I was sitting on the m14a this morning with my dog otto who was farting away in his little carrying case.  Otto is a boston terrier and has bad gas because his little nose forces him to inhale air while he eats. 

In any case, I was thinking about Freedom (Franzen) and how this is like one of those 19th century french novels where a bright young thing comes tries to make his way in the world and comes up against society and convention, conscience and love.  Both are about how people attempt to construct their lives and how this construction is thwarted or redirected in unanticipated ways by the realities of life.

At first I was thinking  Dostoevsky could be in that category.  Various fine young things attempting to make their way in the world. I am making my way through the Dostoevsky opus after watching the woman with 5 elephants, a film about an ancient Russian who lives in Germany and translates D.

Anyway this description - a sort of psychoanalysis cum social analysis cum melodrama depicting bougeois or upper class life.   Rather D creates thought experiments.  What would happen to a man who acted with childlike innocence and without malice (the idiot)? What would happen to the regular man who tried force greatness upon himself (crime & punishment)?  These thought experiments frame a situation that the characters work their way through.  I suppose here D is being the arbitrary Creator, creating an absurdist world where the characters have to make meaning for their own lives rather than derive it from the world of the story. The world of the story operates by physics different from the everyday world we live in. Very Existential :)