So, ok...

Obviously, this work is a little more awkward compared to his later novels. The writing style might not be as polished or refined as what we come to expect from him in his more mature works.

But still, I found myself drawn to the plot. It had its moments of intrigue and mystery that kept me turning the pages.

And, yes, it was really, aggressively boring at times. There were sections that seemed to drag on forever, and I had to force myself to keep going.

However, it was also ambitious and poignant at others. The themes explored were deep and thought-provoking, making me reflect on various aspects of life and human nature.

It took forever to read, and it frequently depressed me. The dark and沉重的 nature of the story sometimes weighed me down.

And yet, I didn't really enjoy the process. But also I feel like it's good? Maybe it's because of the intellectual challenge it presented or the way it made me feel.

iT'S A fRANZEN. His works always seem to have this love-hate relationship with readers, and this one is no exception.

This is a somewhat entertaining book, but overall it is a hardly convincing construct without a solid foundation.

Some events are hardly believable, and some characters are just ridiculous. Franzen fails to "hold the story together", so the whole book disintegrates into unmotivated individual parts.

I will definitely not read it again.

It seems that although there are some elements that can bring a certain degree of entertainment, the lack of a coherent and believable storyline makes the book lose its charm.

The unconvincing events and laughable characters further detract from the overall quality of the work.

As a result, it fails to leave a deep impression on the reader and is not worth rereading.

¿Soy la primera reseña en español de este libro? ¿La única? (Qué nervios...)

For the author, this is also his first novel, and perhaps that explains some things. Insecurity. The desire to impress, perhaps. He doesn't need it because, as happens in Freedom or Purity, one can glimpse his powerful intelligence, his lucidity in describing feelings and motivations, and the ironic contradictions of the world we live in. But, unlike in those works, in this debut, all of that is hidden, almost suffocated, by too many unnecessary pages, forgettable and unnecessary characters, which make the plot only take off, with force, around page 400-450 approximately.

Franzen's novels are like tables supported by five legs, which are his protagonists. In Freedom, they are two parents, two children, and a "family friend". In Purity, there are "only" four main characters, so the table limps a bit.

In this case, the opposite happens: the table would have been very well formed by the three members of the Prost family, and Singh and Jammu were added. No one else. Maybe some extras like Devi Madan. But too many characters were added who contribute little or nothing (Asha Hammaker, the detective couple, the in-laws Rolf Ripley and Audrey, the duo RC White and Clarence Davis, the couple Buzz and Bev, the multiple industrialists, entrepreneurs, and politicians, etc.)

All of this makes it difficult to follow the thread of the story(ies), and despite the fact that the book is full of shootings, explosions, murders, car chases, phone intercepts, helicopters, and infidelities, it can be very heavy at times. If we add to that the changes in narrators, several inner monologues, multiple perspectives, crossed dialogues, the thing gets more complicated. All those techniques and the use of short segments made me think of The Time of the Hero, but of course, not as efficient.

The set of intercalated facts, the parallel and anonymous misfortunes in which everything is related, give it an air of Ribeyro's Changing of the Guard, and like in that novel, the result may not be the desired one. Franzen is a master at describing the evolution and destruction of a life, a couple, a family, a city, and as is seen in his other works, he doesn't need something as forced as a Hindu-origin conspiracy, as unconvincing as the end of some of the characters.

Despite that, the book has its good moments, sharp phrases, social criticism, and the sensations it transmits, which, paraphrasing what one of the characters says, won't take you to the seventh heaven, but at least to the twenty-seventh.

¿Lo habré hecho bien?

Disclaimer: I am a Franzen fan. After reading and thoroughly enjoying The Corrections, Freedom, and even The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History, I (somewhat) incorrectly assumed an immediate connection to The Twenty-Seventh City.

The novel’s premise screams intrigue: urban restructuring, political corruption, suburban discontent (in true J-Franz style), and adultery. However, the result was an over-ambitious, convoluted plot and an ending filled with unnecessary murder. On a semi-regular basis, I had to check the cover to make sure I was reading Franzen and not Tolstoy – too many characters and sub-plots in a 517-page book. It is an ambitious first-novel.

The story meanders through a proposed county-city amalgamation of the Greater St. Louis area. Ignited by a recently appointed city police-chief, S. Jammu, amalgamation proponents want to alter the declining shape of the city by creating a new suburban tax-base and begetting a police-‘state’ to soothe (Northern St. Louis) crime and entice ‘urban’ development. To achieve these means, Jammu, who refuses to be defeated in any realm – public or private, filters Indian immigrants into St. Louis to create an urban-security crisis that demands brute police force. Elsewhere, in true ‘80s urban fashion, Jammu aligns with developers and planners, binding the civic and private.

If the amalgamation proponents seem intolerable, the opposition is a racist, right-wing business owner, General Norris, and a stubborn anti-union magnate, Martin Probst. In an underwhelming climax, the punchline sees apathy victorious. Yes, folks, amalgamation fails because of political apathy. Voters failed to go to the polls. I hope this isn’t Franzen’s (meta)narrative of a tense political time of restructuring and cohesion between the public and private. Seriously? The fallout of political apathy sees Jammu commit suicide and Probst’s wife murdered in a freak accident.

True to Franzen’s other works, I struggle with the book’s political undertones. I don’t necessarily think every novel should have a ‘right’ and/or a ‘wrong,’ but who am I supposed to ally myself with in this urban tragedy? Police corruption or a devoted union buster? Personally, The Twenty-Seventh City, in espousing Liberal ideas (yes, Liberal with a capital L) brands itself with the special interest of capitalists – public and private. The city as a ‘business’ or the monopolization of development by hungry, free-market entrepreneurs. This advocacy promotes the enfranchisement of certain political-economic privileges and omits general welfare. Bad and bad. Bad vs. bad.

On a lighter-note, I love the allusions to St. Louis, my birthplace. In his discussions of Webster Groves, I regularly chuckled commenting on how I know that ‘spot’ or intersection. Ultimately, I want people to read Franzen, but would suggest starting with his other works, particularly Freedom. 2 out of 5.

The Twenty Seventh City is Jonathan Franzen's first book, and yet his debut is truly exceptional.

Had I read this book back in the late eighty when it was first released, I would have followed Franzen's career more closely.

Not many twenty-something year-olds possess the ability to write with such remarkable clarity, unwavering stamina, and undeniable talent.

The story is set in Franzen's home city of St. Louis. It chronicles the devious rise and fall of an American-born female of Indian descent (specifically Bombay Indian), who is desperate to win the elections for the unification of the County and City.

Of course, Franzen introduces a plethora of other characters and masterfully delves into not only their relationships but also their complex internal natures, emotions, aspirations, and needs.

This is a book that can replace TV, the internet, and radio as a form of entertainment.

You'll return home from work, school, or whatever and immediately want to pick it up and lose yourself within its pages.

You'll go to bed with it and wake up with it.

It is well thought out, highly entertaining, and intricately crafted.

I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Unfreedom is a state that many people unfortunately find themselves in. It can manifest in various ways, such as being restricted by external forces like laws, social norms, or economic circumstances.

Those who experience unfreedom may feel trapped, unable to pursue their dreams or make choices that are truly in line with their desires. It can limit their opportunities for personal growth and development.

Unfreedom can also have a significant impact on mental and emotional well-being. The feeling of being束缚 can lead to stress, anxiety, and even depression.

However, it is important to note that unfreedom is not an insurmountable obstacle. With determination, courage, and the right strategies, individuals can strive to break free from the chains that bind them and regain their freedom.

This may involve challenging the status quo, advocating for change, or simply taking small steps towards greater autonomy and self-determination.

In conclusion, unfreedom is a complex and often difficult issue, but it is one that we must all face and address if we hope to live fulfilling and meaningful lives.

Hmm. It's rather difficult to express this. Jonathan Franzen is undeniably a highly talented writer, with a level of skill in writing that far surpasses anything I could achieve, even when it comes to the simplest of tasks like tying my shoes. However, when comparing this book to "Strong Motion" and "The Corrections", it comes across as tiresome and clearly fails to meet its ambitious goals.

There are indeed some glimmers of his remarkable gift, which is more consistently on display in his later works. He has the ability to provide hyper-perceptive and incredibly realistic accounts of the moment-by-moment consciousness of his characters. If only his regard for the characters in this particular book had been more evenly distributed. Additionally, in his later writings, he incorporates more humor as well.

Nevertheless, I do appreciate the fact that this book tackles important themes such as public civic participation and terrorism in the form of serious fiction. Why should the pulpy mystery novels have all the entertainment value? Moreover, the hunting scene, especially on pages 161-162, was truly masterful. In fact, if you were to show someone this passage without revealing the cover, you could probably convince them that it was written by Don Delillo.

The fact that Franzen has written only a few works so far gives me the unique opportunity to claim that I have read the entire oeuvre of an author I like, once I finish this one. But I must admit, I have more enjoyment reading this book if I view it not as early Franzen, but rather as a sort of bootleg Delillo.

What is astonishing is that those technical elements that an average writer learns throughout a lifetime, Franzen seems to simply spout out effortlessly: in this novel, the accuracy and ingenuity of the descriptions, as well as the vividness of the dialogues* suggest that we are dealing with a literary professional who exploded in front of us fully armed from the very beginning. However, what I am less impressed with is the story itself.

Franzen writes the chronicle of declining St. Louis, where suddenly mysterious Indians appear and moreover, dirty and at least equally disgusting political machinations begin – they do not shy away from anything to bring about some atrocity that I dare not write down, partly because of the spoiler prohibition, and partly because I myself do not know what the hell they really want. This line is unconvincing in certain elements and is generally overwritten, but in return it suppresses all the other, otherwise particularly promising subplots of the novel. To be honest, I am not even sure what the author wanted to convey with it. It is certain that it can be read as a criticism of American democracy – at most as a criticism of the self-defense ability of American democracy. For by arranging all kinds of cunning immigrants with the farce of white-collar crime, Franzen takes the life out of the message: he thus leaves the American reader with the possibility of believing that it is not he himself, but others (the "non-Americans") who pose a threat to the system. (What unfortunate Indian readers will say about all this, I dare not even think about.)

All in all, it is great, disturbing horror from a dark dimension, and if I take into account that it is a first novel, I am forced to bow before the technical apparatus used by Franzen. However, I am very glad that in his later epic prose, the author learned to do without the big, chaotic stories, and instead gave way to the smaller stories, which are filled with dynamics by the relationships between the characters, and not some demonic conspiracy worthy of Frei Tamás.

* I think of the dialogues. Does it seem to me alone that Hungarian contemporary literature has produced astonishingly few vivid dialogues in the last few decades? Most of our writers neglect the tool of dialogues in terms of intelligence, and those who use it – like Jászberényi most recently – speak to their characters as if they were aware that they were being filmed. Of course, it is true that every literary character is filmed (they call the camera the writer), but somehow the essence of the thing is violated if they are informed about this.

Hey, uh, Jonathan,

I'd really like to have that week of my life back. That week I wasted reading this thing. I know, I know, I read your works in the wrong order. I started with "The Corrections" several years ago, and I truly loved it. Then I read "Strong Motion," which wasn't nearly as satisfying, but still had some value. And now this. I endured this one until the very end because "Strong Motion" only redeemed itself in its final pages. I kept thinking, okay, Jonathan, just tie up a few of those loose ends. Make someone act in a humane, decent, believable way. But, uh, that never happened. So I spent a whole week reading about horrible people doing horrible things to each other.

I understand that misunderstandings and miscommunication are your trademarks, and you've used them effectively in your other works. But here we have a dysfunctional family in a city run by evil corporate interests, policed by a department infiltrated by leftist Indian terrorists, and spied on by a cartoonish racist general. Next time, just pick one or two evils. This kind of absurdity only works if you have some kind of "everyman" that readers can actually relate to in order to make the experience at all palatable.

What I find most unbelievable of all is the high praise this book received from professional reviewers. I can only assume they were most impressed by the actual writing - the careful details and the elaborate plotting, maybe. But surely not the characters. I mean, what happened to you? Does everyone in your life hate everyone else? Could an entire city really be filled with people who, at every level of personal and civic involvement, just want to use others for their own ends? Does no one in your world have any emotional connection with other humans? The kind of connection that requires a little sacrifice or giving the benefit of the doubt? Sometimes you came close, but inevitably you pulled them away again. I'm just not sure that works for an entire novel.

Oh, and please. Why on earth did you even attempt to write about those African American characters? Clearly you didn't have your heart in it. Let's say you actually understood something about their lives. You still didn't know what to do with them, couldn't come up with any real plot for them, and the whole thing felt like a pointless afterthought. Just stick with what you know: middle class white folk.

This was a huge mess, albeit a promising and fairly enjoyable one.

Franzen had clearly been reading Pynchon, and his ambition was of the best kind. For a first novel, it's quite decent.

It's interesting to observe him writing in this mode, especially after reading his later works that have led him to create nuanced characters, explore family dynamics, and present larger and more easily followed narrative chunks. Part of me is actually a little sad that he abandoned this mode for the other one, although I do recognize how skilled he is at what he does now. He might have become a fine "Mr. Difficult" himself.

One of the messiest aspects of this was the Pynchon-esque conspiracy. When Pynchon does it, I sometimes wonder if he's just playing or if he truly believes some of his more outrageous stories. Here, however, the conspiracy seems to be a projection of some sort of racial and economic panic, and one imagines that Franzen himself does not approve. There is no such slippage between exaggeration and conspiracy nutjobbery as Pynchon brings, but at the same time, the narrative affirm without any doubt that the fears of a General Norris were 100% correct. It's hard to know what to make of this. Perhaps simply that the book's strategy doesn't work fundamentally.

Another thing this book brought up for me was the never-ending American obsession with race and racism as its fundamental truth. I've read other reviews of this, by GRers I respect, suggesting disappointment that Franzen didn't delve deeper into the problem of race but rather danced around its outskirts, dealing with economics, legislation, special elections, and real estate. And yet, when did these tangible realities of inequality and injustice become mysteries to be solved, problems to be uncovered, revealing the fundamental and incontrovertible truth of endemic racism that is its own explanation? Surely this is backwards?

The left (not only our good friend Pynchon) has long indulged in its own conspiracy theories. The truth is always hidden and always horrible. Only those with the impenetrable theory's hermeneutic apparatus (and its equally bullshit trickle-downs) can see reality for what it is. Economics must yield to a sort of original sin that pollutes us all, the only thing not requiring further unpacking, decoding, or explanation, and that is our curse of racism. We all bear it, and it is the cause of economics and injustice, not their symptom, fruit, strategy, or result. It's a quasi-religious belief bordering on puritanism and extremely pessimistic. But why should this be the case? Surely the machine works the other way around?

In short, it's hard not to connect this sort of complaint about this book to the kind of incessant, ineffective railing against Trump voters that takes it as a given that we have now exposed the evil at the heart of America and doesn't think this requires any explanation. In my view, a book that deals with criminal justice, economic power, real estate, money, etc. has actually done a much better job of addressing race and racism than yet another tract about how we are all hopelessly and terribly polluted, in need of shaming, purification, and cleansing, perhaps by means of violence. In this respect, "The 27th City" seems to me to be spot-on in its choice of subject matter and emphases, and it's perhaps no wonder at all that it is such a promising, terrible mess.

I've embarked on this reading journey two or three times already, but alas, I haven't managed to get beyond the 100-page mark.

The story is truly strange and lacks the necessary conviction to hold my attention. It's as if the author is trying too hard to create an otherworldly atmosphere but falls short in making it believable.

Moreover, the writing style is a major turn-off. It gives the distinct impression of being a poor imitation of DeLillo. The sentences are convoluted and lack the elegance and precision that one would expect from a great writer.

Overall, this book has failed to capture my interest and has left me feeling rather disappointed. I'm not sure if I'll have the motivation to continue reading it or simply move on to something more engaging.

A Strange Book.

For over 100 pages, I struggled to understand exactly what was going on. Was there a story and a meaning that I couldn't grasp? New characters were continuously being introduced, and I regretted not taking notes. The plot is very slow to clarify, and there is chaos in the book! I finished it, and yet I still think I didn't manage to clarify some points. I was tempted many times to give it up. Nevertheless, I continued to read it. From a certain point on, it caught my attention. It is clear that Franzen has things to say, but he just throws them all together, which confuses and tires the reader. It's difficult to classify the storyline. Is it a social satire? A political thriller? Perhaps both together and many other things. He dissects the stories of modern America, leaving the feeling that nothing will ever work for the good of the citizens. There will always be the dark forces that will plot against it, and all ideals will be sacrificed on the altar of money. At least that's what I got from my first encounter with the world of Franzen.