Franzen’s Short Stories Miss the Mark

With infidelity, promiscuous behavior, and television shows like “Sex in the City” becoming new trends in American society and pop culture, it’s no wonder that Jonathan Franzen’s short stories, “Breakup Stories” would be considered a suitable one for our times. While his stories of dysfunctional relationships may be an intriguing read, its lack of depth and absence of wit make it no more satisfying than an hour-long conversation with a bunch of love-starved old ladies.

However, the one attribute of Franzen’s work that is extremely positive is that most of the stories within “Breakup Stories” hit home in the readers mind and point out the faults of each of the characters. Considering it’s possible for all of these situations to happen in any person’s life, Franzen makes it easy for readers to relate their own bad relationships to the text. Franzen also incorporates diverse personalities within each story that do a solid job of giving each and every person reading a feeling of belonging to the story.

Despite a solid environment for the story to be told in and solid characters, Franzen lets his readers down by keeping the juicy details away from them, as he only tells us of the consequences of each characters actions and offers less insight than a gypsy fortune-teller on the east side of Manhattan. By doing this, Franzen makes these stories read more like a shoddy Laundromat conversation between two old ladies rather than the “Sex and the City” type piece he was obviously going for.

For instance, one story revolves around Peter, a radiation oncologist with a busy uptown practice who has been cheating on his wife with his Pilates instructor. Franzen says Peter’s wife was “plain and rather clingy,” but that still isn’t recourse for Peter to resort to having “unprotected sex with his Pilates instructor, Rebecca, frequently enough (and then some) to make her pregnant.”

Simply put, the reader needs to know more here. People usually don’t make such rash decisions in their lives without being some type of reasoning involved. What was going on in Peter’s head for him to make such a decision? Has his wife done anything to him that would accommodate his cheating? What else is going on in Peter’s life for him to cheat on his wife? What part is the Pilates instructor playing in this?

You never find out any of the answers to these questions because Franzen’s cookie cutter approach to character development sends each and every promising story in this short story series down a tube that lands this piece somewhere between mediocre and lackluster. Every story, regardless of the characters involved does the same thing over and over to the reader; never giving enough information about the characters to make the story invoke more than a smirk. It doesn’t matter if the story is about a 40-year-old man looking to end his glory days and finally settle down, or a power-hungry wife that drives her husband to strangle her; it all ends up having the same flat and frivolous style that leaves the reader asking a million questions that will never be answered.

While “Breakup up Stories” may be a great premise for a novel, not even the stories taking place in New York City can help much in the overall readability of this verbose, anti-thought-provoking attempt at a gossip column-turned novel. Its shallow attempt at telling great gossip stories just leaves the reader bored and uninspired to repeat them, thus eliminating any reason to read this book in the first place.