[PAGESIX] Novelist Jonathan Franzen felt so disconnected from today’s youth that he contemplated adopting an Iraqi war orphan to better understand them.There's no better lab animal than an orphaned Iraqi, is there?
“Oh, it was insane, the idea that Kathy [his partner] and I were going to adopt an Iraqi war orphan,” the 56-year-old said in a recent interview with the Guardian. “The whole idea lasted maybe six weeks.”
Had the adoption actually taken place that would probably have been about the time the interest wore off.
The idea’s roots went back to Franzen’s frustration with young people, who he felt were not living acting the way that young people should.
How old an Iraqi war orphan was he talking about? Something maybe in his late teens or early twenties?
“One of the things that had put me in mind of adoption was a sense of alienation from the younger generation,” the “Freedom” author explained.
Ahah! Alienated, was he? Light me a Gaulloise.
| I will, if you explain about this "Freedom" (love the scare quotes they put around it!) he's so proud of. I've not heard of it, which puzzles me. |
They weren't responding to my leadership. There was a lack of interest, almost as though I didn't matter..."
"I thought people were supposed to be idealistic and angry.
"I was looking forward to harnessing that idealism, focusing that anger..."
"And they seemed kind of cynical and not very angry. At least not in any way that was accessible to me.”
"But of course I mattered. So the ones I had access to were defective. I needed to find a new set."
"Fortunately his editor stepped in to suggest something a little less permanent: A meeting with a group of fresh college graduates. It cured me of my anger at young people,” he said.
"They had, of course, heard of me..."
| If they had time to meet, they weren't gainfully employed; this suggests they had degrees in studying things like freedom in scare quotes. |