It’s about parents and their adult children, about the repressed, the unsaid and the silence. A pastor family with the German name Hildebrandt lives in a suburb of Chicago. The parents raised their offspring in the American way of life, but they always want to accept few from their parents, they have almost written them off. You don’t understand each other anymore. The novel is a tragic comedy. We readers are vividly transported back to around 50 years ago. 1971, there is civil war in the USA, there are hippies, sex, drug & rock n ‘roll, big cars, baseball, burgers and alcohol. A guitar player with ripped jeans sits on the cover of the heavy book – Jonathan Franzen himself, the picture was taken in 1974. There he was, born in 1959, a young man who was looking for his way. Society had loosened up, but most Americans still believed in religiosity as the standard of existence.
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At the age of 15 Franzen had joined a Protestant youth group, in the book he tells how it was back then. The teenagers were influenced by a young church worker a few years older than them and a talented, cool man catcher. They were taught in seminars, strictly biblically oriented and with the aim of becoming honest people and being friendly to others. Group spiritual therapy for teenagers.
The young church members are popular in their community, while Pastor Russ Hildebrandt of all people is sidelined. He’s old-fashioned, narrow-minded, and ashamed of his overweight wife. When a young widow comes into the community looking for refuge, he begins to flirt with her bizarre, whereupon the woman takes flight. Word gets around, Hildebrandt’s eldest son addresses his father: “Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to be your son?” In Franzens Chronik, the change in US society begins at this time. The older ones stay among themselves, especially the fathers lose importance. Of the Hildebrandts’ four children, three no longer attend church services, and fewer do so in the family house. The eldest son wants to go into the Vietnam War to portray his father, a self-proclaimed pacifist, as a hypocrite. The family dissolves more and more. The “old white men” are no longer in control, they don’t understand their time and insist on traditional privileges. The differences between old and young are described drastically, it is about the feelings of the boys, their love and sex scenes. The author can convey the unrest, the change that can no longer be stopped.
A plethora of characters are performed, women and men alike, with a preference for moral rigor and individualism for the elderly and the liberal pop culture for the younger generation. The author takes each of his characters seriously, he places them against the backdrop of modernity, often describes the many lost hopes, mishaps and the futile search for happiness.
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Franzen stated in an interview that he wrote his novel on a “dark underground” and that he himself led a “two-part life”. What is meant is the importance of religion, which is crumbling, and psychoanalysis is taking its place today. “Crossroads” is an amazing book because it traces the paths that have diverged in America for years. It’s strong literature, honest and haunting.
The book is also entertaining and therefore easy to read for everyone. If you want to understand America, here is a story.
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