Nell Freudenberger's The Newlyweds, about a Bangladeshi woman who moves to upstate New York as a mail order, was a pleasant surprise for me last year. Freudenberger seemed as comfortable writing about Dhaka as she did about Rochester, and the novel nicely married the adjustment that any immigrant makes coming to a new country with the more intimate and emotional compromises necessarily for a serious relationship. (She also eschewed cliches about fiction set in Muslim countries, which I was grateful for.) So naturally I was interested in reading her first novel, The Dissident, which tells the story about a Chinese dissident who moves to southern California for a long-term fellowship. Unfortunately, I felt as if it was much less assured than her second novel.For example, I felt as if Freudenberger's voice wasn't entirely there. The Newlyweds was in large part a comedy of manners (in America as well as Bangladesh), but at times The Dissident edges toward outright parody in its presentation of the various American characters, which is not a voice that suits the novel well. Even when the novel isn't being arch, many of the characters are too easily reduced to familiar types: the cold fish husband, the middle-aged immature fuck up, the brittle novelist (which felt like self-parody), the sullen teenagers, etc. I was more interested in the sections of the novel set in Beijing's East Village, among the fragile community of radical Chinese artists, where everything didn't seem quite so familiar.Partially, too, I was disappointed that Freudenberger wasn't as interested in the clash of cultures this time around, and instead left the dissident and his host family in parallel stories for much of the novel. She skillfully teases out her primary concerns, about authenticity and authorship as it relates to art, and I could see her drawing some interesting parallels. But it all felt a little too inside baseball to me, like something a novelist would naturally care about more than I do.Having said that, there were plenty of flashes of the author that I knew as well. I thought at first that Freudenberger was taking a page from Jonathan Franzen in her portrait of a wealthy American family, but she's too fundamentally even-handed for that and even said cold fish husband is given a moment to be honest and sympathetic while maintaining the integrity of the character. And Freudenberger can be sharp about the differences between the two cultures, even if that theme isn't explored nearly as well as in The Newlyweds. (Dissident artist Yuan Zhao was trained by a traditional landscape painter to replicate traditional forms instinctively before moving on to more original work. When he fails to get this across to his American art students, he explodes, "You are not trying to express yourself. You are trying to express a lobster.") I basically liked the book--I don't finish books that I'm not enjoying on some level--but I would recommend starting with her second novel instead.
This was a fabulous book for many reasons. The Chinese artists coming out of the Cultural Revolution have been producing some of the most complex, disturbing, and evocative artwork today. The author uses this as her backdrop to discuss the meaning of art, as well as the purpose of art in our modern world of utility and extreme praticality. The writer's direct, unadorned narrative was accessible, yet profound in its simplicity and frequent hints of a dry, dry wit. On the nature of artist:"It's a paradox, I guess," Joan continued. "Of course it's better for artists to live in a free society, but I wonder if political pressure can sometimes be good for art?" (112)"Someone once told me that's the sign of a real artist-- they don't care about their work after it's finished... We can be excited about the work, whether it's ten years old or two hundred.. but for the artist it's always about the next thing.""X waved that away. 'An artist is an artist, no matter what he's doing.'I didn't believe that. In fact, I believed the opposite: an artist is someone who's making art, and I had not not done anything more than pencil sketches for the past five years" (p 37). [I'm with the second viewpoint.]And then randoms that I identified with:"After Meiling and I split up, I sometimes wondered whether the secretive tendency I'd developed as a child was the thing that attracted her to me; if you are a hider, you have to be careful of seekers, who are drawn to you simply for the challenge of discovering something. But of course, hiders are drawn to seekers too; there is always some part of us that yearns to be found out." (page 119)"It helps to have a talent for making oneself agreeable to strangers, something that has always come easily to me. I see what people want, and I give it to them. Maybe that's a bad quality; in any case, it isn't one my cousin ever shared." (page 38)
What do You think about The Dissident (2006)?
A book with a few good moments and an interesting 1st person narrative about the history of avant-garde artists in communist China, but that ultimately builds to a climax that leaves the reader wondering, "Really? That's what it was all about?" Very disappointing.It's obvious Freudenberger spent all her time researching and developing the character of the Dissident himself, as anything dealing directly with his past is quite interesting and compelling. Ironically, though, all the American characters, whose lives and culture Freudenberger should be fully conversant in, read like reject cliches from the film American Beauty. They are so bad and one-dimensional, in fact, that even the Dissident's character begins to suffer and flatten out any time he comes into contact with them, which, sadly, comprises half the book.Recommendation: Read all the 1st person PoV chapters. Leave the rest alone.
—David
This is a solid, if not spectacular, effort by a first-time novelist (although she's an accomplished short story writer). First, the good: Freudenberger really nails the sense of place, and she's a skilled wordsmith - plenty of evocative turns of phrase. And she handles the back-and-forth between POVs quite nicely. That said - the pacing feels uneven. It's slow to the point of inertia in the first half, then accelerates too rapidly, as if she were rushing for the finish line. And the characterization feels thin in spots - particularly the two teenage kids. By far the most compelling chapters are the dissident's flashbacks to his life in China's underground artistic community. I actually might have liked the book better if Freudenberger had just done away with the storyline about his California host family and kept the focus on China.
—Lisa
Nell Freudenberger’s career to date reads like a novel in itself, with her Harvard education, slinky good looks, New Yorker publication, famous literary agent, and mentions in Vogue and Elle. It is a letdown, of sorts, to find that her debut novel is such a banal affair. The Dissident tells the story of Yuan Zhao, an exiled Chinese artist who comes to live with the Traverses, a Southern Californian family that is a Woody Allen-style parody of shallow Beverly Hills life. The dramatis personae include an absent-minded writer father, a sexually unsatisfied homemaker mother, two surly teens, and a Chinese-American student who— surprise!—is authentically talented. Hijinks ensue, secrets are revealed, lessons are learned, etc.This is, to put it mildly, well-trodden territory. To be fair, Freudenberger is a crisp stylist, and she effortlessly captures the tics and mannerisms of these feckless Californians, as observed by the bemused Yuan in his role as cultural ambassador. Freudenberger’s observational powers and way with a phrase only go so far, however, and as pleasant and absorbing as it is, The Dissident imparts no impact: it practically evaporates upon completion.From THE BROOKLYN RAIL, November 2007
—Mike Lindgren
