Jonathan Franzen is the author of numerous novels, including “The Corrections”, and nonfiction books. In January, Fourth Estate published “What if We Stopped Pretending?”, a hardback edition of his controversial 2019 New Yorker essay in which he argues that to prepare for the coming climate apocalypse, we must admit that we can’t prevent it.
Your essay on climate denialism, now published in book form, created a huge backlash. Were you misunderstood?
I was well understood. There were two groups of people responding to the piece. The individuals who numbered in the hundreds, they got very clearly what I was talking about. Then there was this larger response on social media. The essay can be summarised in the title: What if We Stopped Pretending? We are stuck in a rhetoric of false hope. That is a holdover from the decades when it was possible to avert climate catastrophe.
You argue that “meaningful action” is an illusion.
Well, meaningful action is not going to suffice. As things become more unstable, our resilience is going to be put to a test. The reality is that large parts of the world are soon going to be uninhabitable. I’m arguing that as a [global] society we should be adapting and strengthening our political systems to withstand those ecological shocks.
You also suggest that the scientific community is underestimating climate change.
I know many people who work in climate, and what they say privately is often not what they say publicly. [Scientists] have spent 30 years trying to raise the alarm, arguing that we can solve this problem. But they are now facing the position that the problem is unsolvable.
If climate change is unsolvable, what’s the point in raising the alarm?
Well, we can partly do something about it. We can slash our carbon emissions. We can slow things down a bit. We can maybe take the edge off the very worst outcomes. But this false hope in order to motivate people results in cynicism. The ordinary citizen has a good radar. They know when someone isn’t telling the truth. Back in 2005, we were told: we still have ten years to [address the] climate. So when a scientist or an activist in 2021 steps up and says: we still have ten years, I don’t think it’s healthy or honest.
Why put so much emphasis on local battles?
Climate is a global problem . . . one individual is essentially powerless to do anything about it. You can live in a yurt and grow your own crops organically, but that won’t have the slightest impact on the future. However, look around you, see the problems. Homelessness. The degradation of your soil. The likely future water supply for your community. Or look at the political divisions on your city council. These are all things you can actually do something about. It’s really depressing to just beat your head against a problem where no contribution of yours could possibly affect it. But it’s very satisfying to select a few problems where your contribution might actually matter.
The reaction of the right in the US to the climate crisis appears to be blatant denial, but isn’t there also a naivety in the approach of the political left?
I have no respect for the right’s position on climate change. I think it’s insulting. But there is something to the rightist critique of the Green New Deal [GND]. The GND advances this agenda that has very little to do with climate. It’s sold as [an idea] that will create jobs and tremendous economic growth, as we move to renewable energy. It’s a delusion to imagine that the United States in the space of a few years could turn itself into a country that looks like, say, Denmark. There are a number of reasons for this. Namely: the political divisions and our history. So yes, there is a naivety.
Your 2010 novel “Freedom” hinted at the idea that Americans expect far too much from their civil liberties. Is that what you believe?
The extremity of the political divide in [the US] has been evident for many years. In the end, it really comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what freedom is. In the US it seems to be this incredibly adolescent notion of what freedom should be. Like [you hear people say]: “You can’t tell me to wear a mask” [during the pandemic]. “You know, I’m a citizen, I have my rights.” Well, yeah, I mean that flies if you’re 14 years old, but good God, grow up! Look at Europe by comparison. After two world wars where millions died, many of the countries of Europe have realised freedom is about more than just having the absolute right to do whatever you feel like doing, whenever you feel like doing it.
One theme that recurs in your fiction is family life and its complications. Has your attitude to this subject changed as you’ve aged?
I have a new novel called Crossroads coming out in October. And I explore many of those same family conflicts [in this new book]. Like loyalty to yourself versus family loyalty. But I also find myself less interested in judging my characters or laughing at them. That’s a by-product of getting older. I used to run with a certain kind of comedy, especially between parents and their children. But when my parents died, it became more apparent to me how much I love them, and what good parents they were.
You’ve previously spoken about confronting shame as a novelist in the public sphere. What do you mean by this?
It’s one of the chief obstacles any fiction writer contends with: the feeling of shame. The shame of putting yourself out there. The shame of exposing yourself. We’ve all been exposed in public and experienced the pain of being seen intimately in a public space. That pain is always there for the novelist. Furthermore, it’s the first emotion one has, when one contemplates writing about, say, the worst things one has ever done, or the most humiliating situation one has ever found themselves in. Of course, the worst thing you’ve ever done is exactly what you should be writing about. Good writing goes to the extremes. Learning how to manage shame, how to transform the impulse of shame into something else, whether it’s forgiving yourself or laughing at yourself, or whatever – that’s primary [material] for all fiction writers.
Where does your reputation as an angry, misanthropic, privileged male come from?
I don’t really have a theory on this. I am a privileged white male. And if that is ipso facto a problem for you, you will look for the worst side of me and cast me in the worst possible light. I know I used to badmouth people who were more successful than I was. I would look for things in their work that would prove they were a bad person. So it’s just a natural human response. All I can really do is not read the things that are written about me [in the press]. Also, because I have that privilege, I try and tell the truth about things that more cautious people might fear to weigh in on. Like the climate situation. I have nothing to lose. I write my novels, and people read them. So if the entire climate community in the US is angry at me for this essay, it doesn’t change my life at all.
Has cancel culture curtailed freedom of speech?
We’re not living in the Soviet Union. But I do know friends who are alarmed about censoring, cancelling, self-censoring and self-censorship. It’s something to be mindful of. But my cocky optimism tells me there will be people who try to represent reality in its complexity, and who won’t toe the political line.
This article is from the New Humanist autumn 2021 edition. Subscribe today.
