Quote of the Day (Jonathan Franzen, on ‘The Dream of Limitless Freedom’)

“The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.” —American novelist Jonathan Franzen, Freedom: A Novel (2010)

Quote of the Day (Jonathan Franzen, on Fiction)

“Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance.” —American novelist Jonathan Franzen, Freedom: A Novel (2010)

Quote of the Day (Jonathan Franzen, on Digital Technology as ‘Capitalism in Hyperdrive’)

“Our digital technologies aren’t politically neutral. The young person who cannot or will not be alone, converse with family, go out with friends, attend a lecture or perform a job without monitoring her smartphone is an emblem of our economy’s leechlike attachment to our very bodies. Digital technology is capitalism in hyperdrive, injecting its logic of consumption and promotion, of monetization and efficiency, into every waking minute.”—Novelist-essayist Jonathan Franzen, “Capitalism in Hyperdrive,” in The End of the End of the Earth: Essays (2018)

Quote of the Day (Jonathan Franzen, on Social Media as a ‘Protection Racket’)

“[Social media] feels like a protection racket. Your reputation will be murdered unless you join in this thing that is, in significant part, about murdering reputations. Why would I want to feed that machine?” —American novelist Jonathan Franzen quoted in Emma Brockes, “Jonathan Franzen Interview: ‘There is No Way to Make Myself Not Male,'” The Guardian (U.K.), Aug. 21, 2015

Quote of the Day (Jonathan Franzen, on a High-School Prank From the Past)

“Kortenhof had heard of a high school where pranksters had put an automobile tire over the top of a 30-ft. flagpole, like a ring on a finger, and this seemed to him an impressive and elegant and beautiful feat that we at our high school ought to try to duplicate.”— Jonathan Franzen, The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History (2006)

Franzen, a bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist (Freedom), is my age, so I was intrigued by what of pranks he and his friends played in high school nearly 40 years ago. The question took on even more consuming interest for me because of the mischief created by more than five dozen seniors in Teaneck, N.J.,in the wee, wee hours of the morning a few weeks ago—a break-in that resulted in cops from neighboring Bergen County towns descending on the school, and possible criminal charges that led to a hue and cry, mass rallies by parents on behalf of their boneheaded progeny, and extensive Northeast regional media coverage.

I don’t know which side is closer to the truth in the Teaneck case, the cops or the kids.  I am glad that, following an agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor, the seniors who are adults in the eyes of the law won’t face criminal charges as part of their permanent record because of this idiotic offense. But even if little was damaged and the whole thing was just a gross overreaction on the part of the authorities, you wish that these teens could have exercised better judgment. Or, since the offenses were so plain stupid, at least they could have used more imagination, as Franzen and his friends did.

Quote of the Day (Jonathan Franzen, on Adolescent Self-Consciousness)

“Adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, is its leading symptom. Even when something important happens to you, even when your heart's getting crushed or exalted, even when you're absorbed in building the foundations of a personality, there come these moments when you're aware that what's happening is not the real story. Unless you actually die, the real story is still ahead of you. This alone, this cruel mixture of consciousness and irrelevance, this built-in hollowness, is enough to account for how pissed off you are. You're miserable and ashamed if you don't believe your adolescent troubles matter, but you're stupid if you do.”— Jonathan Franzen, The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History (2006)