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A review by kathystl
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
1.0
tl;dr Girls are bad (unless a guy is having sex with them, and then only in the particular way that guy wants to have sex).
I listened to this monstrous travesty so you wouldn't have to.
25 hours. That's how long this book is in audio form. I'm trying to imagine how any editing of this book actually happened.
Editor: "Maybe you should think about spending less time talking about how much the East German guy despises his mother and then has sex with teenagers?"
Franzen: "Mm, no."
Editor: "OK."
Franzen also goes on and on and on about how horrible the title character's mother is and how much her ex-husband hates her (in the section in the middle of the book that's written in first-person). He also spends many many pages on how insufferable said character is, presumably because her mother was insane and behaved like a spoiled seven-year-old.
Within these hundreds of pages are maybe three significant events. You could summarize the plot in a paragraph if you wouldn't have to take a detour to talk about the East German guy and his parents. It's a parade of human insanity. I can't even with the woman who can't have sex without foreplay that involves a stuffed bull, and who counts orgasms to make sure she has as many as he does.
Oh, also? The Internet = DEATH. I mean, someone like me can spew my opinion about how much I dislike Franzen's book and shoot it into the ether for all the world to read. Who the hell am I? Obviously, the Internet is the end of civilization as we know it.
I listened to this monstrous travesty so you wouldn't have to.
25 hours. That's how long this book is in audio form. I'm trying to imagine how any editing of this book actually happened.
Editor: "Maybe you should think about spending less time talking about how much the East German guy despises his mother and then has sex with teenagers?"
Franzen: "Mm, no."
Editor: "OK."
Franzen also goes on and on and on about how horrible the title character's mother is and how much her ex-husband hates her (in the section in the middle of the book that's written in first-person). He also spends many many pages on how insufferable said character is, presumably because her mother was insane and behaved like a spoiled seven-year-old.
Within these hundreds of pages are maybe three significant events. You could summarize the plot in a paragraph if you wouldn't have to take a detour to talk about the East German guy and his parents. It's a parade of human insanity. I can't even with the woman who can't have sex without foreplay that involves a stuffed bull, and who counts orgasms to make sure she has as many as he does.
Oh, also? The Internet = DEATH. I mean, someone like me can spew my opinion about how much I dislike Franzen's book and shoot it into the ether for all the world to read. Who the hell am I? Obviously, the Internet is the end of civilization as we know it.