A Review of Jonathan Franzen’s “Crossroads”
Part One of Three of an Epic Family Saga
The best story I know about Jonathan Franzen, and I only vaguely remember where I read this (a profile in Time magazine while waiting for a haircut?), is he is so focused on his craft of writing that he has jimmied the Ethernet port out of his laptop so he won’t be tempted to surf the Internet when he should be writing. If that isn’t a sign of a commitment to one’s art, I don’t know what is. However, Franzen is famous for other reasons. Of course, everyone knows about his feud with Oprah Winfrey. His 2001 novel, The Corrections, won a National Book Award, to boot. Now, Franzen is back in Corrections territory with another long book that’s about another dysfunctional family. Crossroads, a firebrick of a novel that’s nearly 600 pages long, is the first part of a proposed trilogy that takes the characters from the early 1970s (the setting of this book) up until the present day. Called A Key to All Mythologies, this series just might be the most epic thing that Franzen has ever written or attempted. Already, as I write these words, the early reviews appear to be gushing with praise, calling Crossroads his best novel so far. Better than The Corrections? Hard to say. While Crossroads is a good read, I had particularly pleasant memories of reading The Corrections, so I’m not sure which book is better. Crossroads can be a bit of a beast to get through, and it all leads up to one massive series of cliffhangers, so perhaps this is a case where the whole series, once published, should be judged and not the individual, introductory novel.
Crossroads takes its name from the titular youth church group featured within its pages. Set in a Chicago suburb called New Prospect, whose name will become ironic as the book progresses, the story is centred on the Hildebrandt family. The father, Russ, is a pastor at a progressive church who has been kicked out of running Crossroads for a variety of reasons and is now smitten with a younger, widowed parishioner. Mother Marion is holding on to secrets of her own, secrets that she hasn’t even told her husband about. Becky, the sole daughter, is falling in love with a folk musician who is already dating someone else; she has also come into a large inheritance from her aunt that everyone wants a piece of. Clem, the eldest brother, is away at college but walks away from school and his girlfriend to enlist to serve in Vietnam. Perry, the middle brother, is essentially a teenage alcoholic and drug abuser — selling drugs to his peers, at that — who is simultaneously brilliant and gifted. And then there’s a young, nine-year-old son named Judson that we don’t get to hear from much, not in this book. Instead, the book alternates between the voices of mother and father, and the three oldest siblings, marching backward and forward through time.
If you want me to be honest, I had a love-hate affair with this book. I realize that it’s a great book and certainly is going to be worthy of some awards, and I love it for its ambitions. However, it is one loooooong read. I have discussed with a friend epic books, and our general conclusion was that most of them didn’t need to be so baggy and digressive. Easily, you could prune 300 pages from Crossroads and probably still come away with the essential story intact. Still, there’s something to be said about digressions and this novel is one you can easily get lost in. The characters are all lovable fuck-ups, if you don’t mind my language, and you’ll spend most of the read cringing at what’s going on — all leading to an exciting climax that you won’t see coming with multiple endpoints that are left unresolved. If you read Crossroads, you’re going to have to be prepared to be in it for the long haul as there is way more story waiting to be unearthed here. That’s what I liked and hated about this book in equal measure. Sometimes, the plot got so wearying and almost depressing that I had to put this novel down for a couple of days just to get some respite. However, I could read on and on this story, such as it is that it is so well written. (That said, I do think that, at times, when telling the backstory of the parents and how they met, Franzen tends to tell, not show, and he additionally rambles. A caveat or selling point? You decide.)
If there’s anything particularly amiss that wasn’t already dealt with as an authorial tic (so, basically, if you’ve decided you are anti-Franzen, nothing will change your mind here), it’s that I wasn’t quite convinced of the setting. If you were to drop the references to Vietnam and move the parents’ backstory up a few decades, Franzen could have easily set this book in the present. There’s no flavour of the era, really — none of the characters has, say, a Pet Rock. I think Crossroads could have been stronger if there was more pop culture in it, not just the odd reference to someone like Laura Nyro, who, as much as I love her, wasn’t as popular as a solo artist as she was writing songs for other people to sing. What we do get, however, is a lot of churchiness. To that end, the novel is pretty bang on and paints a portrait of Christianity that is usually at odds with itself and is hypocritical. I think Jonathan Franzen was trying here to write less of a period piece and write more about his thoughts about organized religion. To that end, he succeeded.
So, should you read Crossroads? Well, if you don’t like to be left hanging, you’ll be disappointed because all the story arcs are not finished. Life goes on, as they say. However, if you want to snuggle up under the covers on a fall evening and get lost for a while in a good, lengthy book, Crossroads might be the novel for you. I have to say that I’m interested in knowing where this story is going, and that’s a high compliment. Who knows how long we’ll have to wait until the next installment of A Key to All Mythologies? But here’s hoping that it — and its successor — is as long and absorbing as this book was. If you already can’t stand Franzen’s level of self-indulgence, you really should steer clear because this is yet another door stopper of a read. But to his fans, Franzen has delivered a showstopper of a book. Since this book is about religion and God, I’ll just say — pun intended — that Franzen is probably preaching to the converted here. If that’s a commendation that you should read this, take it. You’ll probably already know what you’re in for and that this is simply a mesmerizing tale on par with the book he’s already most famous for: The Corrections. However, you know me: I’m really waiting to hear what Oprah thinks! Bring on Book Two!
Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on October 5, 2021.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
