The Twenty-Seventh City: A Novel (Picador Modern Classics) Paperback – November 5, 2013

I have to admit that The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen's debut novel, was a book that I found difficult to get through. I picked it up the first time, read about a hundred and fifty pages, then put it down again. A year later, I picked it up again with greater determination, started over, and managed to finish it, in spurts, over the course of five months. What is it about The Twenty-Seventh City that makes it such a tough read? For many readers, it will be the difficulty of the prose. Despite the fact that Franzen is supposedly stepping away from the postmodern games of someone like Thomas Pynchon (who is briefly, gratuitously, mentioned in passing in the novel) toward a greater sense of realism, the fact is that his debut novel reads in many ways, like a throwback to modernism - one could easily imagine, for instance, that Andrei Bely's Petersburg (1913) was a model for this text.I'd like to think, though, that I have enough literary muscle to handle difficult prose, so I don't think that was the only culprit. No, the thing that made the novel such a hard read for me was the way that Franzen continues to introduce new characters, even up until the very last pages. The sheer amount of names becomes impossible to keep track of, and this problem is compounded by the fact that Franzen doesn't provide enough signals from the outset as to which characters are important and which are not. Everyone is named and described in with seemingly equal importance, giving no indication about whether they will continue to be important to the plot or not.In the end, there are two characters are elevated above the rest: Martin Probst, a local developer and community leader, and S. Jammu, an Indian woman who was unexpectedly hired as St Louis's new police chief. Once the reader realizes that these are the two figures that stand above the cacophony created by such a dizzyingly large array of characters, the novel starts to click. I am sure that rereading the novel with that knowledge would be a different, more rewarding experience.That's not to say that other characters aren't important, including: Barbara Prost, Martin's wife, and their daughter Luisa; Luisa's older boyfriend Duane Thompson, whose relationship with Luisa begins the process of fragmenting the Prost family; Rolf Ripley, who is obsessed with Barbara despite the fact that he is married to her sister, Audrey; Jack DuChamp, an old buddy of Martin's who acts as a barometer of the "man in the street;" RC, a black cop who plays an important role in the novel's denouement; General Norris, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who smells something fishy in Jammu's dealings; Asha Hammaker, an Indian princess who marries one of St Louis's richest men and conspires with Jammu; Shanti Jammu, the police chief's controlling mother; and Jammu's various goons and pawns, most notably the handsome and ruthless Balwan Singh and the drug-addicted Barbara Prost lookalike, Devi Madan. There are more characters, many more, illustrating just how difficult it can be to keep track of which character is which in the novel.While the pitfalls of such an approach are obvious, this vast canvas on which Franzen lays out his story also has its strengths. His deep knowledge of St Louis and its culture comes from the fact that he grew up there, but the skill with which he portrays the city in all its complexity is quite extraordinary, with the diverse array of characters on display a reflection of the city's multifaceted nature. In spite of its particular context, however, The Twenty-Seventh City has a much broader scope that transcends both its time and location. Franzen states early on that "all cities are ideas, ultimately" (p.24), and thus St Louis, itself defined by the symbol of the Arch and its connection to Manifest Destiny, is also transformed into an idea.So it is that The Twenty-Seventh City unfolds as a political novel of ideas, a "textbook dialectic" that pits "absolute freedom" against "absolute terror, the French Revolution à la Hegel" (p.198). Probst and Jammu are the opposing terms in this dialectic, which contrasts his rigid sense of ethical "decency" with her utter ruthlessness. Probst and Jammu thus find themselves on opposite sides of the fence in the political fight to unite the city and county of St Louis, only to find in their opposition a hidden attraction that perversely brings them together.It is when Franzen engages with these grand political ideas that The Twenty-Seventh City rises above its limitations and truly soars. Franzen does not allow himself to get carried away, in contrast to so many other American writers during the 1980s, with railing simplistically against the conservative Reagan years. There is no easy dichotomy between freedom and tyranny, for it is the sheer apathy of the St Louis public that saves the day. There is a beautiful but sad irony in the fact that this lack of interest in their own political future is what eventually saves them from the traps that Jammu lays.Franzen's key insight is that counter-revolutionary forces are not anomalies, but an integral part of the revolution itself, an inherent problem that easily inverts the original relationship between "theory and praxis" in such a way that "praxis dictate[s] that theory, in the short run, be its apologist" - that is, the ends come to justify the means in the most vulgarly Machiavellian sense (p.394). It's a complex, clear-eyed view of politics that Franzen delivers in his debut novel that, sadly, he has been unable to sustain in his most recent work.

The fact that Franzen was a friend of David Foster Wallace led me to search out his oeuvre. I decided to start at the beginning with The Twenty-Seventh City. Character and plot development in a soup of creative weirdness gave me surprise after surprise. This is not a review that is going to tell you the story - rather, I want to tell you to ignore the bad reviews and get this book. Read it for fun.

This was a pretty interesting novel from Franzen's early days. Although it was difficult to keep track of the names of some of the characters who appeared only occasionally, Franzen did a good job of developing both the characters and the plot. It was also an interesting look at the 1980's. I read it mostly in anticipation of "Purity" to see how the author progressed through his other books.

The genesis of Franzen's style as a novelist is on display in this work. The author astutely creates very human characters with all the foibles and peccadillos one finds in his own circle of family and friends. Toss in a layered plot and some social commentary and your in for reading journey that is all Franzen. This is a fine debut novel.

I read The Corrections, so I was looking forward to reading this. I've persisted 3/4 the way through the book and am finally abandoning it. I can't keep track of how all of the characters inter-relate. Of the few key characters, the Indian sidekick Singh is just not believable at all esp the relationship he has with the protagonist's wife. Some interesting writing, different perspectives of viewing some things, but not enough to make up for the incomprehensibility of the book.

Franzen's best work has been Freedom. This is my second favorite book of his. A mysterious plot, local to St Louis, without the randomness found in The Corrections. Written a while back, but relevant to the city of St Louis today, this is a page turner, and a must-read!

Not his best book, that goes to Freedom, but as a Missourian, it personally related to me in some interesting ways. If this isn't your first Franzen novel, it, again, should be Freedom, then this is something you will, at least, like.

And despite not seeming able to find a ringing endorsement of anything else written by Mr. Franzen, the premise here sounded intriguing. Stopped reading around page 100. I was hoping at least there would've been more from the historical side on St. Louis, - the building of the city, etc - but wasn't even getting that. You're on your own here.

I read this book after Corrections and I must say I was disappointed, it does not have the same reach. Interesting and witty at times, but the central theme is too dramatic and unrealistic. In Corrections one is transposed in the story, whereas in the 27th city one remains a spectator wondering what the fuss is about. Jonathan's writing is superb, one can see undoubtedly his skill.

Story is a bit slow!

super

J'ai réçu l'article dans la periode mentionnée et j'ai été très satisfait. L'état était optimal comme dans la déscription et le livre était en très bon état.

A must read for any Franzen fan.