For the spoiled brats in Freedom: I say to hell with them

A hundred or so pages back Joey told his dad, Walter, that he was in trouble, and now (about p 450) we find out why: Joey cut a deal as a "sub-sub" with a sleazy right-wing friend who was supplying crappy Polish-made trucks to the US forces in Iraq - Joey to supply spare parts and turn a $50k investment into $500k. He gets the parts from Paraguay, ships them - predictably, as he sees on a news report, they fail and an American convoy gets stranded and wiped out. Should he go public with this news? Good question - but it's all set on shaky ground, as I'm never convinced a spoiled and sheltered kid like Joey could have brought off this kind of deal. I thought he was going to be wiped out and deep in debt. We also see in this section how Joey secretly married Connie, a deeply troubled young woman, they flew off to Argentina with Jenna. Jenna is as unlikable as they come, and Joey not much better. What a dark view of humanity Jonathan Franzen has! People get worse as they get older, and the each generation is nastier and more self-involved than the last. "Freedom" is one of the most compelling books I've read this year, and it will no doubt be on many year-end best lists, even mine, but it's a book without any lightness of being, its characters are all in ruins. Some have said Franzen does not write well about women, but the most sympathetic character is Patty Bergland - though she becomes quite the harridan, estranged from her husband and kids, at least we see in her case why: her own horrible parents. She's a character who deserves better (maybe her husband, Walter, does, too). For the rest of the spoiled brats in "Freedom" (another Franzen irony is the title itself), my attitude is: to hell with them.