“Crossroads” by Jonathan Franzen – Stitches for Family Relations

 

Short Summary

Jonathan Franzen has, over the years, become a prominent voice in literature when it comes to the exploration, and even dissection of contemporary America. In his latest novel Crossroads he transports us back to 1971 and takes us a on a stationary odyssey examining two generations of the Hildebrandt family, threatening to come apart at the seams. All of its members have ideas of their own about life ought to be lived and where to find happiness, and over the course of a single day everything will be decided.

Jonathan Franzen Makes the Hildebrandts Face a Crisis

With the amount of information we have access to these days, I think most of us know just how much family dynamics can vary from one locale to the next, each and every unit facing its own particular challenges. However, all families are united in their susceptibility of being torn apart by the dissenting opinions of their members, which is precisely what the Hildebrandts are facing in Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen.

The story takes us back to December 23rd, 1971, and presents us to the afore-mentioned family living in Chicago. Christmas is looming large over the city, people are gathering with their loved ones in the warm festive atmosphere particular to that time of the year, only intensified by its contrast with the cold and heavy weather.

For Russ Hildebrandt, father of the family and associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, life is anything but warm and festive. Stuck in a joyless marriage for far too long, he is on the verge and breaking free from the clutches of misery, a bittersweet ending to a decades-long affair. However, his wife Marion might have some ideas of her own in this regard, not to mention her own secret life, and is trying to beat him to the punch.

Meanwhile, their children are struggling to find their proper place in the world. The oldest child, Clem, has just returned from college, soaked in the juices of moral absolutism, turned into a follower of a philosophy he doesn't entirely understand. His sister Becky isn't doing too much better from their parents' point of view, having taken an extremely sharp turn into the counterculture scene. Meanwhile, their younger brother, Perry, has resolved to stop selling drugs to seventh-graders.

Each member of the family is in search of what they believe to be a liberating brand of freedom, and on this one fateful day all matters (or most of them, at least) get pushed to the surface for everyone to deal with. Finding themselves at the titular crossroads, the Hildebrandts are forced to confront reality face-to-face, trying to understand what it is they really want, and the true meaning of belonging to a family.

The Hell of Personal Fulfillment in Crossroads

Overtly-speaking, this might simply seem like a regular family novel, exploring the relationships between its various members and seeking to impart on us morals we've already learned a long time ago. However, in the hands of Jonathan Franzen Crossroads becomes a whole lot more than that, using the family in order to explore the realities of contemporary life in the United States of America.

The most prominent theme which jumped out at me was the quest for personal fulfillment all the characters seemed engaged in. Franzen makes a good case for how this type of mentality has become dominant over the years, with the level of individualism in North American society having consistently grown over the past few decades.

While we are shown the benefit of such an approach in terms of personal growth, the author prefers to shine his spotlight on the negative aspects of this mentality, namely the selfish attitude it tends to push us to. We see how each character pushes him or herself into some form of personal hell in search of some fleeting satisfaction they don't even really want, but think they do.

It can be at times fascinating, and at other times educative to see these characters suffering through the same lapses in logic and false ambitions many of us have experienced for ourselves. The misguided nature of their quest is one I think a great number of people can relate to, making their plight relatable, which in turn gives a tangible heft to the trials they're going through.

Whether or not you agree with Jonathan Franzen and his perspective on contemporary America, I think it's accurate to say his arguments and reasoning stand on a solid foundation and penetrate deep beneath the surface. He offers us quite a bit of food for thought as well as his own take on things, and even touches on additional topics including marriage, theology and the counterculture revolution of the 1970s. Ultimately, it's as much a meditation on the modern world as it is the story of a struggling family.

One Day to Change it All

As you might have gathered from the fact the entirety of this story takes place over the course of a single day, Crossroads certainly isn't an action-packed novel nor a thriller which will keep you sitting on pins and needles. On the contrary, it's a slow and steady character study which requires the reader to adopt the correct mindset in order to be enjoyed.

Personally, I think this is one of those books which greatly benefits from being read at a slower and more meticulous pace. While there isn't a lot of action there are plenty of ideas to digest (the hardcover edition is just under six hundred pages), and no matter which way you cut it, it's a process which takes time.

Naturally, with this being a character study, we get extremely well-acquainted with each and every member of the Hildebrandt family, to the point where I think it's safe to say we come to know them better than they know themselves. Jonathan Franzen is extremely talented when it comes to creating believable, memorable and multi-dimensional characters who carry entire world within themselves for us to explore.

While there are certainly bits and pieces of heartwarming humour to be found interspersed throughout the story, on the whole, I would say the subject matter is a heavy one, focused entirely around one unhappy family and the difficult decisions they are pushed to make. Every member of the family is struggling quite severely in his or her own way, and contrary to most other family dramas, I never knew whether the ending would be a happy one.

With this being said, Franzen doesn't seek to cloud everything and everyone with the cruel and sobering wind of realism. He does try to imbue some positive messages into his work, namely about the concept of always keeping love for others and life in general within one's heart, and how it can help to resolve at least some of the challenges endemic to our modern ways of thinking.

The Final Verdict

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen is an excellent piece of literature & fiction, a detailed family drama examining the distinctly dysfunctional family, and through them the many woes of contemporary Americans. If you're looking for the kind of book which takes its time in dissecting a family and offers some valuable insight about the world we live in, then I do think you should give this book a shot.

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Jonathan Earl Franzen Personal site Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American essayist and novelist whose 2001 novel, The Corrections, won the National Book Award, a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His other novels include The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, Freedom, Purity, and Crossroads. Among his most recent awards are the 2017 Frank Schirrmacher Preis and the 2015 Budapest Grand Prize.