Freedom: A Novel and the Inherent Importance of failure

The current issue of Reason has a nice review of Franzen's newest novel. I am in the midst of this cultural critique and a very, very important element of freedom is repeated throughout the book. The Reason book critique captues this element:

The system is fundamentally based on “the restless growth of capital.” Freedom is the story of a family carried along in a similar current of restless growth. Yet Franzen invests their struggles with enough richness and humanity that their ceaseless effort to break free of their pasts and their communities, to overcome the stereotypes that the world has built for them, is somehow noble anyway. The meaning his characters yearn for is ultimately found only in their restless pursuits. Freedom in America is the freedom to rebel, to fail, and to make mistakes—which, at the very least, are your own.

It is this combination of individualism and freedom to fail that is the operative mechanism of adaptive efficiency. The novel goes to great length to describe characters that express their individuality in both conventional and unconventional ways. I am frequently reminded of the characters in the sitcom Seinfield as I read. Like George, Kramer and Elaine, Walter, Patty and their kids are deeply flawed, often self centered and prone to excess - in short they are human and real.

The actions of the characters in Freedom lead to unexpected consequences (for both the characters and the reader) so the plot is real. These unexpected results are often failure - failures of anticipation, ethics, morality and intent. In this Hayekian world one can begin to see the emergence of order and, more importantly, growth and progress.

Franzen does a wonderful job of capturing the unsettled state of mind that characterizes the market order.

I understand that President Obama made a great deal of his reading of this book. I hope that he takes away from that reading the centrality of the freedom to fail.