Everything goes wrong at the meatball party
Franzen Fall continues and seriously, it's all about meatballs
Happy Franzen Friday! I started this second section of Crossroads with a heavy sigh, worrying what fresh hell awaited me in these nearly 200 pages. How many creatively gross sex scenes? How many nervous breakdowns? How many uses of the word semen?
Well. Just when you expect him to zig, Franzen zags. No real sex scenes, just one possible manic episode, and he switched to using the word sebum, which (surprise!) I find just as repulsive.
Molly described this book as a soap opera, and I have to say I agree. This section might not have been as shocking as the first 200 pages, but so much is happening to everyone, all the time. Perry’s getting sloshed on grog. Marion’s smoking again. Becky is breaking up relationships. Clem is (still) set on going to Vietnam. Judson is finally getting some lines. And Russ is…oh, Russ. He’s getting his feet washed. Honestly, if Franzen introduced an amnesia/evil twin plot, I wouldn’t even be surprised.
Last week I compared Judson to Shoshanna, and ever since then I couldn’t stop thinking about which Girls characters correspond to each Crossroads character. This was, strangely, easy to do. Russ is obviously Hannah (terminal case of main character syndrome, doesn’t care about anyone but himself). Becky is Marnie (long hair, bad relationship decisions, popular). Marion is Jessa (kinda mysterious, acts like she’s above everyone else’s problems but actually has her own). Clem is the show’s fifth main character, the creative and explicit sex scenes. Perry is…I guess Adam (intellectualizes too much, pretty annoying). Let me know if you agree/disagree with any of these assignments.
Let’s get into the plot. So Becky is still inexplicably in love with Tanner, who’s really just Some Guy. But Tanner is still with the lead singer of his band, the (short, ugh!) Natural Woman named Laura. In the scene where Becky and Tanner discuss this in his snow-covered VW bus, he maintains that he just can’t break up with her right now and Becky thinks, “The need to cry could be as urgent as the need to pee.” I apologize for assuming that Franzen was obsessed with writing about poop; perhaps he’s obsessed with writing about all bodily functions, because this is the second time Becky’s mentioned pee when, frankly, she did not need to. Also, when some of Laura’s friends show up at the bus and are like, “Hey who’s in there with you?” Becky hides under a Navajo blanket.
Becky…honey…no man is worth this. When you’re hiding under a blanket in a VW bus, that’s a sign that you should get out.
She does get out, and walks home to have a surprisingly emotional conversation with Perry. Perry is, of course, Not Clem and as such Becky senses a “badness” in him. Perry’s all, “I’ve had a change of heart and I think we need to be friends,” and Becky almost immediately drops her suspicion and believes him. He tells her to go to Tanner’s concert and heroically volunteers to go to this weird grown up party at the Haefles’ house. Marion was, like, obsessed with this party earlier in the book. Apparently hanging out at the pastor’s house is the social event of the year for these people. But now everyone has much bigger problems!
Specifically Russ. Russ’s problems are always bigger than anyone else’s, if only in Russ’s mind. Russ spends pages reflecting on how he and Marion used to be cool but now Marion’s weary and heavy (unforgivable). He looks back on when he met Rick Ambrose and thought they were friends. When the youth group really took off, Russ no longer craved Marion’s attention, instead preferring “the excitement of the attention he was getting from the new breed of girls in the fellowship.” You know, the minors who are in his church. Seems normal.
It turns out that this entire time that Russ has been holding his grudge against Ambrose (three years!), the reason Russ actually got kicked out of Crossroads is because he creeped the girls out. He told one of them that he was “bored in his marriage.” I’m certainly not taking Rick Ambrose’s side because he also seems like a creep, but I guess two things can be true: Russ and Rick can both be creeps. This church is run by pervs. Let’s hope the Haefles are better than this (their party, which we’re getting to soon, at least proves that they’re good at making meatballs).
But forget about the underage girls. Russ is still into Frances Cottrell, whom he’s driving to the urban church. Remember how last week, I said Russ was like the best friend in Teen Witch? Well, Franzen essentially translated that scene into Franzen-speak: “She’d sat chatting away with Rick Ambrose, against whose hipness Russ had abundantly demonstrated he could not contend.”
I genuinely do not know what game Marion is playing, because she’s like, “It would be so fun if you and Rick, like, became friends again? And then we could all go on the Arizona mission trip together? I would love that!”
Frances…are you new here? Russ’s entire personality is wrapped up in hating Rick Ambrose. He’s supposed to just forgive him like he’s a man of God or something? As if it’s that easy!
It’s kind of that easy. Russ is down bad for Frances (down bad crying at the church), enough that he’s considering forgiving his mortal enemy.
Perry is still my least favorite character because I don’t understand him and he spends a lot of time thinking in italics. At one point he uses the word “pleasant” four times in one paragraph. Why is he so obsessed with this word? I thought his whole thing was having a large vocabulary. Anyway, he and Judson go to Reverend Haefle’s apparently super fun church party that no one cares about anymore, and Perry has one thought that I actually found poignant:
Watching [Judson] fall down and pick himself back up, Perry mourned no longer being small enough that falling didn’t hurt. He no longer even remembered how it felt to have the ground so unthreateningly proximate. Why had he been in such a hurry to grow up?
This is why I haven’t gotten back into rollerblading, for the record. Too far to fall.
No one knows where Marion is and they’re only sort of concerned (they should be more worried). Once Perry and Judson show up at this party, I see the appeal. There are meatballs, glogg, and some potato dish called “Jannson’s Temptation.” The Haefles are throwing a Swedish Christmas party! Judson, proving himself the only sane family member, goes into the basement to play Yahtzee and watch a Christmas movie with some girls. Judson doesn’t even have to try to be cooler than the rest of the Hildebrandts. They want what he has (a childlike sense of wonder).
Perry gets blitzed on grogg and gets into a theological debate about goodness with a reverend and a rabbi. I loved this scene, which felt like a thoughtful little break from the Hildebrandts’ chaos. Of course, Perry ends the scene by drunkenly shouting “Do you think I enjoy being damned?” which kind of ruins the vibe of the meatball party.
Meanwhile, Marion has been busy having what is either a psychotic break or a manic episode. Her therapist is pretty bad at her job because what Marion actually needs is a diagnosis and some real meds instead of sleeping pills, but this was the 70s and the therapist is hiding in a dentist’s office, so what should I expect. Also Marion will not stop calling her therapist “the dumpling.”
Marion buys her first cigarettes in years and, hopped up on nicotine, she’s making plans. I relate a little to Marion here, as this is the way I feel after having one matcha latte: ready to take on the world. But what Marion wants to do with this newfound energy is lose thirty pounds and look up that old car salesman she had the terrible relationship with. Thank God social media wasn’t around back then because Marion for sure would’ve been stalking Bradley. As it is, she can only look him up in the phone book.
Also. Just like last week, I’m still not going to mention what Marion’s weight is, but it’s a relatively small number. It reminds me of reading Bridget Jones’s Diary where she’s constantly writing about how she’s so overweight and so miserable and then you see how much she weighs and you’re like…excuse me, what? I know I’m always going on about not attributing the characters’ views to Franzen, but at some point you have to realize that Marion is not the only one with these thoughts about weight, that Russ also thinks she’s unbearably heavy, that Becky is also equating gaining weight with becoming unattractive. It feels unsophisticated to point this out, like I should be able to get over it because this is real literature and I’m somehow being unserious but focusing on this one ugly thing…but it’s exhausting! It’s overwhelming and it colors the whole book for me. This isn’t a Franzen-specific issue but he’s certainly an offender.
Marion is really going through it in therapy but not in a way where she’s having a breakthrough. More like in a way where she’s making herself angry and now she’s gonna wreak havoc.
Marion’s just walking around town, smoking, fantasizing about losing thirty pounds (at which point she will be basically skeletal) and leaving Russ, who (oh yeah!) she hates. Russ is soooo convinced that Marion’s his loyal little wife who loves everything he does and it turns out she totally hates him. And it’s not just the cigarettes talking! She’d rather be with Bradley the car salesman. I don’t want to diagnose a fictional character but she’s definitely having a psychotic break right now, and she cannot stop thinking about the meatballs at that Swedish Christmas party which she doesn’t even want to go to anymore! “Low on the list of options was smelling the meatballs of Dwight Haefle’s nasty wife.” Yet another phrase to add to the list of poetic Franzenisms: “the meatballs of Dwight Haefle’s nasty wife.”
Marion finally remembers she has children and picks up drunk Perry from the Haefles’ (don’t worry, she leaves Judson in the basement…he needs a break from this family) and then proceeds to dump her entire years-long story of trauma on him.
Marion explaining her dad’s death and her own hospitalization to Perry:
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Clem shows up thinking that everyone’s gonna be ready to hear about how his imminent deployment but no one’s even home. They’re busy dealing with their own weird problems. He goes to the church to find his one true love (his sister) at the concert and instead discovers his father hanging out with Frances Cottrell alone in his office (of note: Clem initially thinks she’s a boy…what is WITH this description of her). I’ll be charitable and assume that Clem is still hanging onto these feelings of being betrayed by his father when he runs into Becky and gets so mad that she’s dating Tanner, about whom the worst he can say is “He’s kind of the definition of passive.” I guess that IS the worst thing Clem can say. We all know how he feels about taking quick, decisive, extremely stupid action.
Becky does not like this: “The sensation of hating Clem was new and overwhelming. It was like love ripped brutally inside out.”
Everyone in this family hates each other right now, but Russ is filled with the Christmas spirit because, I kid you not, Frances Cottrell “beeped him on the nose.” He can’t even get that worked up about Clem: “He sat at his desk and tried to clear his head, telling himself that Clem might yet change his mind or fail to be drafted, and that, in any case, with American infantry no longer in combat, his risk of physical injury was low, so that he could devote his thoughts again to Frances.” He’s like, “ok, but the war isn’t, like, THAT big of a deal so I don’t have to worry about that and I can just focus on Frances beeping my nose.”
With that problem solved (in his mind only), Russ decides to make up with Rick Ambrose because that’s what Frances wants him to do. It’s a bizarre conversation and ends with Rick Ambrose washing Russ’s feet, Jesus-style, with cold drinking fountain water in a collection plate. Whatever works for them, I guess.
While Russ is getting the world’s weirdest pedicure, his daughter is getting beat up by Laura, Tanner’s now ex-girlfriend. Perry is trying to score weed (his mom’s trauma dump, surprisingly, did not help him chill out). Clem is on a bus out of town (long story).
And, finally, Russ comes home to find Marion smoking and wired in the kitchen.
Marion hasn’t been openly mad at him in years but honey, she’s ready now. Of course she already knows he has the hots for Frances Cottrell (that he ever thought he was being discreet just shows how self-absorbed he is). Marion laughs and says, “I hope she’s good at writing your sermons. I hope she likes cooking your meals and washing your underwear. I hope she’s ready to have the relationship with your kids that you’re too busy saving the world for. I hope she’s up for dealing with your insecurity every night of the week. And you know what else? I hope she keeps a close eye on you.”
Russ is (heavy sigh) turned on by this. Seriously mere sentences after he thinks, “A schizophrenic parishioner had once said the same thing to him,” he’s like, “Okay but it’s working for me.”
But it’s not working for Marion! She ends the section with the ominous words, “Wait and see.” What is Marion going to DO?
We’ll have to find out next week, when the “Easter” section begins and the book ends. I’m going to miss these suppressed freaks.
Here are some questions I have:
Okay seriously, what does Marion have planned?
Is Clem really going to Vietnam?
Am I ever going to feel anything but annoyed weariness when a Perry section begins?
Is Judson going to go live at the Haefles’, a quieter place with unlimited meatballs?
Is Frances Cottrell REALLY into Russ? I’m leaning toward no.
Seriously HOW is this book going to end? Is someone going to die?
I’d love to know all your thoughts and questions. Also, a couple various pieces of Franzen interest. Meryl Streep is set to star in a TV adaptation of The Corrections, adapted by Franzen himself. Of course this sounds great, and I’ll believe it when I see it. I do think Meryl would be great in any Franzen work, though.
Also, here’s a 2021 picture of SJP with Crossroads.
See you next week. Until then, please consider having some meatballs but take it easy on the glogg. xo
GLOGG IS NOT FOR CHILDREN! The foot washing scene was just perfect, so ridiculous. I'm starting to worry Marion might murder Russ. Do you remember in the first section when she was younger she had a list of people who needed murdering? And yeah I'm so curious to see how things play out with Russ and Frances. What is her deal? I don't think Clem is going to Vietnam. I'm worried Perry's going to end up a meth addict! I can't wait to finish!
"down bad crying at the church" made me snort laugh at my desk