn Beck on Fox News and claim that the government is ripping them off, as if the government didn’t provide roads and schools…\u00c2\u00a0 Oh wait, they don’t want to send their kids to the public schools, where they mingle with heathens and are exposed to left wing, delusional thinking.<\/p>\n

Hate me yet?<\/p>\n

Well, you don’t hate me half as much as you’ll hate Franzen after reading this book.<\/p>\n

Grammys are a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 But we trumpet them in the music industry like they’re Oscars, like they mean something. But they don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 But it takes an author not in the business to speak this truth.\u00c2\u00a0 That those listening to NPR, so smug in their hybrid SUV comfort that it makes you want to turn Republican, feel they’re better than you.<\/p>\n

Well, this hatable dude, this author, Jonathan Franzen, has nailed the American experience.\u00c2\u00a0 From the do-gooders and holier-than-thou to the rip-off Texan energy barons to the self-righteous Evangelicals.\u00c2\u00a0 But since he encapsulates his beliefs in a book, it’s irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 He should have ranted on YouTube.\u00c2\u00a0 Got kids to dance. Gotten Snoop to rap.\u00c2\u00a0 Then people would pay attention.<\/p>\n

But attention wasn’t his only goal.\u00c2\u00a0 His desire was to delineate truth.\u00c2\u00a0 To the number who could handle it.<\/p>\n

This used to be the desire of musicians.<\/p>\n

Ain’t that laughable.<\/p>\n

P.S. My inbox will be filled with people sending me their MP3s, saying I’m right, that they’re doing what I say and could I just give them a ride to the top?\u00c2\u00a0 They’re too ignorant to see the contradiction in their behavior.\u00c2\u00a0 So desirous of instant fame that they can’t reflect.<\/p>\n

P.P.S. "Somewhere there had been a failure of imagination." Shawn Fanning can imagine the future, but the labels and artists who decried his efforts and their aftermath can’t.<\/p>\n

P.P.P.S. "it’s a lot easier to turn a few billionaires than to educate American voters who are perfectly happy with their cable and their Xboxes and their broadband."\u00c2\u00a0 So I’m at this music education dinner last Monday night. And the powerful Chairman says there’s plenty of money for music education.\u00c2\u00a0 This has us all scratching our heads, so we ask this gentleman to explain and he tells us if we just get our house in order, our ducks in a row, create a simplified message, he can take it to Bill Gates and Eli Broad and they’ll rain money down on the problem.\u00c2\u00a0 On one hand great, but isn’t it fascinating that the public can’t do this on its own, it in its own way? Oh, that’s right, we should pay no taxes, the government just wastes the money.\u00c2\u00a0 So, it’s better to give it all to rich pricks like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina so they can buy power and truly rule us?<\/p>\n

P.P.P.P.S. "Fighting had become their only portal to sex, almost the only way it ever happened anymore." Bruce Springsteen used to reveal truths like this, now he’s papering gigs and complaining about scalpers… Hey Bruce!\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe if you created great new music the problems would evaporate, you could play to sold-out stadiums once again!\u00c2\u00a0 As for scalpers…\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t see you going to paperless tickets so fast.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m only singling out the Boss because he was great once, and on the covers of "Time" and "Newsweek" too.\u00c2\u00a0 But that was thirty five years ago…<\/p>\n

P.P.P.P.P.S. "It really was a lot like the deep shit that got stirred up when a married couple fought: once certain things had been said how could they ever be forgotten again?"\u00c2\u00a0 Like that old girlfriend who made an anti-semitic remark.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no coming back from that.<\/p>\n

P.P.P.P.P.P.S. "Never been a washcloth user, no."\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the little things that bond us, that make our hearts sigh and leave us pledging fealty to artists.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember using a washcloth with my mother in the tub as a child, but since then I find them useless.<\/p>\n

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. About the people who come to New York City: "’The girls all come for publishing and art and nonprofits,’ he said.\u00c2\u00a0 ‘The guys come for money and music.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a self-selection bias there.\u00c2\u00a0 The girls are good and interesting, the guys are all assholes like me.’"<\/p>\n

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. "yes, he had a fatal weakness for a certain smart depressive kind of chick,"\u00c2\u00a0 No, this is not me.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ve got a friend who married the same woman three times.\u00c2\u00a0 Only worse-looking and more of an asshole.\u00c2\u00a0 And another friend who rejected a compassionate mate to marry a shrew just like his mother.\u00c2\u00a0 How to explain this?\u00c2\u00a0 By reading stuff like this in a book.<\/p>\n

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. "You can Nexis me all night without finding one direct quote from my forty-seven years in business"\u00c2\u00a0 It’s only the shameless wannabes who want press, accolades and fame.\u00c2\u00a0 The truly rich, those who truly run our country, they like their anonymity.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell how often do Jimmy Iovine and Doug Morris go on the record?\u00c2\u00a0 And if you think they’re powerful, you don’t know who truly runs this country.<\/p>\n

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. "She needed to feel extraordinary, and becoming an Emerson reinforced her feeling that she was, and when she started having children she needed to feel that they, too, were extraordinary, so as to make up for what was lacking at her center."\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re well-adjusted, you’re not an artist.\u00c2\u00a0 An artist is not captain of the football team, not class valedictorian, he’s not the most popular cat in school.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s the guy or girl many deride…yet want to grab the coattails of when they finally make it.<\/p>\n

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. "even a horrible marriage was less lonely than no marriage at all."\u00c2\u00a0 Loneliness, the scourge of humanity.\u00c2\u00a0 But never mention it in public, you’ll become an instant outcast.\u00c2\u00a0 Think twice before you get divorced.<\/p>\n

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S.\u00c2\u00a0 And now the piece-de-resistance.\u00c2\u00a0 Slap your own back if you made it this far, I’m gonna provide a nugget that’ll make the effort worth it.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re one of those people who persevere, who endure the bad times to get to the good, who don’t give up as soon as the going gets rough, even though the rewards may not be visible ahead.\u00c2\u00a0 Anything not worked for is not worth having.\u00c2\u00a0 And drumroll please…\u00c2\u00a0 "People came to this country for either money or freedom.\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily."\u00c2\u00a0 This explains the current political environment better than any of the bloviators on either Fox News or MSNBC.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what artists have conventionally provided, insight.\u00c2\u00a0 Tell me again what insight GaGa is providing?\u00c2\u00a0 Case closed.<\/p>\n

\n
Freedom: A Novel<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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