I’m pleased to announce that I have been deemed the “official” micro-blogger by the Decatur Book Festival for tomorrow night’s Jonathan Franzen keynote address.  (I guess we did it “unofficially” last year)

So, if you weren’t able to get tickets or just can’t get out of the house tomorrow night, tune in to Decatur Metro at 8pm and get live updates and random observations by yours truly straight from Agnes Scott’s Presser Hall!

(And no, the fact that I will be multi-tasking during an keynote address by a speaker who abhors multi-tasking has not been lost on me.)

Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” finally goes on sale today.

And if you had any personal hopes of finishing it before hearing him speak this coming Friday night at the Decatur Book Festival, you’d better get to a local bookstore today and then take the rest of the week off to read it, because like The Corrections, this is some pretty heady stuff.

How heady?  I’m so glad I asked.

How about tackling “the twinning” of the American concepts of “freedom” and the “secularization of power”?  From the New York Times’ book review…

That twinning is where the trouble begins. As each of us seeks to assert his “personal liberties” — a phrase Franzen uses with full command of its ideological implications — we helplessly collide with others in equal pursuit of their sacred freedoms, which, more often than not, seem to threaten our own. It is no surprise, then, that “the personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage,” as Franzen remarks. And the dream will always sour; for it is seldom enough simply to follow one’s creed; others must embrace it too. They alone can validate it.

Or liberal guilt…

[The Burglunds] are “the super-guilty sort of liberals who needed to forgive every­body so their own good fortune could be forgiven; who lacked the courage of their privilege.”

Or the “liberal paradox”…

…Liberals, no less than conservatives — and for that matter revolutionaries and reactionaries; in other words, all of us — believe some modes of existence are superior to others. But only the liberal, committed to a vision of harmonious communal pluralism, is unsettled by this truth.

Or sex…

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In the New York Times’ cleverly titled article, “A Novel Is All the Rage Even Before It Is Sold“, (“rage” as in both “fad or craze” and “a fit of anger”), journo Julie Bosman relays the array of buzz surrounding the pending release of Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom”.

Mary Flad points out this particularly Decatur-centric paragraph…

Next Wednesday, Mr. Franzen will plunge into an 18-city tour. In St. Paul, the primary setting of the book, an event on Sept. 21 featuring Mr. Franzen at the 1,000-seat Fitzgerald Theater sold out quickly. At the Eagle Eye Book Shop in Decatur, Ga., one of the stores that distributed tickets to a Franzen speech at the coming Decatur Book Festival, tickets were snapped up in two days.

“We had people calling from South Carolina and Florida” who were willing to make a trip to see Mr. Franzen, said Bob Munson, a bookseller.

I’m sure Mr. Wang was out mighty early this morning scavenging up every last copy of the New York Times in a 5-mile vicinity.  (I know because I had to chase him off my driveway around daybreak this morning.  Man, he can really move in those red shoes.)

If you haven’t gotten tickets yet you’re probably SOL (to put it bluntly), but ArtsCriticATL.com gives us a good idea of the rarity of a Jonathan Franzen appearance.  Not just at the Decatur Book Festival, but ANYWHERE.

Franzen, author of the acclaimed “The Corrections” and the new “Freedom,” arguably the most anticipated literary novel of 2010, is not quite in Thomas Pynchon’s neighborhood of reclusiveness, but he’s clearly someone who doesn’t relish the modern publicity machine. (His official publicity photo looks like it was taken by a stalker without his knowledge or consent.)

To publicize “Freedom,” his first novel in nine years, he agreed to a recent Time magazine cover story … and the DBF… and not much else. (The Oprah reference, if you don’t recall, goes back to 2001, when she wanted “The Corrections” for her Book Club, he made some mildly ambivalent comments, and the media fanned it into a feud.)

“I have a sneaking feeling there’s not going to be many more chances to see Jonathan Franzen on a book tour,” says DBF mogul Daren Wang. “It’s fair to say he doesn’t really enjoy the limelight. I think he’s going to step back from these kinds of public appearances. We’re really lucky. It moves the book festival forward one more step in terms of national importance.”

I really hope that Franzen gets a chance to check out the Festival, though I imagine that may be difficult without attracting a mob – something he obviously avoids like the rest of us would a giant, slobbering book monster.

After the jump, you can view a recent Franzen video where he describes his “profound discomfort at having to make videos like this”.

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Hey, look who’s the first writer in a decade to make the cover of Time Magazine!

Click here to view the list of area bookstores where can pick up your 2 free tickets to Franzen’s keynote address at this year’s Decatur Book Festival.

From the Decatur Book Festival blog…

National Book Award winner Jonathan Franzen will be giving the 2010 keynote address. The AJC-Decatur Book Festival is Franzen’s first stop on his international tour for his latest novel, Freedom.

This special event is free, but a ticket is required. You can pick up your ticket at any of the following locations around town:

• Agnes Scott College
• Charis Books
• Blue Elephant Book Shop
• Bound to Be Read
• Eagle Eye Books
• Little Shop of Stories.

The event will begin at 8pm on Friday, 9/3 at Agnes Scott College’s Presser Hall.