Book review of Edward J. Ahearn’s Urban Confrontations in Literature and Social Science, by Edward K. Kaplan

Urban Confrontations by Edward J. Ahearn

Edward J. Ahearn, Urban Confrontations in Literature and Social Science, 1848-2001: European Contexts, American Evolutions. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7546-6882-4;

ISBN 978-0-7546-9538-7 (ebook), 236 pp.

Edward Ahearn has developed a truly comparative, interdisciplinary investigation of representations of the modern city in literature and sociology (which he also calls social science). This is an excellent model of committed scholarship, extending stretching from mid-nineteenth-century Europe to the present-day United States. The author draws us in by explaining that the book “reflects my personal and professional life. Born in Manhattan in 1937, I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1940s and1950s, stimulated by New York’s vast spectacle and the enormous energy and variety of crowds in streets and subways” (1).

Baudelaire

A specialist in nineteenth-century French literature and author of a book on Rimbaud, Ahearn opens with Baudelaire’s prose poem, “The Bad Glazier,” as a metaphor of his critique of ideologies, both political and academic, characterized as “a hegemonic battle between literature, psychology and social theorizing,” in Baudelaire’s terms, “breaking the glass” (loc. cit.).

The entire book is organized around two domains of research: academic or politically engaged urban sociology and literature, mostly American. Given the wide variety of examples, Ahearn assumes that most readers would not have read the majority of works he cites. So he structures each of three parts to highlight the continuity of his focus on Chicago, Paris, Los Angeles, and New York.

In each part he first examines the writings of social science and then he interprets literary exemplars. Part I, “The Heroism of Modern Life? Baudelaire, Brecht and the Founders of Urban Sociology” (9-64), provides a pedagogical model, highlighting Baudelaire’s Parisian modernism and Brecht’s theatrical radicalism through his Chicago drama, “Jungle of Cities.” Part II, “Chicago Black and White: Immigration and Race in Native Son and The Adventures of Augie March” (67-112), deals with American identity in major works by Richard Wright and Saul Bellow. Part III, “Power, Governance and the Struggle for Human Realization” (113-179), introduces woman authors who portray struggles with ethnic and immigrant identity, and gender roles, Jazz by Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, and Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone.

A substantial Epilogue, “DeLillo’s Global City” (181-203), carefully examines Cosmopolis, “a novel of world quality” (181) published in 2003. Ahearn returns to Baudelaire’s “The Bad Glazier,” as he recalls his other literary examples to explain the “space-time” compression of Cosmopolis (183). Throughtout the book, the author accompanies his careful analysis of each work with a respectful, and often laudatory engagement with other critics, lending a generous dialogical dimension to his exposition.

Ahearn’s parallel (or complementary) theoretical analysis systematically studies the development of urban social science, lending a greater coherence to the otherwise scattered variety of literary interpretations, some of them quite detailed. I found the study of Robert Moses to be the most dramatic: chap. 6, “Bureaucracy and the Lone City Dweller: James Q. Wilson – and Michel Foucault – Meet Bartleby” (121-35), continuing in chap. 7, “Jazz and The Power Broker: Urban Tycoon versus Real Lives of Ordinary Black People” (138-60).

The reading experience is usually friendly but sometimes arduous. Ahearn provides deft plot summaries, and strategic reminders of his process, to clarify his interpretations and critiques.

This is an exemplary pedagogical work, the fruit of a life-time of award-winning teaching and co-teaching at Brown University. From the perspective of literary studies, it could be said that Baudelaire, and to a lesser degree Rimbaud and Balzac, comprise the foundation which justifies Edward Ahearn’s defense and criticism of urban sociology, a social science that illumines the sad, complex facts of big cities such as Paris and Chicago – the two prominent places of interest in this richly documented, militant but hopeful, and clearly argued book.

Edward K. Kaplan

Brandeis University

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom: The WOW! Factor in Contemporary Fiction

No doubt, you already know about him. Time Magazine has published his picture on its cover, calling him the “Great American Novelist.” I have just finished reading Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Freedom, and my visceral reaction was: WOW! Which led me to think about the importance of the WOW! factor: not just in Franzen’s novel, but in contemporary fiction in general.

Let me preface my remarks by stating the obvious: it’s not easy to publish literary fiction in this country. Literary fiction writers like Jonathan Franzen, Wally Lamb, Jeffrey Eugenides and a handful of others have to compete in the publishing world with brand name authors: political personages like Sarah Palin or pop celebrities like Madonna, who generate controversy and attract media coverage, which in turn boosts book sales. Literary fiction is, above all, an aesthetic genre. At its best, it delivers strong characterizations, an individual style—as unique as the fingerprints of its authors—psychological depth, cohesive, well-balanced structures and outstanding plots, full of twists and surprises.

Furthermore, literary fiction is not easily digestible: it requires a lot of patience, thought and, since such novels probe into our natures and motivations, a not always pleasurable introspection.  Which is perhaps why –along with poetry and independent films–literary fiction tends to get great critical reviews but doesn’t usually sell well. So when an author manages to write literary fiction that is top-notch quality and appeals to the general public, the only way I can explain this magic is through that je ne sais quoi, the WOW! factor.

Granted, Jonathan Franzen had a lot going for him: Oprah’s attention (the mere presence in Oprah’s Book  Club makes any book sell well); an outstanding literary agent (Susan Golomb) and the support of a publisher who is known for publishing top literary fiction (Jonathan Galassi, the publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux). But talking about all of this “cultural capital” in Franzen’s corner really begs the question. Because his new novel wasn’t chosen at random: it really deserves  the endorsements it gets.

Freedom is, first of all, a family epic. It traces the lives of two generations of Americans: Patty and Walter Berglund and their children, Joey and Jessica. The novel offers a masterful sketch of two eras in American culture, not just the portrait of a family. For additional interest and spice, there’s the drama and tension of a love triangle. Patty becomes infatuated with her husband’s best friend, the renegade musician, Richard Katz. In its vivid portrayals of the love story between Patty and Walter and the affair between Patty and Richard, Freedom shows us the difference between infatuation—with its long-term obsessions and explosive, but short-lived sexual excitement–and love, with its combination of loyalty, disappointment and real-life challenges.

The novel’s tension is maintained not just by the drama of the plot, but also by the depth and balance of its characterizations. The main characters function as each other’s foils: the moral, straight-laced Walter is a foil for Richard, the egotistic musician, whose outlook reminds me of Ivan’s famous saying in The Brothers Karamazov: “But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.” Similarly, Patty, the competitive housewife prone to depression is counterbalanced by her pragmatic, even-keeled daughter, Jessica. Finally, the doting, self-effacing neighbor’s daughter, Connie, functions as the perfect complement and foil to the outgoing and self-confident Joey. Their youthful love story reveals the symbiotic relationship between idolizer and idol, which could prompt analyses of the workings of narcissism and co-dependency, but which also remains more touching and unique than popular psychology. The characterizations in this novel are so compelling that it’s as if the author immersed himself into mindset of each character, a process reminiscent of Flaubert’s saying, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi!” Which brings me to my initial point: Freedom definitely captures the WOW! factor. For me, the WOW! factor happens when a writer  appeals to  the greatest number of readers without sacrificing anything in quality (characterization, plot, structure or style).

As a novelist and literary critic, I’ve been an avid reader of contemporary fiction for many years. Novels like Franzen’s Freedom, which magically combine mass appeal with aesthetic qualities, remind me of why if you make it as a novelist in the U.S., you make it internationally.  To keep afloat in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment, American publishers demand  mass appeal  from all of their  writers.  Meeting the highest aesthetic standards, as Franzen’s Freedom does, is just an added bonus:  that unforgettable and unmistakable WOW! factor.

Claudia Moscovici, literaturesalon

http://www.amazon.com/Seducer-Novel-Claudia-Moscovici/dp/0761858075/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326297451&sr=1-1