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tangledinblue's review against another edition
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen's 2001 study of the turn of the millennium, begins with an electric chapter in the home of Enid Lambert, the neurotic and ever-suffering housewife to husband Alfred, the once formidable patriarch whose mind and body are rapidly going to seed. Franzen's picture of the Midwestern home of elderly empty nesters is frightfully accurate, describing Nordstrom bags overfilled with ephemera that I myself have stepped around in carpeted hallways and dusty basement pool tables holding burnt-out Christmas tree lights I have tried to illume. The alarm bell of anxiety is familiar as well. A house haunted by words unsaid and hopes unrealized. Franzen's stateless Midwestern microcosm, St Jude (the patron saint of lost causes, no less) is the American Dream in all its schlubby, misanthropic glory. Your parents' and grandparents' houses are immortalized here, in St Jude.
Franzen's strongest suit is the scientific way he captures his cast of dysfunctional characters, pins them down, and dissects them right there in front of you. Some tropes that would be hackneyed in the wrong writer's hands (the burnt-out professor sleeps with the pretty young student? Groundbreaking.) are made engaging and fresh by dancing prose and bracing wit. The five protagonists are insufferable in their unique ways, and we get to witness their lives falling apart due to their hangups and bad habits.
Reading about nasty people in nasty situations is a matter of taste-if you don't like it, don't bother; but the merit of reading unlikeable protagonists is, of course, the light it shines on your own shortcomings. Unlike trashy reality TV where we can point and laugh at people we are superior to, literature leaves little room for displacement. You have to lean into it: the absurdity, the disgust, the realism of it. You're weird because of your parents, just like the Lambert children.
The protagonists are four people caught in the orbit of the force Alfred Lambert. When their sun starts dimming, they are left to prepare for the rapidly approaching supernova and deal with the burns they're stuck with. The most compelling thing in this work is Alfred, present in the background of every story. He is the driving force behind every action his children undertake. An angry father who no longer exists is haunting the narrative. The story reaches its climax when each of them comes to realize the true nature of their relationship with their father, for better or for worse.
However, when we see through his eyes, his memory loss, hallucinations, and confusion have left him a shell of a man. Franzen's change in tone and style when writing Alfred to immerse the reader in his experience is unlike anything I've ever read. It's scary and heart-wrenching and perfect.
Read this book, if for nothing else, for moments like the page-long run-on sentence describing Alfred losing his way in a sentence, a conflation of "crepuscular" and "corpuscular" to describe the particulate twilight of an old man's train of thought, a meeting in a forest of that old man and his younger self, and the successful completion of that sentence to a person unaware of the depths of his confusion.
Franzen's prose is perhaps not beautiful, but it is witty and it is precise. Its flawless construction and flow had me underlining and dog-earing almost unconsciously.
This is a book about economic corrections and the turn of the century, and only some of what Franzen does works for me. If it gets docked any stars it’s because of the Lithuania nonsense. Lithuania may have been more interesting when the book was published or to someone more economically-minded, but to me it seemed like an idea that could've been pulled off in a few pages and was instead drawn out chaff. This is somewhat made up for in other, surprising social commentary in the form of moments like the woman on the cruise and a brief interlude about crime, justice, and grief; or Robin Passafaro's unsettling backstory that forgives this side character of her foibles.
"Tour de force" gets thrown around at an obnoxious frequency in book reviews, but I would be remiss to not say it now. Franzen wrote The Corrections at the turn of the century but it reads like it was written in the 2020s, despite what it really is- the last cultural snapshot of pre-9/11 America. If I had to explain to an alien the human condition using only literature, I would give it a stack of classics and The Corrections, and ask it to forgive us our trespasses.
Franzen's strongest suit is the scientific way he captures his cast of dysfunctional characters, pins them down, and dissects them right there in front of you. Some tropes that would be hackneyed in the wrong writer's hands (the burnt-out professor sleeps with the pretty young student? Groundbreaking.) are made engaging and fresh by dancing prose and bracing wit. The five protagonists are insufferable in their unique ways, and we get to witness their lives falling apart due to their hangups and bad habits.
Reading about nasty people in nasty situations is a matter of taste-if you don't like it, don't bother; but the merit of reading unlikeable protagonists is, of course, the light it shines on your own shortcomings. Unlike trashy reality TV where we can point and laugh at people we are superior to, literature leaves little room for displacement. You have to lean into it: the absurdity, the disgust, the realism of it. You're weird because of your parents, just like the Lambert children.
The protagonists are four people caught in the orbit of the force Alfred Lambert. When their sun starts dimming, they are left to prepare for the rapidly approaching supernova and deal with the burns they're stuck with. The most compelling thing in this work is Alfred, present in the background of every story. He is the driving force behind every action his children undertake. An angry father who no longer exists is haunting the narrative. The story reaches its climax when each of them comes to realize the true nature of their relationship with their father, for better or for worse.
However, when we see through his eyes, his memory loss, hallucinations, and confusion have left him a shell of a man. Franzen's change in tone and style when writing Alfred to immerse the reader in his experience is unlike anything I've ever read. It's scary and heart-wrenching and perfect.
Read this book, if for nothing else, for moments like the page-long run-on sentence describing Alfred losing his way in a sentence, a conflation of "crepuscular" and "corpuscular" to describe the particulate twilight of an old man's train of thought, a meeting in a forest of that old man and his younger self, and the successful completion of that sentence to a person unaware of the depths of his confusion.
Franzen's prose is perhaps not beautiful, but it is witty and it is precise. Its flawless construction and flow had me underlining and dog-earing almost unconsciously.
This is a book about economic corrections and the turn of the century, and only some of what Franzen does works for me. If it gets docked any stars it’s because of the Lithuania nonsense. Lithuania may have been more interesting when the book was published or to someone more economically-minded, but to me it seemed like an idea that could've been pulled off in a few pages and was instead drawn out chaff. This is somewhat made up for in other, surprising social commentary in the form of moments like the woman on the cruise and a brief interlude about crime, justice, and grief; or Robin Passafaro's unsettling backstory that forgives this side character of her foibles.
"Tour de force" gets thrown around at an obnoxious frequency in book reviews, but I would be remiss to not say it now. Franzen wrote The Corrections at the turn of the century but it reads like it was written in the 2020s, despite what it really is- the last cultural snapshot of pre-9/11 America. If I had to explain to an alien the human condition using only literature, I would give it a stack of classics and The Corrections, and ask it to forgive us our trespasses.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Excrement, Alcoholism, Dementia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Self harm and Murder
Minor: Racism and Drug use
Father suffers from debilitating dementia, bouts of psychosis, and suicidal ideation. Graphic descriptions of his experience as well as his family trying to treat him. One son has alcoholism and depression w/ graphic descriptions of both experiences. No adult/minor relationships or assault but two instances of men in positions of power sleeping with much younger women. A brief segment of the story is dedicated to a murderer, his crime, and the mother of the victim’s revenge fantasies.
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