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(10/01/10 12:00am)
According to Wikipedia, a Great American Novel is one that, when it is published, insightfully captures the zeitgeist - "the spirit of the times," also according to Wikipedia - of the nation. Time magazine pegs Jonathan Franzen as this generation's Great American Novelist, and his new book Freedom is the work that clinched the title for him. That kind of instant canonization makes reading Freedom an interesting challenge: Not only do readers have to think about whether they like or understand the book, they have to decide whether their zeitgeist has been captured.Franzen has been on the unofficial Great American Shortlist since 2001, when his novel The Corrections earned the National Book Award and got him into an infamous public dustup with Oprah. Freedom came out in August and has already gained truly stunning amounts of critical praise, a #2 spot on The New York Times best-seller list and a path back into Oprah's good graces - the hardcover carries an Oprah's Book Club sticker.
(09/03/10 12:00am)
This past Friday, I got a nasty shock when I read in the Thresher that The New York Times columnist and talking head David Brooks would be the class of 2011's commencement speaker. As a Times reader, political science major and longtime non-admirer of Brooks, I'm disappointed both by the choice of speaker and the embrace of indulgent intellectual mediocrity that it represents. Brooks first came to my attention when I was a bored and nerdy high schooler. While my classmates with good TV reception and social skills caught up on "The OC," I sat at home with my parents, watching "The NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer on PBS. At the end of the hour, the program often had two commentators to come on and debate political issues, and Brooks would represent the conservative viewpoint alongside his liberal counterpart Mark Shields. I remember slowly noticing off-putting patterns in Brooks' style: I didn't like his smug snipes at his debate partners, his obviously premeditated jokes or his confident blusters through long strings of tautologies. Later on, I learned that he wrote a column twice a week in The New York Times and appeared regularly on national public radio. A July profile of Brooks in New York Magazine reported that President Obama pays close attention to the columnist's opinions and courts his good opinion. Clearly, David Brooks is an influential writer with a very large platform. But he's not the kind of political thinker our country needs, and he's not a good choice to speak at Rice this spring.
