Freedom and loyalty

I'm a pretty loyal person, when you come right down to it.  I'll stick with you, for the most part, if I've decided to be with you in the first place.

As I've gotten older, I've become more willing to admit that I don't always benefit from just doing what I've always done.  I don't use Scott toilet paper any more, because Honey convinced me some time ago that it was terribly uncomfortable.  I'm happy with Trader Joe's tp, but don't feel some unending bond with it.  If something better came along, I'd go with it. 

The same thing happened with orange juice.  Tropicana didn't deserve the loyalty I gave it, and now I am happier with unpasteurized from Trader Joes, or, preferably, Fresh and Easy.  See how flexible I've become?

My loyalty to products is now more carefully given to those I perceive as truly worthy and exemplary.  Whole Foods fudge bars, Noah's jalapeno cream cheese.  The latter has become so difficult to obtain--Noah's having stopped producing it in to-go tubs--that I have to beg bagelistas (that's what bagel people are called, right?) to dispense it for me into soup containers.  Having tried last week to be "brave" (as I referred to this trial) by having plain cream cheese on Trader Joe's bagels, rather than jalapeno cream cheese on Noah's bagels, I succumbed to "loyalty" and went to Noah's today.  It was with a sense of real relief that I walked away with my jalapeno cream cheese soup cup well packed by the bagelista.

My loyalty extends, of course, beyond the bounds of products to people and more ineffable things.  A recent crisis--which is best left off blogville--has led me to wonder about others' loyalty to me, but, fortunately, that is not a subject I wish to engage with today.

I remember many years ago driving a group of folks to the airport.  I was working in my first adult job, as the manager of the circulation desk of alma mater library.  My boss, a wonderful and kind woman whose death a few years ago from breast cancer grieves me to this day, had asked me to drive her and some other librarians to the airport.  For those folks not familiar with library things, librarians are the professional folks who went to library school.  They are faculty at most universities, including alma mater.  Should I call alma mater 2nd tier liberal arts school?  No, best not at least not in a post about loyalty.  People like me, who checked out the books at the desk (and managed the checker outers and shelvers and such) were not librarians.  We were staff.

Anyway, there I was, in my early twenties, driving these folks to the airport and one of them starts asking me about music.  He was cool and I liked him.   (So did my boss, I think, but she didn't date him, since she was dating this even cooler librarian who drank single malt scotch and was kind to her son).  I was then in a deep Indigo Girls fan zone and cool librarian was talking to me about them.  He said something that stuck with me.  "I bet you'll keep buying all their albums, even when you don't like them any more.  Some bands are like that for people."

He was right, for a while.   I kept buying their albums.  Seemed obligatory.  I didn't buy the last one or two, though.

Now, though, I mostly listen to podcasts and music I already know.  I'm hopelessly out of date on music, though occasionally discover a band I like by listening to Terry Gross.  Which, of course, makes me one of those middle aged liberal NPR listening types.  Still, the Carolina Chocolate Drops are awesome and just because I "discovered" them on Fresh Air, doesn't mean anything negative about them.  Or me.  Plus, mostly I listen to podcasts and am more of a fan of Planet Money than I am of any band.  Which still makes that whole bit about NPR true.

Which brings me back to the ostensible subject of this post.  I just finished Jonathan Franzen's Freedom.  I know, I know.  Oprah.  The National Book Award snub.  The Time magazine cover story.  Blah Blah Blah.

Thing is, though, he's one of those writers.  Can't put the book down (even at 561 pages).  Feel all the emotions that are there.  Savor all the wonderful bits of writing.  And the characters.  And the story.  And the structure.

Feel genuinely sad and happy about the end.  Put it on the shelf and look wistfully at it.  Think about how much I remember (still, eight years on) of Corrections.  Still sort of regret having sold my true first edition of same with the erratum on ebay.  (Pages 430 and 431 were reversed and FSG put a slip of paper into the first printing indicating the error).

I think I got about $50 for it, but whatever.  I want it back now.  I suppose I could buy another, but it wouldn't be the same.

My point, I guess, is that I fell for Franzen like very few other authors.  He writes it.  I read it.  Then I wait for the next one.  The waiting isn't active.  I don't go to fan sites.  But it's there, somewhere in my brain.  It gets rekindled when I read an essay of his.  Or someone brings him up.  Or asks if the "great American novel" is possible.  All of this for a guy who writes about families.  And the Midwest.  (The bird content of Freedom did make it even better).  So, I'll wait until 2018.  Or whenever the next one comes.

I guess Patrick (the librarian) was right, but about the wrong thing.  I let the Indigo Girls go.  As yet, Franzen (and a few other writers) get the bucks every time the publish.  No kindle on iPad for them either.  The real book.  On the shelf.

If you like American literary fiction, ignore the noise over Oprah, Time, and the rest.  Go buy Corrections and Freedom.  Read them.  Be prepared to give some of your time away to them.  In the end, though, if you're even a little like me, you'll be glad you did.

I can't lend you my copy of Freedom, though.  It's staying here.  I learned my lesson letting the last book go.  It never came back.  But I'm still loyal and I still miss it.