The 2011 Championship
presented by
CHAMPIONSHIP
Freedom
v. A Visit From the Goon Squad
Judged by C. Max Magee + All Judges
C. Max Magee created and edits The Millions. He is co-editor of The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books. Known connections to this year’s contenders: “Aimee Bender, Marcy Dermansky, Emma Donoghue, Jennifer Egan, James Hynes, Paul Murray, and Lionel Shriver have all written pieces for the website I edit. In most cases, this also means I may have exchanged an email or two with the aforementioned writers.”
C. Max Magee: I’m already imagining the headlines if Freedom wins this thing: “Hip Online Book Tourney Spills More Ink For Time Coverboy—Cranky White-Guy Novelist Re-Re-Ratified As No. 1.” And then the predictable wrap-ups about how Franzen’s portrayals of gentrification, infidelity, and clammy-handed concern about SUVs and suburban sprawl have made him the Voice of a Generation. Followed by, of course, the backlash to the backlash to the backlash. I’m kind of hoping my fellow judges just hand the trophy to Jennifer Egan and call it a day.
But then the problem with all the Franzen backlash is that it feels so much more scripted than the supposedly tired Franzen-ian tics we’re railing against. The baron of backlash (and another cranky white guy) B.R. Myers led with the same complaint you see in all those disaffected Amazon reviews: “One opens a new novel and is promptly introduced to some dull minor characters. Tiring of them, one skims ahead to meet the leads, only to realize: those minor characters are the leads.”
If you think these characters are dull, though, you aren’t paying attention. There really are plenty of novelists out there who merely dip a toe into the malaise of the suburban liberal, but it’s Franzen who plumbs the depths, and rises above those other novelists to be the one we all talk about, love, and/or love to hate.
When I sat down to reread Freedom—this time knowing the full arc (some might say horror) of what lay ahead of the Berglunds—I wanted right away to flag Patty down on Barrier Street to tell her to give Joey some breathing room. And for God’s sake, steer clear of Richard! Which is to say, the book awakened my instinct to give people advice. Leaving aside that this is probably an annoying habit, it’s rare that I feel compelled to unleash my wisdom on fictional people. Such are the characters Franzen creates; they’re human through and through.
And yet… and yet… It’s not enough for Franzen to push these cranky, flawed, complicated (but not dull) people into conflict, crisis, and brief moments of joy. He must also trot out his old anxieties. Here he endeavors mightily to work his creations into America as we know it. And so we have George W. Bush and Jeff Tweedy, Halliburton and Tupac, neocons and Twitter, all jarring you out of the Berglunds’ world and into Franzen’s.
With The Corrections, Franzen was perhaps lucky to have trained his critical eye on the world at the turn of the millennium, when the stakes felt lower. Now there’s terror and war and ever-more-impending global environmental doom to ruin your day, every day. Franzen (feeling, I suspect, as beleaguered by current events as poor Walter Berglund) must compulsively cram all his concerns into this big book. Like when callous Joey looks around at the books in the library where he works and thinks disdainfully, “There was no way it all wouldn’t be digitized within the next few years.” And we know from Franzen’s New Yorker piece (and subsequent New Yorker podcast) just how exercised he is about threatened songbird species. But we wish he’d save Walter’s ornithology oratory for his nonfiction.
Still, Franzen more than balances out the preaching with his invigorating detours into weirdness—e.g., the toilet episode—and his arresting brushes with core human truths, as when Patty notes, “There are few things harder to imagine than other people’s conversations about yourself.”
If only I could have that kind of tortured, challenging relationship with every novel I read. Freedom frustrated me a lot, but I loved it.
FROM OUR SPONSOR
Then again, I loved A Visit From the Goon Squad too.
First of all, the title is bodacious, and its abbreviation became something like a secret password for the literary set. “Goon Squad,” we readers whispered to each other with knowing looks all summer and into the fall. Uninitiated passersby probably thought we were talking about a Mafia flick or a punk band.
I liked the first half of Goon Squad the most. The book’s early stories ached with feeling and tension. Egan picks up Sasha, Rhea, Bennie, Lou, and Rolph, each so close to the edge of his or her own collapse that she makes the reader feel dangerously close, too. The book’s B-side is given over to a formal playfulness and looser plots that include a David Foster Wallace riff, a fictionalized post-colonial dictator, some near-future science fiction, and the famous PowerPoint story. It is perhaps fitting that I found these B-sides to be less successful than the stories earlier in the book.
Calling Goon Squad a novel in stories, as it is sometimes billed, does it a disservice. The book is more like a scaffold. Each story is a platform connected by the structure Egan has erected, but, in the form of little bits of exposition within the stories, she also sends ladders shooting higher and ropes hanging lower, moving the characters decades into future where they may or may not meet again. The scaffold suggests the heft of a much larger design behind it. And, to extend this metaphor further, isn’t it true that an intricate, possibly hazardous scaffolding is sometimes more interesting to behold than the massive building to which it is affixed?
Perhaps when I read books as pairs, I subconsciously look for parallels, but these two books are sufficiently compatible that you could fit the whole of Goon Squad into Freedom without a single misstep, creating a massive novel of gentrification, malaise, nostalgia, and low-grade technophobia after the turn of the millennium. Just insert a few scenes in which nearly washed-up record producer Bennie Alvarez tries to kick-start aging rocker Richard Katz’s career and call the whole thing Freedom from the Goon Squad.
While the suggestion that Freedom could swallow Goon Squad implies that I found something lacking in Egan’s novel-in-stories format, that it was missing the literal and figurative heft of Freedom, the book was nimble in a way that Freedom wasn’t. Where Freedom is a novel of oversharing, telling many episodes from several angles, Goon Squad, often to its benefit, floats us among characters and across decades.
With Goon Squad, I wanted more while simultaneously knowing that having more might make the book less extraordinary. This is a good thing in many ways, but this tension was also the book’s biggest negative for me. Upon finishing, there were more plot threads I wanted to keep following and characters whose stories I wanted further filled out.
And now I feel like I’m still writing because I can’t decide whom I should give my vote to.
To forestall my decision a little further, let me just say thank you to The Morning News for putting on such an awesome literary spectacle, which I know is a real logistical bear to organize. Thanks as well to Kevin and John in the booth, whose commentary is the steady, thumping, funky, and incredibly necessary bass line behind the judges’ impassioned air guitar.
OK.
So, because it is big, messy, flawed, enraging, and engrossing, and because we need so many more books that have those qualities, I choose Freedom! Cue the backlash.
Freedom 1 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 0
Catherine George: I followed the same trajectory through two-thirds of both books. Beginning: elation. The first three stories in Goon Squad are perfect; in Freedom, Patty’s journal made me believe the hype. Middle: mild disappointment with the fuzzy hat dictator and Joey’s horsey vacation. Then came the end. Last three stories in Goon Squad? Perfect again. Patty and Walter’s dark days? I couldn’t believe I’d ever wanted to read a book about these two, let alone know their romantic fate. A strong finish gives the point to Goon Squad.
Freedom 1 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 1
Anthony Doerr: From a certain angle these books feel the same: well-made realistic fiction zeroing in on American bourgeoisie. Sharp detailing. A smattering of jokes. Searing observations about suburbia. The structure of Goon Squad, though, is more interesting: it seesaws, it whorls, it pivots. Which of these two books might help, to borrow Zadie’s Smith’s clause, “shake the novel out of its present complacency?” Egan’s.
Freedom 1 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 2
Kate Ortega: The gist of A Visit From the Goon Squad is that time, the goon squad, wreaks havoc on life’s successes and takes the sting out of its failures. This is also the heart of the plot of Freedom. But Franzen does a better job at the theme; his book lets us wallow in his characters’ missteps, loves, and tragedies over decades; Egan’s collected individual tales (though lovely) put too much work on the reader’s shoulders.
Freedom 2 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 2
Jennifer Weiner: Oh, man. Pun intended. Jonathan Franzen and the boys’ club that backed him, on one side; Jennifer Egan, who published part of Goon Squad in an “anti-chick lit” anthology, on the other. It’s like Sophie’s Choice, if Sophie hated both her kids. Worse, neither book was any fun. Freedom’s characters range from loathsome to despicable, with the author’s contempt dripping from every sentence. Egan’s book seemed more like an exercise in Let Me Show You How Clever I Am than anything as lowbrow as entertainment. But Egan gets my vote, because if Franzen takes the prize, then the terrorists win (and because even if he doesn’t, you know the Los Angeles Times will run his picture anyhow).
Freedom 2 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 3
Rosecrans Baldwin: Terrific books. They both succeed at their plans, and I enjoyed both of them, but I loved only one. Freedom dramatizes an incredible amount of life. Even during its dumb moments, or when stretches were flat, it still fed the main reason I love reading novels: to go deeply into other souls.
Freedom 3 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 3
Sarah Manguso: I’m grateful for both of these books, and I’m glad to judge such an even fight this time. But now I have to make a choice, so here are my criteria: Both books use multiple points of view, but I found Goon Squad more convincingly multivocal; only Egan’s prose yielded sentences that made it into my commonplace book; Franzen made me weep for lost love, but Egan reminded me that death is coming.
Freedom 3 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 4
Hamilton Leithauser: Sooo…. Me again with the old Goon Squad and Freedom. Well, it’s an honor to be the only judge whose decision didn’t mean squat. I chose Freedom the first time because the characters are dynamic and convincing. I feel like I actually know some of the people in the book. Wait—I think I actually do know some of the people in the book! Maybe Goon Squad’s entertainment types—credible in their own right—just weren’t folks I needed to spend time with. In Freedom, I was wary of Richard Katz from his first appearance, but because the surrounding cast was so convincing, I was much more entertained by Richard’s lackadaisical and self-centered agenda as he banged his friend’s wife and dragged out a tedious rock career (oh, jeez) than Bennie Salazar’s disconnect and sort-of redemption with his son, his assistant, and a long-lost bandmate. Anyhow, once again, congratulations to both authors!
Freedom 4 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 4
John Williams: Egan’s refracted structure seems only half-necessary, and I’m not sure that in 2011 it’s as innovative as it’s gotten credit for. The last, dystopian-ish chapter bothered me. Still, she writes some fine sentences, and I even bought the PowerPoint chapter, which shocked me. As for Franzen, I’m in the “honestly befuddled” camp. It would take me 4,000 words to fairly explain why. I can’t imagine revisiting a single paragraph in Freedom. My vote: Goon.
Freedom 4 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 5
John Roderick: Due to family events beyond his control, John was unable to write up a judgment by press time, but he was able to complete both books and pass along his decision.—ed.
Freedom 5 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 5
Jessica Francis Kane: I love books in which the author disappears. I love books that make me forget I’m reading. I don’t want chapters to begin with show-offy page-long sentences or be told as PowerPoint presentations. The story never needs those fancy tricks—the reader ends up paying more attention to the form than the story. On these grounds, I didn’t love either book, not at all, but I choose Egan over Franzen because I did admire how she manhandled time, that goon.
Freedom 5 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 6
Matthew Baldwin: In the first round I decided against Super Sad True Love Story in its second paragraph, so you’ll be pleased to hear that I made it all the way to page 11 of Freedom—in which Jonathan Franzen describes a child as “like an imaginary friend who happened to be visible”—before declaring it the winner. I think I’ve really grown as a critic.
Freedom 6 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 6
Radhika Jones: I love both of these books. I think they both succeed on their own terms. So the question for me is, which of those terms lie closer to my heart? As much as I adore big sprawling novels, I’m a nut for form, the more rigorous and inventive the better. And that leads me to the Goon Squad.
Freedom 6 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 7
Matt Dellinger: These books were like cocktail cousins made with the same liquor: a Manhattan and an Old Fashioned. A Visit from the Goon Squad is the more concocted, more garnished drink (e.g., the PowerPoint chapter). It’s wonderfully balanced and beautifully made. Freedom is the high-octane classic, not as easy to drink (e.g., 562 pages), but its seriousness delivers more wallop in the end. Goon Squad delighted me; Freedom clobbered me. The martini beats the Tom Collins.
Freedom 7 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 7
Michele Filgate: If there’s one thing I like, it’s an easy decision. It’s true that Freedom is a good novel, but measured against Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad? There’s no comparison. Egan’s novel is innovative and playful, while simultaneously smart and captivating. I was fascinated by the way she played around with point of view. While Franzen wrote a somewhat predictable though solid novel, Egan wins for her vibrant prose and style.
Freedom 7 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 8
Elif Batuman: Goon Squad is trickier, more varied, and more formally inventive than Freedom. It grew on me, with its dazzling accretion of small, precise components. Freedom, however, sucked me in from page one. Its central issues—the good versus the cool; how to reconcile sex with normal life; how to live—are particularly close to my heart these days. With two books this good, the choice comes down to personal preference, and mine is for Freedom.
Freedom 8 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 8
Andrew Womack: How fortunate to find two books in the championship so comparable—both spanning decades (or beyond) and heavily centered on music. For me, this decision comes down to pacing, and Franzen is the Pink Floyd to Egan’s Sex Pistols; by the end of Freedom I couldn’t take another meandering guitar solo, while I was dazzled by how much Goon Squad packed into such a compact space.
Freedom 8 ⏤ A Visit From the Goon Squad 9
This year’s champion:
A Visit From the Goon Squad
Match Commentary
with Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner
Kevin: Celebrated author Jonathan Franzen narrowly loses book award to a lady writer! Again!
Congratulations to Jennifer Egan. We were actually were able to contact Egan over the weekend with the news, and she had this to say about the award: “A rooster will fit perfectly into our Brooklyn landscape…our sons will be thrilled; our two cats, even more so.”
We will also be making a donation in Ms. Egan’s name to Heifer International, which will provide actual fowl and livestock to people, largely outside of Brooklyn, who desperately need them.
OK, wow. But, so, what are we supposed to do with this decision? A definitive result that predictably resolves nothing. If there had been 15 judges, or 19, we might very well have had a different champion. It’s difficult to imagine anyone reading those decisions one after another and having a clear idea what they should read next. About half the judges truly loved both books, and that group split just about evenly. Only a few (maybe three) of the judges seemed largely unimpressed with both, but that group broke exclusively (and, as it turns out, decisively) for Goon Squad. It’s the inverse of a half-cocked theory I proposed earlier in the tournament: Maybe if you dislike two books equally, you hold the longer one in greater contempt.
This is the second year in a row we’ve ended up with a nailbiting, 9-8 decision in the ToB championship. It hasn’t always been that way. In 2009 it was 11-5 in favor of Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. In 2008, Junot Diaz won 12-4 with The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Cormac McCarthy clobbered his way to a 15-2 victory with The Road in 2007. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas won 10-5 in the pre-Zombie days of 2005. You and I once even speculated that this format might encourage such lopsided results, as we watched an upstart book face a heavyweight in the championship year after year, only to be have its literary hat handed to him by the panel. It seems like the Rooster is just a streaky hitter.
John: To reach for the sports cliché, in a 17-game series, anything can happen. Or, as you say, in a 15-game series or 19-game series, or a 57-game series. We didn’t think to poll the readers on which they would personally pick (as opposed to their prediction), but judging from some of the unsolicited comments, there’s plenty of positive sentiment for both books, along with a fair bit of—I think hype-related—negative sentiment held for Freedom.
Tony Doerr notes some of the thematic and stylistic similarities between the two books, so maybe it’s not surprising that they wind up so close in the sweepstakes for the affections of the individual reader. You note that most of the judges tended to either like or not like both. Even the legendary “gravitas gap” doesn’t come into play, as I think that Goon Squad gets some extra credit for its unconventional structure.
(As an aside, I think this aspect is over-praised in both books. Goon Squad’s scope seems more accidental/incidental to the story form each chapter takes. It allows the reader to see many different angles that are plausibly, but not deliberately present. And the big-picture social issues that Freedom tackles are really the book’s least interesting parts. In each case, what works for these books is their ability to bring these fictional people alive on the page, which they both did brilliantly for me.)
One of the things I like best about the championship is that seeing all of the commentaries together reminds me that book and reader is, always has been, and always will be a partnership, a conversation, and each conversation contains a manifestation of the reader’s values.
Kate Ortega likes Freedom because it handles its theme with more depth and skill. Jennifer Weiner laments that neither book is “fun.” Rosecrans felt Freedom was better at “dramatizing human life,” the reason he reads. Sarah Manguso appreciates Egan’s ability with a range of voices. Freedom appeared to hit Elif Batuman on a just-in-time basis (and who hasn’t experienced that?), and on and on and on…
What I think the championship commentary does year after year is celebrate reading and the engagement with literature, and it’s a real privilege to be a part of it. In fact, I feel so damn sincere now, I can’t even make a joke, which is totally not like me.
Tiger blood!
Kevin: Last year, the 16 ToB judges split evenly and the extra decider in the championship round, Jessica Francis Kane, turned out to be the tiebreaker. This year, the 16 judges went for Goon Squad 9-7 and the estimable C. Max Magee of the Millions brought the final tally to the narrowest of margins. It’s somehow appropriate that Max gets to give an eloquent defense for Freedom on its ToB deathbed. And although I preferred Goon Squad just a little, I’d argue to anyone debating whether they should read it—and in response to Jennifer Weiner—that Freedom is kind of fun. Not all of it, of course—it’s not exactly the Lemony Snicket approach to this particular series of unfortunate events—but most of it really is a page-turner. It’s more fun than your average reader will be expecting, is what I want to say.
John: I thought both of these books were fun, as were quite a few in the final 16, particularly Skippy Dies, Bad Marie, and Kapitoil.
Last year I started what I’m now going to think of as an annual tradition during our final commentary, that is including a “watch list” of books for next year’s ToB. To be clear, this is a personally compiled list, culled from various sources, entirely idiosyncratic, and in no way, shape, or form is the definitive list of books that will even be considered for the tournament, let alone be chosen.
Open City by Teju Cole
Pym by Mat Johnson
Three Stages of Amazement by Carol Edgarian
So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman
Swamplandia by Karen Russell
The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obrecht
Other People We Married by Emma Straub
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
When the Killing’s Done by T.C. Boyle
Abbott Awaits by Chris Bachelder
The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French
Gryphon: New and Selected Stories by Charles Baxter
Miracles, Inc. by T.J. Forrester
The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard
The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah
The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier
The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Luminarium by Alex Shakar
West of Here by Jonathon Evison
The Great Night by Chris Adrian
11/12/63 by Stephen King
1Q84 by Haruki Marukami
Bright’s Passage by Josh Ritter
Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Doc by Mary Doria Russell
The Paris Wife by Paula McClain
Millennium People by J.G. Ballard
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollack
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America by Albert Brooks
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
Long Drive Home by Will Allison
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai
Us by Michael Kimball
The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
Zone One by Colson Whitehead
The Upright Piano Player by David Abbott
Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks
My New American Life by Francine Prose
The Call by Yannick Murphy
The Beginners by Rebecca Wolff
A Man of Parts by David Lodge
Bed by David Whitehouse
House of Holes by Nicholson Baker
The Submission by Amy Waldman
The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
Orientation and Other Stories by Daniel Orozco
Emily Alone by Stewart O’Nan
What You See in the Dark by Manuel Munoz
The Free World by David Bezmozgis
Dreams of Molly by Jonathan Baumbach
Juice by Ishmael Reed
Kevin: Like my “To Be Read” pile needed that. I’m actually reading an advance reader’s copy of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus right now and am quite enjoying it. I have the Boyle and that will be next. The Upright Piano Player is queued up after that. Let me look at my nightstand and also add Glen Duncan’s The Last Werewolf—yes, another werewolf novel—that is expected to see a fair amount of hype this summer. I can’t help but wonder what Anis Shivani thinks about that.
Of course to really anticipate the 2012 tourney, we have to look over the list for the big names that have never been in the ToB: DFW, Kevin Brockmeier, Stephen King, Haruki Marukami, JG Ballard, Tom Perrotta, Francine Prose, Stewart O’Nan, Geraldine Brooks. And then the big names who have been to the Rooster before, but were knocked out in the early rounds: Boyle, Colson Whitehead, Nicholson Baker.
John: I don’t have a crystal ball or a DeLorean with a flux capacitor, but just like last year at this time, I couldn’t imagine a ToB without Freedom, I’m going to make the same prediction for The Pale King. I’m both excited and afraid to read the book. It looks like it’s going to be our last and only chance to have David Foster Wallace in the tournament, though it seems like we couldn’t avoid talking about him this year, even when he wasn’t competing.
And of course, there’s going to be surprises along the way, books that aren’t on anybody’s radar that manage to catch fire and suddenly be everywhere. It’s not that publishing is a meritocracy—for sure, many books come into the world with all kinds of advantages when it comes to gaining readership—but in the end, readers have the final say, and are always capable of surprise.
Kevin: And it won’t be eligible for the Tournament of Books, but let me say that I am really very excited about your debut novel, Funny Man, which will be released by Soho Books in September. I have read an early draft of the book and it (not surprisingly) made me laugh out loud and I hope lots of ToB fans check it out in the fall.
John: Indeed, I am releasing to the world just what it needs, another WMFUN. My hope is that it tells the story of the potential FU in all of us. My mother just finished the galley and said, “I’m not sure I enjoyed reading it, but it was really well done.” We’re thinking about putting it on the cover. Some book-related talks and appearances are likely, so hopefully I’ll have a chance to meet some of our commenters and contributors on the road. I’m happy to come wherever I’m invited, and even places I’m not.
Kevin: And finally, thanks to all of you, the readers and commenters that make the Rooster such a blast. We are always tinkering with it, but I think I speak for everyone who works so hard to make our thing go each spring—especially Rosecrans Baldwin, Andrew Womack, Liz Entman Harper, and Matt Robison—that it really didn’t click until we gave the readers a voice after every judgment. Your insight has been intelligent and funny (and fun) and surprisingly free of troll activity. In fact, if we hadn’t brought ToB readers into the mix, I don’t know that we would still be bothering. Y’all are awesome. Even when you call John and I on our sometimes half-baked bullshit. Even especially then.
John: It really is a pleasure to be held accountable for the ideas one publishes on the Internet without being told to do horrible things to oneself with farm animals, and I think we reached some sort of record for total number of posts without anyone mentioning fascism. I’d also like to thank everyone at TMN for making it so easy for us to just spew our nonsense and then have it magically appear looking great. The commentary leaves my computer wearing sweatpants and somehow shows up on the page in a tux. Thanks also to all the judges for their perceptive and thorough judgments, which left plenty for all of us to gnaw on, and, as always, we should acknowledge Field Notes and Powell’s for sponsoring the fun. I’m pretty sure we couldn’t do it without them.
And of course, congratulations once again to Jennifer Egan. I can’t wait to see whatever she writes next.
Kevin: Which brings us to our contest winner. Thirty-three readers had the result exactly right, which only underscores how close this match was in the minds of most observers. After some shuffling and random number generation, the winners of an awesome Field Notes gift pack and a $50 Powell’s gift card are Marijke Heijn and Wendy (B00kworm97). Please email talk@themorningnews.org for info on how to collect your prize.
And finally, it’s already April and we have the best sampling of smart readers anywhere. Tell us below what books you have read so far in 2011 that we should be considering for next year’s ToB. Or else, what books you are most looking forward to.
John: Cue inspirational music, run credits over highlight reel, fade to black.
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