Reseña de The Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist) por Josh

Twenty-seventh City is the least enjoyable of Franzen's books that I've read (I've read all his other novels, except for Strong Motion). It was written when he was young and, I think, trying too hard to please the professors he'd taken literature classes with.

Part of the issue is that the characters are absurdly implausible. The chief of police, Jammu, is possibly a psychopath or maybe just a dedicated revolutionary. Or maybe her dedication to revolutionary ideas has turned her into a borderline psychopath? She's apparently won over all of St. Louis with her silver tongue, but her actual dialogue is not particularly compelling.

As others have noted Freedom recapitulates a lot of elements of TSC. It seems like perhaps Franzen wanted a do-over, and indeed he does it far better the second time around.

There's also a strange racial element in TSC. The plot revolves around a cabal of sinister Indians (from the subcontinent, not American) who effectively invade St. Louis with some sort of vaguely revolutionary notions. I don't think I understood what Franzen was aiming for well enough to characterize their portrayal as racist, and that's not an impression I've gotten from any of his other work. I think he's trying to make some sorta point about race though, and I have no idea what that point was the whole thing just felt strange and vaguely uncomfortable.