The Twenty-Seventh City

This book presents a very interesting balance. On one hand, it is a page-turning thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat. On the other hand, it can also be a slow-paced, almost boring novel of mid-city civics. Franzen's first novel, it might have been better if it had replaced the map of St. Louis with a chart of characters, similar to most Tolstoy translations. The geography was never as confusing as the fifty-plus main characters, their relationships, and the corporations or city offices they controlled.

The plot is oddly conservative, revolving around a scheme by foreign (Indian) investors to manipulate the real estate market of St. Louis. The only character who sees the truth is a crazy, anti-communist, anti-immigrant, racist former military man. He tries to rally a group of local business men to resist the charming new female police chief. But this is Franzen, so we can't read too much into the political implications. By the end of the book, everyone is basically unlikable yet sympathetic, and there is no one who is really "the hero" or "the villain." We end up pitying both the instigators of the plot and its victims.

"The Twenty-Seventh City" ended up reading more like DeLillo than "The Corrections." This is mainly due to the combination of a paranoid post-Vietnam terrorist plot (similar to "The Players") and mid-life, middle-America angst (similar to everything by DeLillo). Although it starts slowly, the book eventually builds up to a near-thriller pace as the bizarre land-grab plot begins to involve planned terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and Soviet-era brainwashing. Overall, it's a good read, but not required.

Yipe!

I really wouldn't recommend this one.

There could be several reasons for this. Maybe the quality of the product or service is subpar. It might not meet the expected standards or fulfill the promised features.

Perhaps the experience associated with it was less than satisfactory. There could have been glitches, delays, or unresponsive customer support.

Another possibility is that there are better alternatives available in the market. Options that offer more value, better performance, or a more enjoyable user experience.

Based on these considerations, I feel compelled to advise against choosing this particular option.

It's important to do thorough research and consider all the factors before making a decision.

By doing so, you can increase the likelihood of making a choice that will meet your needs and expectations.

So, think twice before going for this one.

This book delves into the realm of city politics within an American city, specifically St. Louis, but it could very well represent any urban area. It vividly showcases the intricate relationships that exist between police chiefs and mayors, as well as between mayors and prominent businessmen and women who are eager to have their voices heard in the governance of the city. As a referendum draws near, a series of strange events begin to unfold. People start to wonder why the new police chief is so widely popular and how she managed to secure the position.

Among the main characters, Martin Probst experiences a split from his long-suffering wife, and his daughter enters a rebellious phase, taking up smoking and moving in with a photographer. Surprisingly, he is so preoccupied that he doesn't even notice when his wife is kidnapped. To make matters worse, his house burns down.

Another mystery that looms large is who is responsible for planting bugs in the offices and homes of prominent individuals throughout the city. This book is a black comedy that stands out as being better than some of the other works by the author that I have read. I have perused "The Corrections," "Purity," and "Freedom." The first two were somewhat disappointing as my expectations were high after thoroughly enjoying "Freedom."

Overall, this book offers a unique and engaging exploration of city politics and the complex web of relationships and events that unfold within it.

If I could give this book zero stars, I would without hesitation.

This author is nothing more than a pale imitation of Phillip Roth, hailing from Indiana. He has only a quarter of the observational skills that Roth possesses, and a mere one-tenth of the writing ability.

The book lacks the depth, nuance, and literary finesse that one would expect from a work of this nature. It fails to engage the reader on any meaningful level, and the characters come across as flat and one-dimensional.

In conclusion, this book is a disappointment and a waste of time. I would not recommend it to anyone, regardless of their literary tastes.

So I read somewhere that the initial manuscript was 1300 pages.

OH MY GOD. This is a 515 page book that could have easily been 250 pages.

Get rid of half the characters and the plot points that went nowhere.

Make it about Jammu and Probst and forget everyone else. Seriously!!!

There were some good parts, some good sentences, and somehow I *was* interested in how it would end, but... damn.

I mean good on you Franzen for not writing a coming of age story about a misunderstood young man growing up in St. Louis but you kinda went too far in the other direction.

The book seemed to have too much unnecessary fluff and complexity.

The numerous characters made it hard to keep track and some of their storylines didn't really add much to the overall narrative.

If Franzen had focused more on the core characters and streamlined the plot, it could have been a much more engaging and concise read.

Despite its flaws, there were still glimmers of brilliance that kept me reading, but it could have been so much better.

Maybe in future works, Franzen will find a better balance between depth and brevity.

A re-read.

After my initial reading of The Corrections, I eagerly sought out Jonathan Franzen's two prior novels. We had just endured that first wave in the aftermath of 9/11, and Postmodernism was declared both DOA and irrelevant in the wake of it. Reading his debut novel, The Twenty-Seventh City, made me deeply reflect on that proclamation. The Twenty-Seventh City feels very much like a product of the late 1980s literary scene, where college bros adored the works of DeLillo and Pynchon and headed out into the world with their newfound aspirations for the written word. Franzen's approach in this novel is a lot more highly conceptual than his most recent works. However, increments of his themes around domestic suburban life and the cosmopolitan connection we share in the midst of our family lives are present here at its earliest incarnation. Martin Probst has the grain and constituency of the paranoid center of Pynchon's Vineland, combined with the darkly comic neuroses of a Daniel Clowes character. Then there's S. Jammu and her nefarious, arcane methods by which she seizes St. Louis as its newest chief of police. Franzen adds developing nation draconian political methods into an American metropolis, and there are obviously significant ramifications.

I can imagine this brand of Postmodern fiction looking more and more like Dreiser and Norris did to Franzen's and David Foster Wallace's generation of authors. Setting aside cultural sensitivity and awareness, I look at Franzen's remarkable skill with the flow and description of this eerie political and public landscape. Probst attends two football games but under different scopes, circumstances, and with different outcomes. Franzen had his eye on greater panoramic views, but he soon discovered that his skill worked better in close quarters, against all that history and conspiracy, and the talk and undercurrent between spouses, parents, employers, and authority figures we encounter on a daily basis. There's a lot of people talking about regional policy and business - it's not what you know as much as it's who you know - but it's all genuine and gives this scenario a unique dimension. Yet for all of it, it remains another satirical artifact of the time.

This is an extremely strange book, and it's the first novel that I've managed to immerse myself in after a rather depressing reading slump. For some inexplicable reason, every reviewer here seems to have despised or at least been let down by this book. However, I thought it was a highly enjoyable and unexpectedly strange read.

Sure, it did drag a bit in the middle, but which 500-page book doesn't? I really haven't been able to get into any fiction for a long time, and I devoured this book in just three days. I looked forward to picking it up whenever I had to put it down. I'm truly grateful for this because whenever that stops happening, I'm scared that I've simply lost my love for books.

"The Twenty-Seventh City" is set in mid-eighties St. Louis, which has been infiltrated by a malicious Indian police chief with unclear and convoluted motives for his evil conspiracy. The plot mainly focuses on this conspiracy and its impact on various members of the St. Louis economic elite. I can't claim that it all made perfect sense to me or that it was a flawless book by any means, but I found it highly engaging. In part, this was because I didn't understand the basic premise (a malicious Indian police chief...?) and was desperate to know what on earth was going on.

Franzen is one of those writers who appears to know a great deal (or at least enough) about a wide range of things, which I generally find quite interesting. However, this book does include some rather tiresome blow-by-blow accounts of various sporting events, and I was extremely relieved when he seemed to forget about his dull birdwatching routine a quarter of the way through. Some people here complained that there were too many characters, but all the important ones were distinct and engaging enough to keep straight and maintain my interest.

Some of the little writerly experiments, such as lapsing into the present tense and creating unnecessary suspense and confusion by withholding key information about what was happening and to whom in a scene, were irritating. But on the whole, the prose was very solid and did have some particularly nice moments and good descriptions.

I think there are some quite interesting flaws in this novel, such as its rather lukewarm and hesitant attempt to directly address racial themes. My perception of this must be influenced by reading this sixteen years after its publication and in the context of recent events in Ferguson. But the black characters in the book are sort of oddly present yet not fully developed, which is especially strange considering how significant the black community is to many of the book's major events. I felt like this omission was sort of deliberate, but it was a rather cowardly form of intentionality, as if Franzen wanted to engage with the racial issues but didn't quite have the courage.

Anyway, I have absolutely no memory of "The Corrections" (aside from an image of a childhood friend's suburban living room and garage, for some reason...?), although I remember liking it at the time. But I know I enjoyed this book more than I did "Freedom". I seem to recall people complaining about Patty after "Freedom" and saying that Franzen doesn't know how to write female characters. And I thought of that accusation quite often while reading this. I think it's often nonsense when readers of either gender accuse writers of not being able to write the opposite gender. It's one thing to point out that certain male writers always create two-dimensional and uninteresting female characters, because that's definitely true. But I don't think anyone could reasonably accuse Franzen of that. He does have a very specific type of female character, and it was interesting to see her represented (in a few different ways) in this book. Franzen's women are kind of messed up and ruthless in a particular way that I don't think I've quite seen anywhere else. To me, this doesn't mean that he doesn't "get" what it's like to be a woman. It's just that he's writing about very specific, certain kinds of people who might not actually exist anywhere else except in his own mind. And I don't think that really has much to do with gender or with some essentialist understanding of what "being a woman" is really like. Maybe your experience of being a woman isn't like Patty Berglund's or like Barbara Probst's, but maybe he isn't trying to represent your experience. And maybe there are some other women out there who think these characters represent something real to them. Personally, I like seeing that in a writer's work - a unique and defined perspective on what people and the world are like - and I enjoyed "The Twenty-Seventh City" because I found Franzen's view compelling, or at least entertaining.

Undeva între 3,5 și 4 stele.

The debut novel of Jonathan Franzen is, undoubtedly, impressive from many perspectives. Especially from the point of view of construction, it is truly grandiose. However, it is also tiring and at times, very unattractive, and sometimes even downright boring (especially in the final part). Moreover, the condition of this novel places it in a rather ambiguous zone. In the sense that it can be regarded as a thriller. However, due to the fact that it is a rather difficult novel to read, there are few chances that it will be appreciated by readers who are passionate only about this literary genre. And on the other hand, readers who reject the thriller genre or place it in an inferior literary category will turn their backs on this novel for the above-mentioned reason. In addition, the novel includes numerous sociological, philosophical or economic analyses, which may not be to the taste of all readers. However, I do not absolutely dislike any literary genre. Each has its more or less talented authors, and the boundaries of literature have expanded quite a lot in recent times, fortunately. Therefore, we must highlight the numerous strengths of The 27th City.

The novel was written during the Cold War, being published in 1988, and this can be seen quite clearly, especially in the espionage elements it contains. However, the main strength of the novel is the way it portrays the internal life of the city of Saint Louis, which almost overnight transforms from a very quiet and unsurprising one into something completely unexpected and full of pitfalls. The history of this city, which in 1870 was the fourth in the US and a century later had dropped to 27th place, is synonymous with a process of decline. The long-awaited flowering of St. Louis was only a newborn promise. However, despite the fact that St. Louis did not experience urban development as expected, the city still offers its locals something truly important, namely a peaceful life, which is no small thing.

The event that triggers a real revolution on countless levels in St. Louis and calls its peace into question is the following: the appointment as head of the Police Department of a woman with dual citizenship, who had previously worked in the police in Bombay, India, named S. Jammu, thirty-five years old. The power of fascination of this woman is impressive. However, behind this force of collective seduction lies a diabolical plot that aims to completely subjugate the city.

However, there is also an opposition to this underground movement inspired by the Marxist revolution. The leader of this current is the entrepreneur Martin Probst, who is about to turn fifty years old. He is the builder of the famous Arcade Gateway, as well as of other representative buildings in the city. He is married to Barbara, forty-three years old, and they have a daughter together, Luisa. No one suspects that Martin's family life is about to dissolve, the first step being the killing of a poor creature, which is completely innocent, namely the Probst family dog.

Everything seems to lean in favor of the police camp, especially since Martin himself will fall under the spell of this woman who hides numerous secrets. However, the city can prove difficult to conquer, despite the fact that someone is convinced that the entire population of this city will play exactly as they are sung. Pleasant reading!