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

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. ...

Cars and books get recalled for different reasons.  But the brakes should have been put on this recent publication in the UK of Freedom , which careened foolishly, skidding on typos.   Franzen has insisted his fans be allowed to exchange their compromised copies for the real thing, the final draft, though 80,000 copies in hardback remain in Britain, tantalisingly full of subtle characterisation alternatives, and spelling differences.  Does such a multiplication of authorial intent wonderfully express the liberating nature of published text, which surely must resist the author's will, or is it merely slipshod and annoying? No writer wants typos; each gets them in their turn.  Like other physical deformities (one leg shorter, a pimple, a tic), each carries them as best they can - all books are marred by them, as all bodies have their imperfections.  Typos can lead to value - collectors often like such flawed variants, but in this case the market is flooded with...