Franzenstein Monster?

I walked past a bookshop today, filled with Freedom, the new novel by Jonathan Franzen. On top of the book, with the pride of the Iwo Jima flag, flared a sign quoting Blake Morrison: For now, the only show in town is Jonathan Franzen....

I am sure London is big enough for two shows, but last night, Franzen's infamous spectacles were stolen from off his face, and briefly ransomed for £100,000 before being recovered after helicopters and frogmen searched near the Serpentine. Someone has suggested this was the work of an over-imaginative PR.

Like a eunuch in a harem, I find myself utterly disinterested in this most marvellous, extraordinary book. The idea of Freedom leaves me cold. No, that is too mild. It leaves me -273 degrees Celsius. I think I may have literary exhaustion - I can no longer get it on with such things.

I know 100 brilliant gifted poets scattered around the world, each with a few books out, or one, that I enjoy reading. I love poetry, and I appreciate it, too. I thought I understand prose, the beauty of a great novel. However, while I could see why The Sea was a work of near genius, I balk at Freedom.

Is it because it appears to be relentlessly materialist, in the Woolfian sense? Is it because it appears to be a book that sets out to describe "what America is really like, now"? I have two problems with that offer - one, I don't believe fiction actually is the best mechanism for depicting socio-political truth (if ever it was) and two, I don't care to be told what America is or was like, according to one middle-aged man. Ho Hum. I find Brazil, or North Korea, or Latvia, more fascinating, and Oman, and, indeed, New Zealand. The world is a big place, and yet another tale about Americans grappling with their ideals and largesse and pop culture is so, well, 80s.

Perhaps this last grasp at a Great American Novel has come at a time when America is about to discover it is no longer great. In Britain, that time was the 50s, and a poet, Larkin, caught the failing of the empire better than any novelist of the period. I suspect there are American poets and singer-songwriters doing that now, better too - just as The Wire did. Now, if someone persuades me that the verbal inventiveness and imaginative invention of Freedom is remarkable and transporting, I will make a beeline for it. Otherwise, I have a 1,000 pages plus of Irish poetry to read, in the meantime. And no, Eyewear didn't steal his glasses.

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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