So in all the back and forth between the “genius, of course” and “obviously overrated, why do these male authors keep getting all the attention when women have been writing equally eloquent and relevant novels about the contemporary family right along” camps regarding Freedom, I was thinking I’d ignore it for the moment. But the first two chapters are on The New Yorker, so of course I took a peek instead of doing the two hundred and sixteen other things I should. The first two paragraphs seem quite relevant, very specifically, at least to my little life, and induce that self-conscious shifting around on the sofa of the reader – this reader- that, in my experience, indicates that either the author or I is going to suggest we meet up for coffee sometime because there are things to be said, and heaven knows that can’t be tackled without shelling out our collective last $6.18 to consume caffeine concoctions in a public place.

Go ahead, give it a go:

Walter and Patty Berglund were the young pioneers of Ramsey Hill—the first college grads to buy a house on Barrier Street since the old heart of St. Paul had fallen on hard times three decades earlier. The Berglunds paid nothing for their Victorian and then killed themselves for ten years renovating it. Early on, some very determined person torched their garage and twice broke into their car before they got the garage rebuilt. Sunburned bikers descended on the vacant lot across the alley to drink Schlitz and grill knockwurst and rev engines at small hours until Patty went outside in sweatclothes and said, “Hey, you guys, you know what?” Patty frightened nobody, but she’d been a standout athlete in high school and college and possessed a jock sort of fearlessness. From her first day in the neighborhood, she was helplessly conspicuous. Tall, ponytailed, absurdly young, pushing a stroller past stripped cars and broken beer bottles and barfed-upon old snow, she might have been carrying all the hours of her day in the string bags that hung from her stroller. Behind her you could see the baby-encumbered preparations for a morning of baby-encumbered errands; ahead of her, an afternoon of public radio, “The Silver Palate Cookbook,” cloth diapers, drywall compound, and latex paint, and then “Goodnight Moon,” then Zinfandel. She was already fully the thing that was just starting to happen to the rest of the street.

In the earliest years, when you could still drive a Volvo 240 without feeling self-conscious, the collective task in Ramsey Hill was to relearn certain life skills that your own parents had fled to the suburbs specifically to unlearn, like how to interest the local cops in actually doing their job, and how to protect a bike from a highly motivated thief, and when to bother rousting a drunk from your lawn furniture, and how to encourage feral cats to shit in somebody else’s children’s sandbox, and how to determine whether a public school sucked too much to bother trying to fix it. There were also more contemporary questions, like: What about those cloth diapers? Worth the bother? And was it true that you could still get milk delivered in glass bottles? Were the Boy Scouts O.K. politically? Was bulgur really necessary? Where to recycle batteries? How to respond when a poor person of color accused you of destroying her neighborhood? Was it true that the glaze of old Fiestaware contained dangerous amounts of lead? How elaborate did a kitchen water filter actually need to be? Did your 240 sometimes not go into overdrive when you pushed the overdrive button? Was it better to offer panhandlers food or nothing? Was it possible to raise unprecedentedly confident, happy, brilliant kids while working full time? Could coffee beans be ground the night before you used them, or did this have to be done in the morning? Had anybody in the history of St. Paul ever had a positive experience with a roofer? What about a good Volvo mechanic? Did your 240 have that problem with the sticky parking-brake cable? And that enigmatically labelled dashboard switch that made such a satisfying Swedish click but seemed not to be connected to anything: what was that?

Read more.

I suppose some questions could be, “Am I so stereotypically aligned with the experience of my culture, the very same culture that Mr. Franzen, according to the gushing of one faction of literary critics and commentators, has his finger tip consistently pressing on the pulse of?” and/or “Are St. Paul and St. Louis quite similar, perhaps, to be completely absurd at three in the morning, due to their corresponding prefixes?” and/or “Is Jonathan Franzen such a St. Louis boy, or what?” Background: The only work of his I’ve read is How to Be Alone, which I remember liking very much, but nothing else about it without out pulling it down from the highest shelf in this room, and why bother when I could just Google it, which I’m not going to do either right this minute. This just means that I have not read The Twenty-Seventh City, his novel that is officially set in St. Louis. (Should I?)

Also, did I mention that I will soon be in the market for a Volvo wagon? Honestly, a 240, if it’s in good shape. No, really. I’ve been talking about it for a couple of weeks now. It was my first car, and I loved it, and would now like another. But it must be cheap, and in decent shape, and pass inspection. Seriously, let me know if you know of anyone who would like to sell me such a vehicle, know-it-all Franzen be damned. I’ll take him for a drive, in the new car, maybe, see what all this fuss is about.

Exhibited:
Solo Exhibit
June 2010
Heterarchy: An Ordinary Adventure
Mostly New Work by Amy VanDonsel
Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts
Saint Louis, Missouri

The @ sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users when using the social networking and microblogging service twitter.

An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury. The crane in Japan is one of the mystical or holy creatures (others include the dragon and the tortoise), and is said to live for a thousand years. In Asia, it is commonly said that folding 1000 paper origami cranes makes a person’s wish come true. This makes them popular gifts for special friends and family. A thousand paper cranes are also traditionally given as a wedding gift by the folder, who is wishing a thousand years of happiness and prosperity upon the couple. They can also be gifted to a new baby for long life and good luck.

A heterarchy is a system of organization replete with overlap, multiplicity, mixed ascendancy, and/or divergent but coexistent patterns of relation. Definitions of the term vary among the disciplines.

Wikipedia contributors. “Thousand origami cranes.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Aug. 2010. Web. 3 Sep. 2010.

Wikipedia contributors. “Heterarchy.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 3 Aug. 2010. Web. 3 Sep. 2010.

Exhibited:
Solo Exhibit
June 2010
Heterarchy: An Ordinary Adventure
Mostly New Work by Amy VanDonsel
Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts
Saint Louis, Missouri

The @ sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users when using the social networking and microblogging service twitter.

A heterarchy is a system of organization replete with overlap, multiplicity, mixed ascendancy, and/or divergent but coexistent patterns of relation. Definitions of the term vary among the disciplines.

Wikipedia contributors. “Heterarchy.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 3 Aug. 2010. Web. 3 Sep. 2010.

Exhibited:
Solo Exhibit
June 2010
Heterarchy: An Ordinary Adventure
Mostly New Work by Amy VanDonsel
Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts
Saint Louis, Missouri

Exhibited:
Solo Exhibit
June 2010
Heterarchy: An Ordinary Adventure
Mostly New Work by Amy VanDonsel
Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts
Saint Louis, Missouri