Purity (novel)
 Cover, 1st edition | |
| Author | Jonathan Franzen |
|---|---|
| Cover artist |
Rodrigo Corral (design) Bon Duke (photograph) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | novel |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | September 1, 2015 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 563 |
| ISBN | 978-0-374-23921-3 |
Purity is a novel by American author Jonathan Franzen. It was published on September 1, 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Plot summary
The novel tells the intersecting stories of several different people.
Purity in Oakland
Purity Tyler, who goes by the name "Pip" and is in her early 20s with $130,000 in student loan debt, was raised by her reclusive mother Penelope in Felton, California, south of the Bay area. Her mother tells her nothing about her own background, not even her original name or age. The one time she reveals that she and Pip are in hiding from her abusive ex turns out to have been cribbed from someone's memoir. Over her mother's objections, Pip is recruited by Annagret, a German anti-nuclear activist, to work for Andreas Wolf, the charismatic leader of The Sunshine Project, a fictional competitor to WikiLeaks, headquartered in Bolivia. Among other things, Wolf promises to help search for Pip's father.
The Republic of Bad Taste
Andreas Wolf, born in the 1950s in East Germany, the son (or so he thinks) of an important SED Central Committee member and his flighty wife Katya, gets himself kicked out of university for publishing embarrassing poetry and lives for years in a church basement, helping troubled youths. After seven years, when he was 27-year-old, a 15-year-old girl, Annagret, comes to him with the problem of her stepfather, a Stasi informant who is molesting her. He falls in love with her. Together, they kill the stepfather, burying his body in the backyard of Andreas' parents' dacha. They separate for a time, to not draw attention to themselves. When nothing happens, Wolf becomes convinced that the Stasi is keeping the regular police away to spare his father trouble.
Two years later, the Berlin Wall comes down and Wolf is afraid his crime will be exposed, partly because his parents are thinking of selling their dacha to Westerners who want to raze and redevelop the estate, doubtlessly uncovering the body. His father arranges for one last favor with the party, and Wolf gets access to his Stasi records and those of Annagret's stepfather, early on the first day outsiders are allowed into the archives. While trying to leave on the sly with carbon copies he is not supposed to have, he runs into television cameras and on the spot becomes a celebrity dissident, shining "sunlight" on the state's secrets. He then meets an American journalist, Tom Aberant, whom he tells about the murder.
Too Much Information
Leila Helou is an investigative journalist for Denver Independent, an on-line newspaper founded by Tom Aberant off a $20 million dollar gift in his ex-father-in-law's will. Leila splits her personal life between her paraplegic husband, Charles Blenheim, a literary has-been, and Tom Aberant, her boss and lover. Leila is pursuing a story made possible by a disturbing photograph of a nuclear warhead being used as a party prop, made available by Pip Tyler, the Denver Independent 's new intern from California. Pip is taken in by Tom and Leila, but over time Leila grows jealous of the relationship between Tom and Pip, and has it out with him. Tom reveals that Pip's mother is his long-disappeared ex-wife Anabel and that he is apparently Pip's father, but that this is impossible. He is greatly disturbed by the fact that Pip somehow ended up with him, apparently without her knowing he is her father. Tom also reveals that Pip's mother has a billion-dollar trust fund in her name which she refuses to acknowledge.
Moonglow Dairy
Pip is in Bolivia, learning the ropes at The Sunshine Project. Wolf and Pip don't quite have an affair—Pip backs out of sexual encounters twice at the last minute—and after six months, Wolf sends her to Denver, partly to spy on Tom Aberrant by installing spyware on his computer.
Pip enjoys working at Denver Independent with Tom and Leila and, realizing they don't seem to have any agenda regarding Wolf, regrets having installed spyware on Tom's computer. She asks Wolf to undo this. He says he may try, but then angrily breaks off contact with her. Tom and his IT specialist have identified the spyware. Pip confesses, although she can't bring herself to naming Wolf explicitly. Tom worries whether Pip might have read a certain document.
[le1o9n8a0rd]
A young Tom Aberant is a college student at the University of Pennsylvania and editor-in-chief of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Following an unflattering story about an incident concerning Anabel Laird, an art student at Tyler School of Art, Tom becomes Anabel's friend, lover, and husband. She is from an extremely rich family, but she won't touch any family money, is a vegan, and excels at taking offense at almost anything Tom, his mother, or her father does. Tom is the son of Chuck Aberant, an American progressive, and Clelia, from Jena, East Germany.
Tom is moving up in his journalism career, Anabel has retreated into an art film project that can never be finished. Tom gets an assignment to cover East Germany as communism is ending, where he meets Andreas Wolf, who tells Tom a slightly fictionalized version of the story of the murder of a girl's stepfather. Together, they rebury the body. Wolf's exuberance disgusts Tom, who returns to the U.S. and decides to divorce Anabel. But they continue to have an affair, and Tom pulls his ultimate weapon to end things with Anabel. He tells her he is going to accept a huge check from her father. She disappears, leaving no trace except for a taunting note. He does not take money at the time, but does eventually accept a gift from his will.
The Killer
Andreas Wolf gets back together with Annagret. But she and Wolf's mother Katya become best of friends, and Wolf finds himself riding great internal rages, which he dubs the "Killer".
After ten years of lovelessness together, they break up. He becomes an Internet celebrity and a wanted man in most countries of the world for his leaking of secrets, eventually settling his operations in a hidden paradise within Bolivia. In his growing paranoia, he endlessly searches for information about himself, and when a journalist, Leila Henou, castigates him for "deep secrets", he connects her with Tom Aberant, whom he is convinced has betrayed him. Seeking revenge, he discovers Tom's wife had vanished so long ago, and starts a deep trawl with face recognition software on American databases. Eventually, he discovers Penelope Tyler, and learning of Pip's existence and her likely fatherhood, asks Annagret to recruit Pip.
When Tom finally learns he has been spied on, he comes to Bolivia to have it out with Wolf, who is surprised to learn that Tom has kept his secret. Wolf leads Tom to a high, isolated cliff, taunts Tom with his private knowledge about Pip and his reading of Tom's secret memoir. When he can't goad Tom into killing him, even telling him he has mailed the secret memoir to Pip, Wolf leaps off the cliff.
The Rain Comes
Pip is trying to come to terms with the knowledge of who she is. She reveals herself to her mother's trust fund manager, whose hands are mostly tied without Anabel's signature at some point. Pip convinces her mother into lending the smallest amounts and arranges for Tom to meet Anabel again. The reunion goes poorly. The novel ends with Pip and Jason, her boyfriend, sitting in a car outside of Anabel's cabin, listening to a furious argument between Tom and Anabel. Pip has hope that she "might" be able to do better than her parents.
Development
The novel had been in development since before December 18, 2012, when Franzen revealed that he had "a four-page, single-spaced proposal" for a fifth novel.[1] A longer excerpt of the novel was published in The New Yorker in June 2015.[2]
On November 17, 2014 The New York Times Artsbeat Blog reported that the novel, titled Purity, would be released in September.[3] Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, described Purity as a multigenerational American epic that spans decades and continents.[3]
Reception
The novel received a mixed response, garnering high praise[4] from some and negative[5][6][7][8][9] reviews from others. Michiko Kakutani's review in the The New York Times was favorable,[10] calling the book "dynamic" and dubbing it Franzen's "most intimate novel yet." Harper's described the novel's plot as a "beautiful arabesque," and suggests that Franzen seems to have responded to past accusations of anti-feminist chauvinism with blunt clichés.[11]
A review of the book in The Economist magazine stated Purity did not compare favorably with his previous works. It stated that "feels like an imitation of Mr Franzen’s earlier novels, without the emotional resonance and subtlety."[12]
Television series
An adaptation of the novel is in preliminary development according to Variety. Co-written by Todd Field and author Jonathan Franzen, headlining the possible adaptation is actor Daniel Craig who is in talks. The series is to be produced by Scott Rudin. Currently producers are looking for a straight to series order of 20 episodes with Field directing every episode where it is being bid by Showtime, FX and Netflix, amongst other networks.[13]
References
- ↑ "Q&A: Jonathan Franzen". portlandmonthlymag.com. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
- ↑ Franzen, Jonathan (8 June 2015). "The Republic of Bad Taste". The New Yorker. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
- 1 2 Alter, Alexandra. "New Jonathan Franzen Novel, 'Purity,' Coming in September". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
- ↑ Cueto, Emma (1 September 2015). "Jonathan Franzen's New Novel 'Purity' Examines Feminism, Technology, And Ideology — But How Compelling Are The Author's Views?". Bustle. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
- ↑ Gay, Roxane (2 September 2015). "A Compelling Plot Gives Way To Farce In Franzen's Purity". NPR. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
- ↑ Corrigan, Maureen (2 September 2015). "Franzen's Latest Novel: An Ambitious But Tarnished 'Purity'". NPR. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
- ↑ Al-Shawaf, Rayyan (3 September 2015). "Our reviewer read Franzen's Purity so you don't have to". The Chicago Reader. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
- ↑ CML (8 September 2015). "Jonathan Franzen's Purity Is an Irrelevant Piece of Shit". Gawker Review of Books. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
- ↑ C. Rodman, Melissa (7 September 2015). "Franzen’s 'Purity' Muddied by Preachiness, Length". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
- ↑ Kakutani, Michiko (August 24, 2015). "Review: In 'Purity,' Jonathan Franzen Hits a New Octave". The New York Times.
- ↑ Blair, Elaine (Sep 2015). "The Prisoner of Sex". Harper's: 84–88.
- ↑ "Being Franzen’s friends". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2015-12-29.
- ↑ Littleton, Cynthia (February 13, 2016). "Multiple Bidders In Talks For Daniel Craig Drama ‘Purity’ From Scott Rudin, Todd Field (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
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