This quotation sums us much of book but it's much more than this clearly. It's mostly about the gradual fall of Walter and Patty Berglund's marriage, a result of her infidelity with his best friend, Richard Katz, a old roommate from college, though the infidelity occurs much later in their married life. We see two Minneapolis college grads, so called victims of terrible upbringings, eventually fall for each other, though they are in many way opposites, Patty an basketball playing jock, and Walter a nerdy idealist, with visions of saving the world. Watching this happy young couple eventually have children and destroy their happiness together along with their children's is the crux of the book. Patty, after an initial few years of child rearing, never seems happy as she ignores her daughter Jessica(like her mother ignored her) and smothers her son Joey with her love, driving him to live next store with their red neck neighbors and fall in love with their daughter, Connie, at the time, a 14 year old innocent, though they begin sleeping together at this age. Interestingly, despite their problems, their endless love(especially on Connie's part, survives and even grows. Walter gets mixed up in plans to create a bird sanctuary in the middle of West Virginia, for a nutty millionaire from Texas. He basically throws the locals off their land, with promises of jobs and new homes, as the coal companies buy the land, strip its hightops, with promises of then redoing it as a sanctuary for birds. Needless to say, Patty seems unhappier with her life as Walter progresses, ends up sleeping briefly with Richard Katz, now a famous rock star. In her depression, her doctor asks her to write a journal of what led to her unhappiness. Unfortunately, she gives it to Richard to read, but he lives it on Walter's desk. When he finds out his wife's real feelings about Richard, he throws her out of the house, freeing him to love a young Indian admirer named Lalitha, an idealist like Walter, who admires his attempts to say the world from over population and develop a sustainable economy, with out destroying the land. Needless to say, Franzen brings in most of the liberal ideology, both his reasonableness and craziness, though at the bottom is a desire to do good for mankind. We get deeply into Walter and Patty's families, their parents and siblings(all screwed up, mostly a result of their sense of entitlement), though Walter and Patty seem to be the only ones who work. We also see into their childrens' lives, how their parents have effected them, like Walter and Patty's parents ruined them. It reminds me of the great Philip Larkin poem:
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Walter seems the most pathetic at times, with his love for Patty but also the most sympathetic, with Patty next,someone who grows enormously as the book progresses, someone we like by the end, as she reunites with her family, letting the past slide, living with the moment. Walter, too, grows, into a somewhat misanthropic idealist, though in the end, even he seems to forgive and change for the best. Ultimately, it has a feel good end, though the trip to this 'feel good' end is anything but happy. A great book, as you are engrossed in the lives of some very unhappy people, not the kind you meet very often fortunately, but their lives are anything but dull.
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