Crossroads

A book – reference 1 – suggested by a correspondent who is quite keen on Franzen, which I bought from Amazon on return from holiday. One of the rare occasions when a new book from Amazon arrived in a damaged condition, appearing to have fallen inside a robot or something in the warehouse. But not badly enough damaged to bother with returns or any of that sort of thing.

I have read two or three books by Franzen, and while he is interesting, he is also too keen on bodily functions and smut for my taste. An obsession about such things which reminds me of the James Joyce of Ulysses – but without his humour or skill with words to take the edge off it. He also writes rather long books, with this one weighing in at near 600 hardback pages.

This one is also rather churchy, revolving around the messy family of an older assistant priest at a church on the outskirts of Chicago – curate in UK speak – and around the associated church youth club, the Crossroads of the title. A group very much into hugging, into telling each other about all their feelings. A story which even includes chunks of seriously churchy stuff, including at least one of the protagonists finding Jesus.

We learn something of the difficulties of being at a position in a hierarchy intended for a younger, less experienced person. Something which those of us who have worked in hierarchical organisations will recognise.

We learn something of the difficulties involved in suburban, middle class church groups trying to do good in deprived neighbourhoods – or a Navajo reservation as the case may be.

A book which got me off to a bad start, and I almost chucked it in at that point. But I persisted, and was eventually carried along by the story, despite irritation with said bodily functions and smut, despite some pieces of the puzzle being presented in the wrong order – which meant that I was quite confused about what was going on a lot of the time. A modern book, in that we are told of the affairs of this family from the different points of view – not in the first person – of the various family members. At least one of whom has both serious mental health issues and a serious drugs problem.

A book without much humour, without much fun. A story about mostly rather unattractive people told in a very po-faced way. I got through it fast enough, just over a week, but it left me feeling rather grubby. Rather in the way that some of the more ‘gritty’ dramas on our television do. Just at the moment, I doubt if I will give it another go. Stick with the original Agatha! Who keeps the ‘obscene’ off-scene, as the word implies.

Which all suggests to me that the book might do very well as the starting point for an episodic drama on TV. Maybe one of the channels will get around to it if Franzen is not too greedy about royalties. I resist the temptation to look up the etymology of royalties!

But I should end by saying that I am glad to have read the book. Franzen is a well respected and successful author and it is good to learn about what is going on in the wider world, even if one does not much like it.

Odds and ends

I sometimes wondered about the level of detail with which thought processes were reported. Is it sensible to speculate about the thought processes of invented people in this way? James Joyce might have done it, but I find it hard enough to set down my own thought processes, on paper (as it were), even right after the event.

And in some places, the reported thought process seemed to detach itself from the person supposedly having it, becoming an authorly digression. From where I associated to the practise of earlier novelists who added their own comments (as it were) on the unfolding narrative in a more overt way.

I was amused by the suggestion that some of the people in the bible belt choose their church in rather the same way that I might choose a restaurant. This one today, that one tomorrow.

I learn that in the US they seem to call the business part of the church – the combination of what we call the nave (for the people) and the chancel (for the clergy and the altar – and possibly a sanctuary light) – the sanctuary. With a sort of anteroom for meeting and greeting.

Noting in passing that while the practise of greeting might not be mainstream here in the UK, I think that the people at the Cornerstone Church (of reference 3) do it. Then what about synagogues, mosques and Hindu temples? Do the latter have the concept of a Sunday, a day for prayer, at all?

I thought this morning to check my understanding of the etymology of the word ‘obscene’ and was a little surprised that neither Bing nor OED offered any support. So I turned to Gemini and he wrote me a nice little essay offering lots of support – but without any references, at least in the first instance. But impressive what he could do with the prompt: ‘I have the idea that the word 'obscene' come from the theatre of ancient Greece, where it originally meant the things that happened off-stage, behind the scenes, behind the screen at the back of the stage. And slowly coming to have its modern meaning, via the Latin. But this morning, I can find no support for this, not even in OED. Can you help’. I probably got my story from some history of the theatre, which I might be able to put my hand on later.

There is also an obscure reference at the end of reference 2. This time Gemini smelt election and declined to play. Copilot was game but unhelpful – and nothing like as good at maintaining a coherent conversation as Gemini - but then I do pay for the latter. Then going at it the old way with search and Wikipedia, I think the chap in question must be Andrew Balls of Pimco, the brother of Ed Balls, a humble special advisor in the days when I knew about such things. He works for PIMCO, an outfit which seems to be big in bonds and which manages a lot of assets. A quick look at their website does not reveal what sort of assets, nothing particular about the extractive industries mentioned at reference 2. Maybe the industries there are a reference to the financial services industry having once been likened to an extractive industry by a retired senior official of the Bank of England. Just a complicated wheeze for extracting money out of the people at large. But a bit of a puzzle, nevertheless. A lesson in the dangers inherent in a bit of text lasting longer than its contents can stand? At a different level, one sees this in many of the jokes in the comic operas of Gilbert & Sullivan: of their time and rather lost on the audience of today.

Reference 3 have done something tricky with the address, so that you end up in the area, in the place, that they think you are calling from. Not the UK at large at all. To think that I thought that an address of this sort was simple, that it does what it says on the tin. God works in mysterious ways! More probably by dropping a cookie which includes some of the content passed along by the search engine. The shadowy presence of a central organisation. Maybe something of the same sort is happening when you get taken to somewhere like ‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake#Plot’, which is a section in a page, rather than a page entire.

Postscript

After breakfast, I thought I had got to the bottom of the obscene business when I turned up reference 4, which contains a substantial section on ancient Greek theatre and I am reminded that the Greek word ‘scene’ originally meant a sort of hut inside which an actor might change his costume. A dressing room. But then perhaps it was the book at reference 5, by the same hand? However, digging deeper, I find that I knew about the word back in 2008. Sadly, the trail presently stops there.

There is also the point that some people, including Laver, believe that the origin of theatre lay in fertility cults, with the uncertain fertility of both plants and animals being an important matter to early men and women. Which meant that very early Greek drama was very phallus-centric, gradually morphing into the comic crudity which survived until quite recently. Maybe this also has a bearing on the matter at hand?

References

Reference 1: Crossroads – Jonathan Franzen – 2021.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/05/franzen.html. Six ‘franzen’s in the archive, of which this was the first.

Reference 3: https://www.cornerstonechurch.org.uk/. 

Reference 4: Drama: its Costume and Décor – James Laver – 1951.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/01/nymph-errant.html.  

Reference 6: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2008/02/live-stock.html.