The Corrections: A Novel

So I've read a lot of contradictory opinions regarding Franzen's books, this novel in particular, and the man himself. Some say Franzen is a genius and The Corrections is the best novel they've ever read. Others dismiss the dude as elitist blowhard and his prose as bloated and self-indulgent. While I can't comment on the qualities of Jonathan Franzen's character, having never met the man, I can at least offer the opinion that The Corrections is a very, very good book, although with some quirks that may prove off-putting for some readers.

The central premise of the novel – a dysfunctional family of five trying to gather together for one last Christmas – serves as a kind of frame story, with every individual chapter delving into the backstory of a main character. Individual stories are not as cleanly separated as in Decameron or Canterbury Tales, though; author often switches to a different POV to show us same situation from different angles, and the narrative often shifts between past and present, showing us how this or that character's formative years made them what they are today. That Corrections is so character-focused can prove a big problem for some people, because all major and most of minor characters are extremely unlikable. They are paranoid, delusional, self-centered, unfaithful, manipulative, domineering (the list could go on forever, really), and their redeeming qualities are few. Nevertheless, none of them are bland or uninteresting, and you will quickly discover that although all of important characters are A-holes, there are actually many different degrees of A-hollery; who knows, maybe you'll even end up rooting for some of characters (or at least hate them less than others). The author even plays a little bait-and-switch where a seemingly most well-rounded and nice member of the family later turns out to be one of the worst human beings in the book.

A lot of people here and elsewhere complained that the absence of sympathetic characters made the book unreadable for them. I beg to differ. Franzen's characters are unlikable, but they are hardly unsympathetic. Numerous flashbacks help us understand that they are hardly to blame for most of their shortcomings; in most cases no one is really to blame. Also, they are not quite unrealistic, and while Franzen is often extremely satirical in their depictions (for example, one of the family members thinks "At least I didn't become a religious fundamentalist like my father"; his sons are named Caleb, Jonah, and Aaron), they still don't devolve into outright caricatures. Speaking of caricatures, Franzen dishes out a lot of criticism aimed both left and right: academic feminists and racist bigots, Midwestern traditionalists and coastal elites, capitalists and socialists all get their due portion of witty barbs. On the other hand, while Franzen steps on a lot of toes, he is unlikely to continue stomping on any particular foot; his criticism is aimed at society in general, and the way it twists and corrupts individuals.

Last, but not least, I've found Franzen's writing style to be pleasantly witty and well-flowing. I've had to re-read a couple of complex passages to actually get them, but the writing in general is not ponderous or self-indulging at all. I'd recommend Corrections to anyone interested in fiction with realistic and complex characters.

I just finished this novel for a second time and remain convinced that this is a blanket apology from my generation to the next. All we (the X’ers) took from our parent’s Boomer generation of hope, security and financial conservatism is a bitterness at realizing

how many years of work lay ahead of us, along with self-inflicted misery and pain. We were told we could have it all and, the greedy over-privileged children we were, we took it as gospel. And we were miserable anyway. Mostly because all we took were the wrong things (sex, drugs, and the right to have all our wishes instantly fulfilled-especially those that pertained to leaving the house and having everything our parents had with little effort on our part), and left the ones we SHOULD have taken (college degrees, work ethic and saving money) behind.

When we found we could not step out of our bedrooms into a life where these wishes were granted immediately, we devised a way to get rich quick and thus crashed the market in 2008.

When we had children, these millennials, we were determined they would not suffer in life as we had. We became helicopter parents, filled their life with way too much PBS, leading them to think the world was fair and kind and everyone would share, (because everyone had the same beliefs, right?) and college would be open to them as long as they wanted, so that they could find the careers that would allow them to be happy, help other people, and make tons of money while doing it. Fortunately, the governments we helped install, opened up endless monies to finance these young idealists, and by ensuring no way to discharge any of this debt, via bankruptcy, these same governments have now created slaves of these millennials AND their parents (who co-signed!) and now we limp through life, still disillusioned and bitter, while our children-who’d never known anything but the Utopian world we created in our homes and then they’re young lives – are killing themselves when they are faced with trying to deal with the Dystopian world we tried so hard to hide from them.

This book is about us and our consequences. And Corrections. Or, Karma, as I see it. And despite what many reviewer’s have said, there IS redemption to be had.

I believe what can be offputting is when Franzen gives us what’s happening in Alfred‘s mind. These passages can be bewildering until you understand he suffers a disconnect from everyone and struggles with confusion and understanding the inevitability of his disease.

When faced with reviewing what I believe is a book that should be considered the definitive book of Gen-X and what went wrong, I’m honored and humbled to think my opinion would even matter.

Franzen has created a beautiful piece of work. There are maybe 3/4 of readers (I’m estimating based on reviews) who understand his message and what a magnificent book he has written.

And that’s more than enough.

The Lamberts are an American family dealing with the universal themes of aging and its indignities, capitalism and its diseases, sexuality and its complications, success and its burdens, depression and its loneliness, family and its expectations and love and its disappointments.

The characters are intense, raw and very very real. To the sensitive reader, the Lamberts are sad and harsh and disappointing. To the critical reader, they are all of that and much more. Whatever they are or however they're perceived, the Lamberts are one midwestern family you won't soon forget.

Jonathan Franzen writes beautiful prose. He pushes words beyond their boundaries to draw interesting images of human experiences. You'll definitely appreciate his writing when you read the book a second time.

The book, to me, is about life as a series of successive corrections: mental corrections, attitude corrections, language corrections, behavioral corrections, emotional corrections, moral corrections and economics corrections. It's the endles cycle of making choices, regretting them and correcting them with new choices that you end up regretting and so forth; It's a cycle that's become synonymous with "growth" and "living."

The complicated and achingly familiar lives of the Lamberts typify that cycle.

I saw a little bit of myself in the Lamberts: in Alfred's sternness, Enid's hopefulness, Chip's uselessness, Gary's madness, and Denise's humanness. Their combined failures and triumphs are epic yet common and their individualism is sincere. The Lamberts are reflections of people we know, including ourselves. Jonathan Franzen did a great job giving each character a distinctive voice and a palpable dysfunction.

When I first read this book six years ago, I thought it was highbrow literature at its best, although I thought the writing at times ostentatious and needlessly protracted. When I picked up the book again this Holiday Season (since the story culminates with a family Christmas get-together,) I fell in love with Franzen's unusual writing style and the fleshed out auxiliary characters whom I neglected to appreciate on my first reading. I really enjoyed reading The Corrections this time around. Although the story is unapologetically raw and deeply sad, it makes a great Christmas read.

I'm looking forward to the new Jonathan Franzen work of fiction and to the theatrical treatment of this story due for release in 2011.

“He cruelly attacked her person; she heroically attacked his disease. Building on this strategic advantage, Caroline had then made a series of brilliant tactical moves. When Gary drew up his battle plans for the first full weekend of hostilities, he assumed that Caroline…would adolescently pal around with Aaron and Caleb and incite them to make fun of Clueless Old Dad. Therefore on Thursday night he ambushed her. He proposed, out of the blue, that he and Aaron and Caleb go mountain-biking…for a long day of older-male bonding in which Caroline could not participate because her back hurt. Caroline’s countermove was to endorse his proposal enthusiastically.” (p199)

Baggage. The baggage we accumulate as we age, no matter how happy or successful we think we are or pretend to be. This is a book about an extended family trying to cope with and compensate for a lifetime’s worth of baggage. The early going is over-the-top quirky and a bit annoying, but give the novel a chance to hit its stride.

Some Amazon reviews suggest that the essence of the story is the question of whether the matriarch can emotionally bully her kids and their families into gathering for “one last Christmas” together. The intended gathering is certainly a big part of the novel, but I’d describe it as a major metaphor for a broader story: it’s the scaffolding on which the author builds a narrative involving a rich multitude of complicated characters and sprawling storylines that collide with each other in fascinating ways.

With dry humor and an extra scoop of irony, Franzen delivers deep insights into the ordinary frustrations and annoyances we all experience. He’s especially strong at portraying “conversations” in which the participants are talking past each other or saying one thing when they mean something else entirely. You’ll see yourself in at least some of the characters and scenes. The details of the characters’ lives may not resemble your own, but it’s easy to relate to their experiences.

Similar to Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, which I read shortly before this novel, this is a story of an unhappy family - 2 boys, a daughter, a mother and an absent father. Although Alfred is not physically absent here; rather, he has been emotionally absent for his entire adult life.

As the story opens Alfred is suffering from Parkinson's disease (though it may not actually ever be named). He has trouble tracking conversations with people: "in the instant of realizing he was lost [in conversation], time became marvelously slow and he discovered hitherto unguessed eternities in the space between one word an the next, or rather he became trapped in that space between words and could only stand and watch as time sped on without him." [p 11] Alfred is emotionally anal retentive and this fixation troubles him later in the story. He will give no emotional support to his wife. "'Why are you so unhappy? Why won't you tell me?' [asked Enid]. 'I will go to the grave before I tell you. to the grave.'" [p 276]. Not exactly the basis of a happy marriage.

Enid, is having difficulty caring for Alfred and keeping up with managing the house. Her solution is to take Alfred on a cruise to see the Fall colors along the Atlantic Seaboard followed by Christmas at home where the whole family shows up.

Meanwhile the three adult children are going through crises of their own. Chip has left the university where he taught before gaining tenure; Gary, the other boy is having a midlife crisis and may or may not be clinically depressed. "He'd had the sense, moments earlier, that Caroline was on the verge of accusing him of being 'depressed,' and he was afraid that if the idea that he was depressed gained currency, he would forfeit his right to his opinions. He would forfeit his moral certainties; every word he spoke would become a symptom of disease; he would never again win an argument." [p 159]. And last but not least, the daughter, Denise, just lost her job as a top notch chef in Philadelphia.

Franzen does a great job weaving these stories together, devoting a chapter to each family member. The opening pages of each chapter describes interactions in various ways. The first chapter has Enid moving bags of unread mail around the house like a general keeping his troops from being attached by the enemy - Alfred.

I especially liked how he tied together thematic elements. Aslan is the lion in the C.S. Lewis series that one of Gary's kids is reading; it is also the name of a drug that Chip has taken and that Enid is prescribed on during the cruise. Furthermore the company that manufactures Aslan depends on a patent that Alfred filed and Gary strives to help get more money from the company for his father.

By the end of the story, everyone makes corrections. Some are physical - job and city changes; but not all. "'And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight - isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before? You see things more clearly and you know that your seeing them more clearly.'" [p 302]

Franzen employs some beautiful imagery (which I'm a total sucker for)

• "Alfred gestured at his blue chair, which under the paperhanger's plastic dropcolths looked like something you might deliver to a power station on a flatbed truck." [p 9]

• "The light was the color of car sickness." [p 18]

• "Cauterized liver had the odor of fingers that had handled dirty coins." [p 251]

• "A dollop of mashed rutabaga at rest on a plate expressed a clear yellowish liquid similar to plasma or the matter in a blister." [p253]

• "Between his dry skin and his shakes, peeling the backing off a strop was like picking up a marble with two peacock feathers." [p 287]

• "Denise watched the sky stick forks of lightning into the slad of the trees on the Illinois horizon." [p 358]

• "His desire brought cool topical relief to the dryness and crackedness, the bodywide distress, of her person." [p 394]

This is a very good book and the recurring motifs and interlocking plot elements could be excellent for a book club discussion.