Review: Purity, a novel

Anyone who can write a doorstop of a novel like Jonathan Franzen did and have it be compelling deserves kudos. Should you read this book? In my opinion, yes. But nonetheless, here are some sticking points that bugged me and personally left me unsatisfied by the end. We get a first-hand account from a rather unlikeable but interesting character, Pip Tyler, who acts like she has Borderline Personality Disorder. Trust me, she probably does have it and she came by it honestly. Then we hear from Andreas Wolf, a sociopath at best, but one too engaging to not be seduced by. We hear from the only person without a personality disorder, Leila, who is instead a hard-working journalist and lover to the final POV, Tom, who is basically hopeless in one area: the area consisting of his ex-wife. Franzen weaves the stories together without too much of a deus ex machina feel, but for all of his off-page pontificating about writers who are overly didactic, Franzen himself falls victim to this trope, causing huge gaps in plausibility and an ending that left me saying, really? and "meh." It's as if Franzen was the boss and his characters his employees charged with letting the reader know how he feels about the vulgarities of technology and money, and the all-redeeming existence of art and true journalism. (At least it wasn't birds.) We get an up-close and personal peek into Franzen's mindset through his characters about what Franzen himself finds vulgar, and it's too easy to spot to be called subtle. The most maddening of all chapters was Tom's, his account of his mother, and then meeting the most unlikeable character-to-date--Anabel--who would later become his wife and ex-wife. Anabel is a textbook borderline (BPD) and their arguments are dizzying and maddening as she continually mentally and emotionally screws with Tom's mind and reality as only a true emotional abuser can. Tom divorces her but can't break free. More important, Anabel has a charismatic and seemingly loving father who also happens to own all of the agri-business in the United States and abroad, which makes her a billionaire. But Anabel spits in the face (literally) of her father and her family money and insists on living in poverty and pursuing artistic work that is born out of the ultimate self-indulgence and over-blown ego of every hack artist alive. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about Anabel, but I think Franzen thinks she is redeemable because she refuses her family's money and chooses poverty. Not only is this like how no person would act ever, it was as crazy-making as Anabel herself. Tom, on the other hand, is a rather decent guy, but he takes money from Anabel's father, and I think this is supposed to be Franzen's smirch on Tom, because otherwise he's a good man. Personally I found myself rooting for Tom to take the money, and so would any other reader with any humanity at all, so Tom remained rather pristine until he's faced, of course, with Anabel or anything to do with her. By the end, Tom and Anabel are reunited, and one would think that one or both of them had grown, even a little bit, in their respective worlds, twenty-five years apart from each other. But no. They are exactly the same, having the same arguments and conflicts, and so you just end up hating both of them completely. Pip, or Purity, of course, lives up to her name in that she is the redeemore for all, but even she ultimately bows down to Anabel's wishes and refuses money, though she has lived below poverty her whole life (again, how no person would act EVER if told they had access to a billion dollars), but we are supposed to agree with Franzen: we are supposed to find the money vulgar. I'm sorry, I can't. We are supposed to find the Internet invasive, frightening and a platform for hacks. I'm sorry, although it can be, it's not, not all of the time. Furthermore, "boots on the ground" journalism isn't the holy grail of all integrity-sourced news. Another belief of Franzen's with which we are supposed to agree. When an author loses sight of the story in favor of a social agenda, and especially when he riffs on a classic such as Great Expectations, he should at least remember that the story should come first, not the agenda and not the clever nods to former great authors. But I don't feel cheated. I feel like this was a great journey to a questionable ending. I would have done a lot of things different at the end, but in order for Franzen to do that, he would have had to let go of his own personal message and ideals and allow the characters a full life of their own. And Franzen clearly didn't want that. He wanted to be the boss.