Purity (2015), a Novel by Jonathan Franzen: summary

“… the false promise of Internet and social media as substitutes for journalism – the idea that you didn’t need Washington journalists when you could read the tweets of congressmen, didn’t needed news photographers when everyone carried a phone with a camera, didn’t need to pay professional when could crowd source, didn’t need investigative reporting when giants like Assange and Snowden walked on earth...”  (p. 226)

I was flabbergasted when a package arrived, a friend has sent me this book as a present. It’s totally a new author to me, moreover he was a recipient National Book Award in 2012, the Corrections, Jonathan Franzen is an American author. The 563-page bestseller, his fifth novel, published by 4^th Estate, London, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers in 2016.

The book starts out in Oakland where central character Pip (Purity) worked and lived. Mr. Franzen combines cutting edge Internet (the leaker) with a realistic life of a young woman who struggled with her student’s debt, who never knew who her father was. The book contains multitudes: the Stasi, socialist’s perspective, a recipient Pulitzer Prize, a talented journalist, an international NGO, and a hippie mother, marital failure, honest, realistic, hypocrite, love, Internet leaker, decaying journalism, sex, revenge, funny, and forgiveness. Not only highly entertaining, but this fiction also informative. Upon being given the opportunity to read a story about East Berlin.

Mostly every page contains smart narration and conversation, and prose. Pip (Purity), main character, is hardly called as the main character, while other characters have the same part. Annabel, Annagret, Tom, and Andreas Wolf were also memorable character. I found myself hungry to learn more about the character’s conflict and their critical and smart conversation. Few character and mostly they are memorable one. Praise for the author for creating smart and unique characters. This book has strong focus on the character, the idea is unique, and every character has the same elements: freak, coming from complicated family, smart, critical, honest to themselves, and independent. 

I had harder time to distinguish the quite similar name of character such as: Anabel and Annagret. At very first place, I had expected the book will technically talk about the Internet leaking. There is a few thriller in the book, but overall it’s more psychological drama. Unfortunately, the suspense element reveals in the middle of story (when Tom is stated as Purity’s father). The book was superbly written, even I reread some pages twice - smart narration and conversation. I look forward to reading more by the author and I really thank to a friend who has sent me this book. 

Purity (2015), a Psychological Drama by Jonathan Franzen: summary

Nobody was there to tell her that it might be the best idea, if she wanted to set about doing good in the world, to graduate from college with $130,000 in student debt. Nobody had warned her current job as sales with Igor. Still in debt and confused job, still her mother‘s sole comfort. In four of twenty-two months was roughly the frequency with which. She had definitely inherited some of her body’s issues, but she at least had hard evidence of her experience with boys to back her up.

No matter how late she had been out drinking, claimed her favorite table in corner, and happily forgot herself for a few hours. This had become her weekly ritual, and, in truth, wherever the idea had come from, her Sunday morning were when she felt most civilized. She had become aware of a nice-looking, skinny boy who had same Sunday ritual. He had a degree in math from Stanford and was living the math major’s dream, working for foundation that promoted American numeracy while trying to write a text book that he hoped would revolutionize the teaching of statistics.

Dreyfuss was schizophrenic house owner, Pip didn’t like the two Germans. Dreyfuss explained her the Germans was invited to the house. Oakland Nuclear Disarmament Study Group, of which Pip and Stephen are by no means the least dispensable, and yet the house, and yet the house the German have chosen to favor with all too typically German earnestness and nosiness, for nearly a week now. The German woman, Annagret, was speaking German. She was a dark-eyed beauty and had a pleasing voice.

She and her boyfriend, Martin, were vacationing in various American slums, ostensibly to raise international squatters’s right organization, and to forge connections with antinuke movement, but primarily, it seemed, to take the pictures of each other in front of optimistic ghetto murals. There was something irresistible about Annagret’s attention, and when she began to talk about the famous Internet outlaw Andreas Wolf, whom turned out she knew personally, and to say that Pip was exactly the kind of young person that Wolf’s Sunlight Project was in need of.

Annagret convinced Pip to leave her terrible exploitative job and apply for one of the paid internships that Sunlight Project was now offering, but she had to submit a formal questionnaire that Annagret herself could administer before she left town. Andreas Wolf and his project were currently conducting business out of South American warrants for his arrest on hacking and spying charges, and there was obviously no way that Pip was leaving her mother and moving to Bolivia. Martin insured her that Wolf was very charismatic leader. Annagret was at least ten years older than Pip, maybe fifteen, she was kind of recruiter.

Behind Stephen’s door, the marital fighting had stopped. From her mother she had learned the importance of leading a morally purposeful life, and from college she had learned to feel worried and guilty about the country’s unsustainable consumption patterns. Her problem at Renewable Solutions was she could never quite figure out what she was selling, even when was finding people to buy it. She had sold power purchase agreements to small and midsize businesses. It’s about the lowering electric bill, helping the planet.

Pip had no interest in getting to know her father, she had already had her hands full wither mother, but it seemed to her that he should give her money. At twenty three, she was well beyond reach of custody. All she needed was his name and date of birth. But her mother defended this information as if it were a vital organ that Pip was trying to rip out of her.

The house she lived had once belonged to Dreyfuss, who had drawn the down payment from an inheritance with which he also opened a used-book store, following his mother’s suicide. In the spaces in six months, he had threatened four different law suits and managed the bank into a stalemate. But apart from his disability payments Dreyfuss had no money, and so he allied himself with the Occupy movement, befriended Stephen agreed, and agreed to share the house with others squatters in exchange for food and upkeep and utilities. Stephen was with his wife, and his two sons, Eduardo and Ramon. Pip had met Stephen at the Disarmament Group few months before Eduardo was struck and killed by a laundry truck. Pip occupied Eduardo’s room.

It was a happy time for her, she had the distinct impression that Stephen and his wife were estrange. Pip had been attracted instantly to Stephen’s intensity, to his extreme-fight physique, and his little-boy mob of hair, and she sensed that other girls in study group felt the same way.  He had married his college sweetheart, and how they’d spent their twenties in Catholic Worker houses, living under a vow poverty. The wife becoming more religious, and less political and the Stephen the opposite. He had lost his faith, and left the Church. Stephen and Marie had legally adopted Ramon a year before Eduardo’s death.  Unlike Marie and Stephen who came from middle-class Catholic families, she had barely even lowered her station in going from her mother little cabin, and her student debt was functionally a vow of poverty. Stephen lost his marriage, Marie had moved out. Pip had tried to seduce Stephen, but for that man Pip was like a daughter, it was Marie the only person he wanted.

By the way of penance, she opened a search engine and did some belated research on Wolf and his project. Born in East Germany, he had distinguished himself in the 1980’s as a daring and sensational critic on the Communist regime. After the Berlin Wall came down he had led the crusade to preserve the enormous East German secret-police archives and opened them to public. Then twenty year later Wolf had founded the Sunlight Project focusing first on German malfeasances but soon broadening his scope to social injustice and toxic secrets worldwide.

Several hundred thousand Web images showed him to be a very good-looking man, but he had apparently never married and had children. He had fled persecution in Germany in 2006, and in Europe generally in 2010, receiving asylum first in Belize and last in Bolivia. The only thing Wolf kept secret was the identity of his financial backers, and the only even vaguely unseemly thing about him was the intensity of his rivalry with Julian Assange. After everything she had been reading about Wolf, her email quickly was replied by Andreas.

Andreas Wolf and Annagret, in East Berlin

He was seven months celibate when the church’s young vicar came to him about the girl in sanctuary. Not praying, just doing her homework. She was fifteen, and also extraordinarily pretty. Annagret had been abused by her stepfather, her father was dead. Andreas was twenty-seven years old, he had never been in love. Annagret’s beauty was so striking, so far outside the norm. Annagret had an older sister, Tanja, who’d excelled at judo as a student. Tanja was boy crazy and overdid the sport thing and ended up working as a secretary, spending all her free time either dancing at the clubs or training and coaching at the sports center. Annagret was seven years younger and not athletic as her sister, but they were judo family and she joined the local club when she was twelve. A regular at the sports center was a handsome older guy, Horst, who owned large motorcycle. He was maybe thirty and apparently married only to his bike.

Inwardly the mother was a hard and disappointed person, the widow of a truck mechanic who died wretchedly of a brain tumor, but outwardly she was thirty-eight and pretty –not only prettier than Tanja but also closer in age to Horst. Tanja and her mother had quarreled about everything imaginable, which now included Horst, who the mother thought was too old for Tanja. She didn’t return for three day, she relocated to Leipzig.

After Horst and Annagret’s mother were married, the three of them to a notably roomy flat where Annagret had her own room. Her step father had fascinated her, he was a labor-collective leader at the largest city power plant. He taught her how to ride motorcycle by herself. In return she tried to teach him some judo. Tanja may have been lost, but Annagret was the good girl, her mother’s hope for the future of her family.

Her mother, who hated her nursing job, was grateful her husband and daughter got along well. Horst found Annagret’s mother was a drug addict, she stole narcotics from the hospital she used them while she worked, and also when she was home. He had worked informally for the Ministry for State Security, he was a well-trusted unofficial collaborator. If his officer learned that his wife was a thief and a drug addict, he could lose his position. Annagret’s mother would lose her job, she would probably go prison. If she told her mother, Horst would sent her mother to jail. They put her mother in jail, left her alone with the predator. Andreas had heard many stories of childhood sexual abuse before, but such as a good girl, never from a extraordinary pretty girl.

Andreas’ father was the second youngest member ever elevated to the Central Committee, and has most creative job. As the chief state economist, he was responsible for the wholesale messaging of data, for balancing the budget that every year drifted farther from reality. Katya, Andreas’s mother, also came from heroic stock. In 1933, after the burning Reichstag and the banning of the Communist Party, the smart or lucky party leader fled to the Soviet Union for advanced training while the others dispersed across Europe.

Katya’s mother held a British passport with her husband and their two girls. The father found work at dockyards and did enough spying for the Soviets to stay in their good graces. When the war broke out, the parents returned to East Berlin. Only Katya was allowed to remain in Berlin, because she was student. Her older sister married and stayed in Welsh. The parents were exiled to Rostock, hanged himself there. Her mother had a nervous breakdown, later she died too. Andreas later came to think that the secret police had assisted his grandfather’s suicide and her mother’s breakdown.

Katya was a full professor and eventually married a university colleague who’d weathered the war in the Soviet Union, along with his Wolf relatives, and learned economics there. Her tenure at university was in Anglistik, and form the beginning she spoke German and English. When he was a boy, a man admitted he was his father. He was student of her mother, later he arrested, tried, sentenced to ten years in prison for subversion of the state. He just said asking her mother’s husband where was he in October and November 1959. Andreas was well aware that he was brighter than the other kids at school. He tried to suicide, his parent had sent him to Stasi- certified psychologist. He tried to jump the bridge, he was only fifteen. At twenty-seven he was a murder now. They took her mother away, and put her in a psychiatric for addiction, and then she went to prison.

On ugly afternoons only the hard core showed up, always the same faces, men and woman who had interrogated and imprisoned for bad reason and bore adamantine grudges against the ministry. The one Andreas liked the best was a guy his own age who’d been spirited off the street in his late teens, after he defended a female classmate  from the sexual advances of a Stasi commander’s son. He had been warned once, and he ignored the warning. For this, he had spent six years in prison.

Andreas never back home, he was in the ministry of the church. Katya, his mother was a committed socialist and a loyal citizen. She visited him after years and asked him to see his father. Weeks passed, he met his father on a Stasi strike. Andreas asked help his father for his case. Even his father was successful, he suggested Andreas went to the police to make a full confession.

His father had worked for forty years within the system, playing by rules, he had still had influence, and the Stasi had come through for him. A captain brought him to the archive building, there were only ten pages in it, pertaining the disappearance of Unofficial Collaborator Horst Werner Kleinholz. The captain left for a moment, but Andreas stole the file. It was still in Stasi’s strike, television crew were still there, he went to TV cameras and proclaimed his name and he was to work against the Stasi. He roared the country had festered secret and toxic lies. It was his first moment of media fame, the first of many. After giving interviews and rallying onlookers, he made his way west to the Kurfurstendamm, where he met the good American Tom Aberant.

Leila Heilou and Tom Aberant in Denver

Leila had a new research assistant, Pip Tyler. She explained that her employer, Denver Independent, was a foundation-supported investigative news service. DI had partnered with many national news outlets in breaking stories. Leila had been assignment in Washington, when Pip Tyler came to Denver to interview for research internship. Pip explained that she had friends in the Oakland nuclear-disarmament community who had hacker friends with access to object-recognition software and (illegally) to inner working of Facebook’s content delivery network.

Tom Aberant was the founder and executive editor of Denver Independent. It was no secret at DI that Leila and Tom had been a couple for more a decade, but the two of them kept things professional at work. For Tom, the new intern, Pip Tyler was honest and friendly and less than threatening beautiful, but she seemed discomfited herself. It dawned on Leila that Pip was a threat, the girl might be a former type of Tom’s, a type like his ex-wife. Anything to do with his ex-wife made him nervous.

She felt safe with Tom. He was only six years older than Leila, younger than his hair loss made him look, but he had started so early in marriage that its ending, after twelve years. His wife, Annabel, had been an artist, a promising young painter and filmmaker, who came from one of the families that owned McCaskill, the biggest food-products company in the world. On paper, she was absurdly rich, but she was estranged from her family and refused on principle money to take money from them. By the time Tom escaped from marriage, her art career was going nowhere, she was in her late thirties, and she still wanted children. Annabel’s father had always like him, tried to help him out financially. Tom couldn’t accept any help as long as he stayed with Annabel, but when the father had died, more than a decade after divorce, he had left Tom stack of dollars, and Tom had taken it. It was the seed money for his nonprofit venture.

Charles’s accident ended up costing her a year of fertility. Unthinkable to add a baby to an already overstressed life. Unthinkable she still wanted a baby, Tom had asked her how long she intended living with Charles, she found herself replying with a question of her own. Tom gave her many sensible reason-their dedication to their work, the danger of birth defects for older couples, the global cataclysms that change and overpopulation would unleash in a child’s lifetime--but the reason actually made him angry was she was still living with her husband and hadn’t told him about their affair. How could he think of having a kid with a woman who couldn’t even leave her husband?

Pip was very talented but kind of mess. She was alone. The mother who had named her Purity had appeared to have taught her very little about how world worked. Three a half weeks after Pip moved in to Tom’s house, Leila had no rational case against Pip as a houseguest. The girl yet to leave unwashed dish or spoon in the sink, a light burning in an empty room. She had even offered to do Tom and Leila’s laundry for them. They’d recoiled at the thought of her handling their underwear, but she explained she’d never lived in a house with a functioning washer or dryer, and so they let her do the sheets and towels. During the week, at least on the nights when Leila’s home, she prepared her own separated dinner, retreated to her room, and didn’t show herself again. Leila felt some anger as she watched Pip absorbing Tom’s wisdom and basking in the pleasure he took in her young company. The girl was doing nothing wrong, just being herself, but Leila could feel herself turning against her, envying her time alone with Tom.

Pip was the perfect avatar of young Annabel, his fundamental type without any Annabel baggage. Leila was stuck with embittered wheelchair dude. Guilt wasn’t the only reason,  she had stayed married to Charles. She never quite got over her suspicion that, however Tom loved her for her own sake, it mattered to him that she hadn’t been young when he met her. The moral considerations were still operative in him, the money from his ex-father in law.

At the dinner table that night they talked about the false promise of Internet and social media as substitutes for journalism – the idea that you didn’t need paper journalists when you could read the tweets of congressmen, didn’t needed news photographers when everyone carried a phone with a camera, didn’t need to pay professional, didn’t need investigative reporting when leakers like Assange, Wolf, and Snowden walked on earth. Tom admitted he had met Andreas Wolf in Berlin, back when he was still married. All he would say was that Wolf was a magnetic but trouble person, with secrets of his own. But the way he said it gave Leila the impression that Wolf had meant a great deal to Tom. Like Anabel, Wolf belonged to the dark core of Tom’s inner life.

Tom found that Pip might be his daughter, she definitely was Annabel’s daughter. After the theater, he asked why her mother changed her identity. Pip said her mother was afraid her father would take her away from her. He found Annabel’s picture on Pip’s phone. Tom hardly accepted that it was a bizarre coincidence. Pip was a good researcher. But if she was good enough to figure that out, she was good enough to figure out that there’s a billion-dollar trust set up in Annabel’s name. If Pip knew about it, she wouldn’t be in Denver.

During the first two weeks at Bolivia, while the others interns and employees did their shadowy work, she had only small menial jobs to do, she hiked the trails every morning. Andreas Wolf was away in Buenos Aires for the shooting of the East Berlin scenes for a movie that was being made about him. Annagret had recruited them, but nobody had heard of her. To a person, they had back grounds more fascinating than Pip’s. They were Danish, British, Italian, Chilean, and Manhattanite. Her own history and expectation were achingly unfabulous. The first person after Pedro to be nice to her was an older girl, Colleen, who had been three years there, almost since the beginning, and had her own private bed room in the main building.

At first time met him, Pip immediately got what Annagret’s boyfriend meant about his charisma. It was a partly a matter of his still-boyish German good looks. Andreas and Collen were speaking German that made her feel so excluded and irrelevant that she headed away. Collen had a law degree from Yale, she was smart and funny. She mad a friend, Collen. Her mother’s friend, Linda had printed out an article that said Wolf was very serious trouble with the law.

He killed Annagret’s stepfather with a shovel. He planned it carefully and did it with cold blood, Annagret helped him. He was twenty-seven, Annagret was fifteen. He was sexually abusing her. He made a horrible mistake, after the Wall came down. He met an American journalist at a bar, told him what he had done. He liked and trusted him. The journalist had run an investigative-journalism nonprofit. They still help to find her father. He had spent most of his life hating her. Pip wished she could believe him. Pip told her story about her intern in Denver. They already liked each other, Andreas asked her to his spy on Aberant.

When she returned to Leila and Tom’s house, Leila gave her a fierce look. By saying nothing, she was protecting a killer, a crazy person, a man she didn’t trust. And yet she was reluctant to lose her connection with him. She texted him every night at bedtime and didn’t turn off her phone until he had texted back. He also was madly in love with her. Since Pip’s returning from Bolivia, the IT report claimed that there was a spyware to Tom’s home computer.

Tom was an existential threat. Not only on office’s computer, office IT manager also found spyware on Tom’s home computer. His business network’s been an open book since three days he hired Pip. Finally Pip admitted that she was in Bolivia in Wolf’s project. She had gave up finding her father and Wolf told her back to Denver.

His affair with Anabel had begun as soon as their divorce decree came through. During their previous binge, they’d talked nine hours, pausing only for bathroom break. The only way their misery was to renounce each other and never communicate again. He kissed her to try to make the pain stop. Everything was ashes, but their full-fledged sex life had only just begun, and he would never stop loving her.

Tom and Andreas

In interviews, he disdained the rhetoric of revolution, and he inwardly winced when his workers spoke of making the world. From the example of Assange, he had learned the folly making messianic claims about his missions, and although he took ironic satisfaction in being famed for his purity, he was under illusions about his actual capacity for it. Life with Annagret had cured him of that. Three days after Tom Aberant had helped him bury the bones and rotted clothes, he had gone to Leipzig to look for her. For three years, he was happy with her. She was very young, and didn’t know anything about anything, certainly not how to share a life with a man, he was older, presumed that he knew everything. Annagret’s mother was disaster. She had pushed police to investigate her husband’s disappearance, but she was a known thief and drug addict, fresh out of prison, and made a poor impression.

Tom was an existential threat. Tom had made himself part of the murder. For long time, for twenty years, he had assumed that the secret of his homicidal past was safe with Tom. By helping to move the body, Tom had committed a serious crime himself, and in the letter he had sent Andreas some months later, from New York. He had taken one last stab at reviving friendship, by calling Tom in Denver and offering a major leak to Denver Independent, and Tom had rebuffed him, he hadn’t worried, he had thought Tom was in professional competition with him. It was the sort of thing that could happen in abortive friendships.

Andreas read the daily digest of news about himself, he came across an interview that a Denver Independent journalist, Leila Helou, had given negative review on the leaker. For her, the leakers were more like savages. She described Wolf was a man so full of his own dirty secret that he saw the entire world as dirty secrets. Fling everything at the wall, like a four-year-old flinging poop, and see what sticks.

The leaker made a quick search, it turned up photos of her and Tom Aberant together at a professional functions. Helou was a respected journalist, but in the online world she was getting reamed as a fiercely as Andreas was being defended. This made him hated Aberant-Helou nexus all the more. They had deliberately provoked the very bloggers and tweeters whom devoting more and more his existence to appeasing. According to Google Helou was married to a disabled novelist, on whom she presumably was cheating. Tom had spoken, after all, of being unable to live either with Anabel Laird with or without.

Their facial-recognition software was nearly NSA-grade matched on every photo data base they can access worldwide, a woman in her late fifties. The just had two goods photos of twenty-four-year-old woman, who’s now in her late fifties.  The resolution of a woman of the image a gray-haired supermarket employee in Felton, California. But when they detected the woman’s employee’s name, Penelope Tyler, and connected it in years at Tyler School of Art.

Penelope Tyler clearly was a person who tried to disappear, they discover she had a daughter. This daughter, Purity Tyler, clearly was relatively richly documented, with profiles on Facebook and every shaky credit story. Andreas studied the pictures of her, comparing her eyebrows with Tom’s eyebrows, her mouth with Tom’s mouth, he concluded that she had to be his daughter. There were no sign of contact between them, not on social media.

The girl was indirectly worth a load of money. A billion-size sum, and almost certainly didn’t know it. She was making student-loan making payment, living in a house in Oakland, and working as an outreach associate for alternative-energy start-up. Andreas set up a secure connection and called Annagret. He sent her to recruit Pip into his energy project. In reality, Pip was nothing like the figure from his vengeful imaginings. The email that Pip sent him, out of the blue, intensified his sense of reprieve. She was young-sounding, intelligent, amusingly reckless.

He fell in love with Pip. He began to think she was the woman he waited all his life for, his friend’s daughter. At last Tom came to Bolivia. Andreas had admitted he had polluted Tom’s daughter, they argued, and Andreas killed himself. Pip was still in Denver when Tom sent her two short email about Andreas’s death. Both of them knew Andreas was mental ill. Although Andreas obviously wasn’t the most honest person who’d ever walked the earth, Pip thought her mother might be the most difficult. She didn’t know what to do about her. Andreas Wolf’s intern had told her who her mother was. Her mother was a renegade heiress, a billionaire. She got the story of her mother,  was by letting her believe Tom had told her his version of it; she figured, correctly, that her mother would find that intolerable.

*****

April 13, 2017

Sekapur Sirih

Sangat senang ketika menerima buku ini sebagai hadiah dari seorang teman, ditambah lagi nama penulisnya adalah baru bagi saya, didapati juga, jikalau novelis Franzen adalah penerima penghargaan untuk novel the Corrections, sekali lagi terima kasih kawan untuk buku ini. Membuka lembar paragraf pertama, sudah disuguhi percakapan-percakapan cerdas, dan terasa pula penulis tidak terburu-buru dalam menyelesaikan tiap bab dan pada halaman-halaman akhir cerita. Novel cerdas menggali dan berfokus pada tokoh.

Sangat menikmati buku ini, tokohnya tidak terlalu banyak, hanya saja nama-nama tokoh sempat dibuat bingung oleh nama mirip seperti Anabel dan Annagret. Penulis Jonathan Franzen berkebangsaan Amerika Serikat, ia sangat lihai dalam menciptakan tokoh aneh-aneh di luar karya main stream, tulisan dalam novel setebal 563 halaman, yang diterbitkan 4^th Estate London, dicetak oleh HarperCollinsPublishers tahun 2016.

Setiap tokoh aneh, dari keluarga yang bermasalah, masing-masing miliki rahasia masa lalu selain Pip, tetapi hampir semua tokoh punyai sifat sama yakni jujur menjadi dirinya. Tokoh Purity alias Pip, gadis berumur dua puluh tiga tahun berjuang untuk membayar pinjaman kuliah sebesar $130,000, angka yang sangat tidak mungkin baginya, bekerja sebagai sales lewat telepon, dan ia sendiri pun bingung produk ditawarkannya. Pip melewati hidup kekurangan, selalu berupaya mencari jati dirinya, dan siapa ayahnya. Ibunya selalu menyembunyikan siapa ayahnya.

Ada dua hal yang mengecewakan dalam bacaan ini. Pertama, saya di awal sempat berharap jika penulis akan mengupas kegiatan teknis para pembocor rahasia/leaker seperti Snowden dan Assange. Kedua, suspense siapa ayah Purity diungkap pada halaman tengah novel, sehingga tidak ada kejutan di akhir cerita. Novel drama psikologi ini kurang tepat bagi pembaca pemula berbahasa Inggris, lebih tepat bagi advance.

Ada kekocakan, kegembiraan, kejujuran, percintaan, seks, kesedihan, kesepian, kriminal, jurnalis, sejarah jatuh tembok Berlin, pembrontakan, orang kaya, kecurangan, dan kasih sayang, semua dikemas dalam percakapan yang cerdas, tapi beberapa pula umpatan kasar, tetapi kisahnya tetap menarik dinikmati, semuanya merupakan emosi alami kehidupan sehari-hari.

Ringkasan Purity, drama psikologi novel oleh Jonathan Franzen

Percakapan Pip dan ibunya membuka kisah. Pip menelepon ibunya dari telepon kantor, terang saja bosnya Igor melototinya. Pip menjadi sales yang saban hari menelepon pada calon pelanggan menawarkan program hemat energi. Gadis berusia dua puluh tiga tahun itu sendiri tidak cocok dengan pekerjaannya, sangat berbeda dengan kepribadian yang diajarkan ibunya. Penyakit ibunya kambuh lagi, ia menderita kanker, tinggal sendirian di kabin sederhana di Felton, California.

Pip sendiri berada di Oakland, berbeda kota dengan tempat di mana ia dibesarkan. Setiap kali ia menanyakan tentang ayah dan keluarga yang lain, ibunya selalu mengelak. Linda, seorang tetangga adalah satu-satunya teman mereka. Pip berusaha kuliah dengan pinjaman, saatnya ia harus mengembalikan utang sebesar $130.000. Ibunya hanya menenangkan saja, tanpa mau membantu anak semata wayangnya, meyakinkan bahwa ia tak dapat hidup tanpa Pip. Di Oakland gadis itu tinggal di sebuah rumah bersama milik Dreyfuss, lelaki sembuh dari schizophrenia, menjalankan toko buku bekas untuk alasan bertemu dengan orang lain, di lantai bawah. Rumah warisan ibunya yang telah bunuh diri, kini terancam macet akan ditarik pihak bank, ia hanya meminta penumpang membawa makanan dan perawatan atau perbaikan rumah.

Gadis itu dibawa oleh Stephen, teman dari grup anti nuklir yang diikutinya. Lelaki tampan itu jadi pujaan bagi setiap wanita di grup, termasuk Pip. Berita perceraian Stephen dengan istrinya Marie adalah kabar baik buat Pip. Hubungan Stephen dan Marie terjalin sejak bangku kuliah, keduanya bekerja pada yayasan Gereja, mereka pun mengadopsi dua putra Eduardo dan Ramon. Pip menempati kamar Eduardo yang telah meninggal ditabrak truk laundri, kini tinggal Ramon. Stephen lelaki lebih tua dari Pip menolak Pip, menganggap gadis itu seperti putrinya sendiri. Hatinya tetap pada Marie. Pip kesal.

Selain Dreyfuss, Pip dan keluarga Stephen, ada pasangan Jerman yang menghuni belakangan ini. Mereka pegiat anti nuklir yang tengah meneliti di Oakland. Gadis itu tidak nyaman dengan pasangan kekasih Jerman itu. Annagret, wanita cantik berumur, berusaha meyakinkan Pip keluar dari pekerjaannya dan melamar di Sunlight Project, sebuah projek yang didirikan leaker/ pembocor rahasia Andreas Wolf, lelaki kharismatik yang menjadi pesaing pembocor rahasia Julian Assange. Dari cara penuturan wanita Jerman itu seolah ia sudah dekat secara personal dengan sang bintang. Sebuah kuisioner disodorkan, tetapi Pip acuh, tapi ia tetap mengambilnya.

Bagi Pip menghabiskan waktu di kafe setiap hari Minggu sangat menenangkan pikirannya, rupanya seorang lelaki tampan dan muda juga memiliki hobi sama, keduanya pun dekat dan sempat jalin pertemanan singkat. Akhirnya Pip keluar dari pekerjaannya, masih marah dengan penolakan Stephen, dan ia akhirnya mengirimkan surat elektronik pada Andreas Wolf, keduanya pun balas-balasan surel. Ibunya tidak setuju jika putrinya harus ke Bolivia untuk menjadi intern Wolf, apalagi Anabel meminta temannya, Linda, membrosing. Internet mengatakan Wolf adalah buronan internasional atas tuduhan memata-matai dan membocorkan rahasia sejumlah negara di Eropah, kini dia dalam pengasingan di Amerika Latin.

Gadis itu akhirnya melamar pada Denver Independent, sebagai intern riset investigasi jurnalis. Editor dan pemilik media itu bernama Tom Aberant. Atasan Pip bernama Leila cepat akrab dengannya. Wanita tiga puluhan itu berempati atas kisah Stephen dan  kesendirian Pip. Wanita itu juga heran, ada seorang ibu sebegitu tega memberi nama Purity dari jutaan nama bagus di dunia. Leila sendiri telah memilki suami, seorang penulis, dan penerima Pulitzer. Seorang mantan nara sumber Leila, dengan kisah rumit, bercerai dengan istri, terpisah dari anaknya, akhirnya menikahi Leila.

Sudah bukan rahasia lagi, jika di kantor Leila dan Tom telah menjalin hubungan satu dekade. Leila tidak pernah mengatakan perselingkuhan itu, tidak tega meninggalkan suaminya yang kini duduk di kursi roda akibat kecelakaan, tetapi hal terbesar dalam hatinya adalah Tom sendiri masih mencintai mantan istrinya. Lagi pula modal Tom saat mendirikan usahanya berasal dari uang mertua. Konsekuensi moral terhadap mantan istrinya selalu mengiringi.

Wajah Pip bak avatar Anabel, mantan istri Tom, dikenalinya lewat foto-foto yang ditunjukkan Tom. Leila seolah menyesal mengajak Pip tinggal dengan mereka, tipe wajah yang disukai Tom. Melihat gadis itu pula, ia menyadari bahwa dirinya sudah tua, ia takut Pip merampas Tom darinya. Pip meninggalkan internnya di Denver sementara waktu.

Tawaran Andreas Wolf diterimanya, Pip juga dijanjikan akan menemukan siapa ayahnya jika ia menjadi intern dalam proyek Wolf. Pertama kali Pip dan ibunya terpisah jauh, apalagi berbeda negara, Bolivia. Gadis itu pun memiliki teman di sana, anak muda berbakat dari berbagai negara dari lulusan universitas terkemuka. Hanya Pip yang berbeda tidak memiliki kemampuan hacking ataupun kelola software. Setelah beberapa minggu tinggal di Bolivia, akhirnya Wolf tiba dari Buenos Aires yang tengah menjalani syuting setting Jerman Timur, pembuatan film tentang kisah hidup sang pembocor. Ungkapan pesona pembocor kharismatik tidak terelakkan dari dalam diri Wolf, dengan kelihaiannya, lelaki tua itu berhasil menaklukkan hati Pip. Keduanya pun menjalin hubungan, bertukar kisah.

Andreas Wolf mengakui dirinya pernah membunuh pada usia yang ke dua puluh tujuh. Lelaki jahat yang melakukan pelecehan seksual pada Annagret ketika berusia lima belas tahun. Wolf lahir dan dibesarkan di Jerman Timur. Ibunya seorang profesor bahasa Anglistik pada sebuah universitas, ayahnya anggota komite partai menangani data-data penting dan penganggaran keuangan. Keluarga Wolf adalah keluarga cukup elegan dan ibunya Katya juga berdarah pahlawan. Ayah Katya adalah mata-mata untuk Rusia yang ditempatkan di Inggris, bekerja di pelabuhan membawa istri dan dua putrinya. Perang pecah, ayahnya disuruh bunuh diri dan ibunya juga mati karena menderita dadakan. Saudari Katya sendiri tinggal di Inggris, menikah di sana dengan anggota partai. Katya satu-satu yang boleh tinggal di Berlin karena masih usia sekolah.

Katya seorang ibu liberal, mengajari Andreas kecil bilingual di rumah bahasa Inggris dan Jerman. Andreas anak cerdas jauh di atas rata-rata teman-temannya. Waktu remaja ia diduga melakukan percobaan bunuh diri dengan melompat jembatan. Sejak itu Andreas pun rutin menjalani terapi psikiater. Pada usia dua puluhan Andreas bekerja pada Gereja, membantu orang-orang bermasalah. Pelecehan seks adalah hal umum yang mereka tangani, tetapi begitu melihat kemolekan dari Annagret, ia seperti tersihir. Pertama kali jatuh cinta pada wanita.

Annagret menceritakan kisahnya. Kakaknya seorang pejudo handal, ia juga mengikuti jejak kakanya. Tanja bekerja sebagai sekretaris, sebagian besar waktu luangnya dihabiskan di tempat pelatihan olahraga. Seorang pelanggan bernama Horst menaruh hari pada Tanja, gadis cantik incaran para pria. Keduanya pun menjalani hubungan, ibunya melarang Tanja berkencan dengan pria seumuran ibunya. Pertengkaran hebat terjadi antara Tanja dan ibunya, gadis itu lari dari rumah, ditemukan bekerja dan tinggal di kota lain.

Pernikahan Horst dengan ibu Annagret membawa sedih karena telah menghianati Tanja, tetapi juga hal baik bagi Annagret. Ayah tirinya, mantan kekasih kakaknya, seorang pekerja pada kolaborator pada penyedia daya negara (PLN). Mereka pun pindah ke apartemen Horst yang lebih besar, Annagret memilki kamar sendiri. Ibu Anngret seorang perawat dan tidak menikmati pekerjaannya, ia juga senang suaminya dan putrinya berteman baik. Horst menyukai motor gede, Annagret mengajarinya Judo. Hal mengejutkan terungkap, Horst mendapati ibu Annagret seorang pecandu narkoba yang mencuri heroin dari rumah sakit di mana ia bekerja. Itu adalah tindakan kriminal berlapis, ibunya terancam dipenjara karena mencuri dan memakai narkoba saat bekerja. Horst akan kehilangan pekerjaan. Bila itu terjadi Annagret yang masih berusia lima belas tahun pasti jatuh ke ayah tirinya.

Sejak itu pula Annagret melayani kebuasan nafsu ayah tirinya tanpa sepengetahuan ibunya, di bawah ancaman. Semuanya dilakukannya terpaksa, gadis muda itu tidak sanggup membohongi dirinya. Semenjak itu pula ia mencari ketenangan, berkunjung ke gereja, tapi bukan berdoa. hanya mengerjakan PR sekolah. Semua masalahnya ia ceritakan pada Andreas. Atas besarnya cinta pada si cantik Annagret, ia merencanakan pembunuhan Horst dengan seksama; memukulnya dengan sekop tanpa merasa bersalah dan Annagret turut membantu mengubur mayat. Keduanya dibayani rasa takut, menghilangnya Horst pasti akan menyeret mereka ke penjara.

Ibu Annagret di penjara atas pencurian heroin, Anngret putus seokah. Gadis cantik luar biasa dan Andreas menjadi kekasih, ikut demonstrasi pergerakan anti Stasi, polisi rahasia Jerman Timur. Diduga Stasi telah banyak melakukan penipuan data dan pembohongan publik. Ketika demonstrasi berlangsung, ayah Andreas yang sudah bertahun-tahun tidak ditemuinya hadir di sana, di depan kamera TV peliput. Hubungan Andreas dengan orang tuanya semakin retak setelah mengetahui ia bukanlah anak kandung Wolf. 

Andreas adalah putra dari mahasiswa ibunya di kampus. Wolf, ayah Andreas tidak mempermasalahkan, ia mencintai Andres seperti anaknya. Pemuda tampan itu mengungkapkan pembunuhan yang ia lakukan, meminta pertolongan ayahnya. Wolf cukup berpengaruh dan disegani, berkas tentang Horst Werner Klienholz tidaklah banyak, Andreas pun mencuri berkas itu dan ia pamer ke kamera TV dengan sebundel berkas Stasi di tangannya, berikrar kalau dia menentang Stasi. Melakukan pembohongan data. Itulah pertama kali ia terkenal dan diliput media.

Sejak itu Andreas semakin tenar sering melayani wawancara TV. 

Pada sebuah bar, Andreas bertemu Tom, seorang Amerika. Ia merasa nyaman dengan sang jurnalis, mengangapnya teman terpercaya. Ia mengajak Tom melihat dan memindahkan bangkai Horst. Jurnalis Tom tengah berada di Berlin menaburkan abu ibunya, separuh dari abu kremasi dibawa dari Amerika. Ibu Tom, gadis Jerman, dikenal ayahnya ketika seminar di kota itu. Duda beranak dua ditinggal mati istrinya, membawa dan menikahi gadis miskin, pelarian dari rumah karena kekejaman ibunya, Clelia, kelak menjadi ibu Tom, juga ibu tiri bagi dua saudari separuh darah Tom.

Itu ide Clelia meyakinkan putra satu-satunya, Tom, kuliah di kampus elit dan bertemu gadis aneh Anabel, putri orang kaya pemilik perusahaan makanan kalengan terbesar di Amerika. Penuh perjuangan Tom mendekati dan mengejar gadisnya, ibunya mengingatkannya Anabel dua tahun lebih tua darinya. Gadis kaya jujur, aneh, dan berpendirian keras, meludahi ayahnya saat hari pernikahan dengan Tom di hadapan para tetamu. Ibunya seorang keturunan keluarga kaya berperilaku sangat aneh, sangat posesif terhadap ayah Anabel, ditemukan bunuh diri di rumah. Ia lebih dekat dengan ayahnya, Annabel juga tidak menyukai ibunya, ia duga ayahnya telah membunuhnya tetapi dibuat seolah bunuh diri. Ayahnya menikah kembali dan memiliki anak.

Sikap kebencian dan kepahitan Annabel pada ayahnya tidak menyurutkan perhatian ayah Anabel pada Tom. Ia meyukai menantunya Tom, bahkan pernah menawari modal untuk mendirikan usaha atas kegigihannya dalam karir jurnalis. Wanita keras kepala itu menolak. Puluhan tahun menikah, Anabel tetap menjauh dan memusuhi ayahnya. Ia tidak mau menerima apa-apa dari ayah dan mengambil uang bagiannya. Anabel dan Tom akhirnya bercerai, keduanya sempat sekali bertemu, dan meluapkan pertengkaran berjam-jam tetapi diredam dengan gairah terakhir. Sebelum ayah Anabel meninggal, ia mewarisi mantan menantunya uang dalam jumlah besar dan Tom menerimanya.

Andreas semakin terkenal, tetapi ia mendapati Tom menjadi ancaman. Kelihaian memata-matai dan hacking mengorek jati diri Tom. Sang hacker akhirnya mendapati mantan istri Tom bernama Anabel, putri orang kaya. Dalam pemantauan kamera, ia bekerja di sebuah supermarket di Felton, California, setelah sekian lama pencarian data tentang mantan istri Tom itu, berbekal dua foto waktu muda dimiliki Andreas ketika berteman dengan Tom. Hacker mengetahui juga, Anabel mempunyai anak gadis bernama Purity. Bertolak belakang dengan ibunya, Pip miliki segudang foto dan cerita di Facebook, setelah dicocoknya secara algoritma pengenalan, tekstur wajah gadis itu dan Tom mirip. 

Aneh bagi Andreas mendapati purti orang kaya hidup sederhana, hidup miskin, Pip menjalani hidup serba kekurangan dan terlilit utang. Annagret pun diutus ke Oakland guna merekrut Pip, gadis itu masuk perangkap, diarahkan melamar pada Denver Independent. Andreas melakukannya demi pembalasan pada Tom. Diluar dugaan, Tom satu atap dengan putrinya. Tetapi Tom hanya bungkam saat mengetahuinya Pip putrinya, beberapa hari sebelum Pip berangkat ke Boliva, melihat foto Annabel pada handphone.

Manager IT di kantor Tom melaporkan adanya spyware, juga di komputer rumah Tom. Data menyebutkan tiga hari sejak Pip diterima bekerja, data bisnis perusahan terbuka ke publik. Pip akhirnya mengakui di Bolivia mengikuti intern proyek Andreas Wolf, bertemu dengan hacker dan leaker yang menjanjikan akan menemukan ayahnya. Sebelumnya ia bertemu pasangan Jerman di Oakland. Wolf hanya menyuruhnya untuk kembali ke Denver dan memata-matai Tom. Ia tidak mengatakan tentang hubungannya dengan Andreas. Walau Wolf baginya aneh, Pip tergila-gila pada pria meanarik, lelaki pantas jadi ayahnya.

Pip akhirnya keluar dari perusahaan Tom, keluar dari Denver, kembali Oakland. Tom tidak memberitahu bahwa ia adalah ayah gadis itu. Padahal Andreas sendiri telah membeberkan pada gadis itu siapa jati dirinya; ibu Pip, putri milioner, pewaris kaya. Ia mendatangi saudari ayahnya, juga perusahaan keluarga ibunya, dan menemui pengacara keluarga. Awalnya Pip tidak mau memberi tahu keberadaan ibunya. Anabel yang menghilang dua puluh tahun lebih, keluarga sudah mengira ia meninggal.

Tom tidak tinggal diam, ia tidak percaya kehadiran Pip di kantornya bukan sebuah kebetulan, termasuk kebocoran data perusahaan. Ia pun terbang ke Bolivia bicara dengan Andreas. Perdebatan hebat terjadi, saat keduanya mendaki bukit, Andreas bunuh diri. Berita itu pun menggemparkan dunia Internet, pembocor kharismatik dan tampan, banyak uang, tenar, tanpa anak dan istri, memilih bunuh diri, melompat dari tebing.

Rumah bersama tempat tinggal Pip di Oakland terancam akan disita pihak bank, Dreyfuss sudah menjadi sahabat baginya, ia ingin menolong pria malang itu, dari uang keluarga ibunya. Akhirnya Pip memberitahu pengacara keluarga alamat ibunya. Pip pulang kampung menemui ibunya dan menceritakan semuanya, temasuk ayahnya Tom masih mencintai ibunya, ia pun mengatur pertemuan kedua orang tua. Ibunya dibawa ke salon, dibelikan baju. Pertemuan Tom dan Anabel yang mengharukan. Jason, pemuda tampan dari café turut hadir di rumah Pip, kini keduanya sepasang kekasih. Pip dan kekasihnya membiarkan orang tuanya tinggal, pertengkaran dari dalam rumah terdengar hingga ke halaman.

*****

13 April 2017