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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Did I like this book? Not exactly.do I think k it's a good book? Yes. Hate to say it but Jonathan franzen really can write. The last fifth or so was so devastating.
Also the stuff about universities was especially on the nose wow.
Also the stuff about universities was especially on the nose wow.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Dementia
dark
funny
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Horrible. I thoroughly enjoyed his more recent novel "Freedom" so was very surprised to dislike "The Corrections" quite so much.
"The Corrections" is the story of a disfunctional and highly unpleasant family coming together for Christmas, at the behest of their mother who wants one last family Christmas at home before her husband further descends into the grasp of Parkinsons. A promising premise but not one that came together in a way I enjoyed. Not one single member of the family is likable. I kept hoping one of them would somehow redeem this selfish self-absorbed family but no, each is more flawed and more repugnant than the last.
The writing is Woody Allen-esque in a bad way and terribly self-indulgent. (Half a dozen pages narrated from the perspective of a racist angry poo. Seriously?! What editor let him get away with such crap, to use a totally obvious pun.)
I have to confess to skimming the last third of the book after giving up in frustration. I very very rarely give up on a book so this should be taken as a sign of my immense disappointment and dislike. I am astounded that the fantastic "Freedom" came from the same pen that wrote this abysmal piece of tripe. Franzen is a very talented writer and one that has obviously matured immensely in the ten or so years between "The Corrections" and "Freedom".
"The Corrections" is the story of a disfunctional and highly unpleasant family coming together for Christmas, at the behest of their mother who wants one last family Christmas at home before her husband further descends into the grasp of Parkinsons. A promising premise but not one that came together in a way I enjoyed. Not one single member of the family is likable. I kept hoping one of them would somehow redeem this selfish self-absorbed family but no, each is more flawed and more repugnant than the last.
The writing is Woody Allen-esque in a bad way and terribly self-indulgent. (Half a dozen pages narrated from the perspective of a racist angry poo. Seriously?! What editor let him get away with such crap, to use a totally obvious pun.)
I have to confess to skimming the last third of the book after giving up in frustration. I very very rarely give up on a book so this should be taken as a sign of my immense disappointment and dislike. I am astounded that the fantastic "Freedom" came from the same pen that wrote this abysmal piece of tripe. Franzen is a very talented writer and one that has obviously matured immensely in the ten or so years between "The Corrections" and "Freedom".
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is the only book I've rated without a review, so I feel (mostly) obligated, and (somewhat) compelled to say something about it.
Firstly, I'll admit that I did not want to like this book. I'd heard mostly mixed things from my friends who'd read it, though with a few stand-out "It's great"s from people whose opinions I trust. I put off reading it for a few years years to help forget the initial hype, then stumbled across it for $1 at the Strand in NYC. Around the time Freedom started getting hyped, I figured it was time to give The Corrections a shot. Despite my best intentions to be a curmudgeon about it, I ended up liking it, though not loving it completely.
Close family dramas always have a bit of a feeling of "otherness" to me, since my father died when I was young, and I'm an only child. My immediate family is pretty tiny. (My extended family is a different story.) So throw in some mother-father drama, some sibling drama, and the way those things intertwine and affect each other, and I'm scratching my head a bit, because I can't really relate or understand it to its fullest extent -- though it's fun to try to, through fiction.
I mention this because, with regard to The Corrections, I was iffy on some of the family dynamics. With not just this, with many things, really -- I struggle with the "I'm fucked up because my parents are" thing. I really only jive with that for so long. Yes, of course, our parents influence us and all, but at the same time, I know people with great parents and families who have plenty of issues and plenty of people from messed up parents and families who have managed to get through fine. Because of this, I felt pretty meh about the way The Corrections ended.
The other issue I had with it was that it felt uneven. Chip's storyline went from being believably trite to unbelievably interesting. (I did not buy any of that Lithuania stuff at all. It was a nice change from the rest of the book, but I just kept thinking, "Yeah right," and "uh, what.") Denise's storyline was mostly great, but I could not have been less interested in Gary, and Enid had her moments but felt more stereotypical retro wife/mom than I would've liked.
Thinking back on it, I can only remember the things I didn't like, and can't remember the things I did -- though I know there were some! Just don't ask for specifics.
Firstly, I'll admit that I did not want to like this book. I'd heard mostly mixed things from my friends who'd read it, though with a few stand-out "It's great"s from people whose opinions I trust. I put off reading it for a few years years to help forget the initial hype, then stumbled across it for $1 at the Strand in NYC. Around the time Freedom started getting hyped, I figured it was time to give The Corrections a shot. Despite my best intentions to be a curmudgeon about it, I ended up liking it, though not loving it completely.
Close family dramas always have a bit of a feeling of "otherness" to me, since my father died when I was young, and I'm an only child. My immediate family is pretty tiny. (My extended family is a different story.) So throw in some mother-father drama, some sibling drama, and the way those things intertwine and affect each other, and I'm scratching my head a bit, because I can't really relate or understand it to its fullest extent -- though it's fun to try to, through fiction.
I mention this because, with regard to The Corrections, I was iffy on some of the family dynamics. With not just this, with many things, really -- I struggle with the "I'm fucked up because my parents are" thing. I really only jive with that for so long. Yes, of course, our parents influence us and all, but at the same time, I know people with great parents and families who have plenty of issues and plenty of people from messed up parents and families who have managed to get through fine. Because of this, I felt pretty meh about the way The Corrections ended.
The other issue I had with it was that it felt uneven. Chip's storyline went from being believably trite to unbelievably interesting. (I did not buy any of that Lithuania stuff at all. It was a nice change from the rest of the book, but I just kept thinking, "Yeah right," and "uh, what.") Denise's storyline was mostly great, but I could not have been less interested in Gary, and Enid had her moments but felt more stereotypical retro wife/mom than I would've liked.
Thinking back on it, I can only remember the things I didn't like, and can't remember the things I did -- though I know there were some! Just don't ask for specifics.
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Upped this on my to-read list after T mentioned a scene and character from it last July 2019. Something about a character being depressed and using work as a way to escape or as the only place he felt successful or useful. T related to that, so I was interested to learn more about this character and since The Corrections was already on my to-read list, I decided to bump it up and found it available at my local library. How does Jonathan Franzen know so much about so many things? I was so intrigued by his description of the goings-on in Alfred's deteriorating mind and all the internal workings of his characters. I appreciate those interior viewpoints. I can see why T related to some of the internal workings and experiences of several of the characters.
Book coincidences: I happen to be reading two books about families right now. This one, The Corrections and The Nest and both of them have characters named Bea.
"How he hated and how he loved the lilt in her voice, the bounce in her step, the serenity of her amour propre! She got to be her and he didn't. And he could see that he was ruined--that he didn't like her but would miss her disastrously." pg. 61
"Now, as his telephone began to ring, it occurred to him that a depressed person ought to continue staring at the TV and ignore the ringing--ought to light another cigarette and, with no trace of emotional affect, watch another cartoon while his machine took whoever's message.That his impulse, instead, was to jump to his feet and answer the phone--that he could so casually betray the arduous wasting of a day--cast doubt on the authenticity of his suffering. He felt as if he lacked the ability to lose all volition and connection with reality the way depressed people did in books and movies. It seemed to him, as he silenced the TV and hurried into his kitchen, that he was failing even at the miserable task of falling properly apart." pg. 77
"Fortunately, the shadows cast by her accusation of depression long, and dark though they were, did not yet extend to his corner office at CenTrust and to the pleasure he took in managing his managers, analysts, and traders. Gary's forty hours at the bank had become the only hours he could count on enjoying in a week. He'd even begun to toy with the idea of working a fifty-hour week; but this was easier said than done, because at the end of his eight-hour day there was often literally no work left on his desk, and he was all too aware, besides, that spending long hours at the office to escape unhappiness at home was exactly the trap his father had fallen into; was undoubtedly how Alfred had begun to self-medicate." pg. 194
The play-by-play when Gary tried to fend off the accusation of not being depressed in front of his family and how far he went to "prove them wrong" by trying to be energetic and normal, but dying inside and then slicing his hand open. Genius. pg. 229-235
"Alfred, by the phone, was studying the clock above the sink. The time was that malignant fiveishness to which the flu sufferer awakens after late-afternoon fever dreams. A time shortly after five which was a mockery of five. To the face of clocks the relief of order--two hands pointing squarely at whole numbers--came only once an hour. As every other moment failed to square, so every moment held the potential for fluish misery.And to suffer like this for no reason. To know there was no moral order in the flu, no justice in the juices of pain his brain produced. The world nothing but a materialization of blind, eternal Will." pg. 261-262
"Lately she had taken to feeding him grilled cheese sandwiches all day long, holding back for dinner the yellow and leafy green vegetables required for a balanced diet and letting Alfred fight her battles. There was something almost tasty and almost sexy in letting the annoying boy be punished by her husband. In standing blamelessly aside while the boy suffered for having hurt her.What you discovered about yourself in raising children wasn't always agreeable or attractive." pg. 263
"Her life would have been easier if she hadn't loved him so much, but she couldn't help loving him. Just to look at him was to love him." pg. 269
"The suspicion that everything was relative. That the 'real' and 'authentic' might not be simply doomed but fictive to begin with. That his feeling of righteousness, of uniquely championing the real, was just a feeling. These were the suspicions that had lain in ambush in all those motel rooms. These were the deep terrors beneath the flimsy beds.And if the world refused to square with his version of reality then it was necessarily an uncaring world, a sour and sickening world, a penal colony, and he was doomed to be violently lonely in it.He bowed his head at the thought of how much strength a man would need to survive an entire life so lonely." pg. 275
"When it was very, very dark in the house, the unborn child could see as clearly as anyone. She had ears and eyes, fingers and a forebrain and a cerebellum, and she floated in a central place. She already knew the main hungers. Day after day the mother walked around in a stew of desire and guilt, and now the object of the mother's desire lay three feet away from her. Everything in the mother was poised to melt and shut down at a loving touch anywhere on her body.There was a lot of breathing going on. A lot of breathing but no touching." pg. 277
"This was a bad husband she had landed, a bad, bad, bad husband who would never give her what she needed. Anything that might have satisfied her he found a reason to withhold." pg. 279
"Denise watched the sky stick forks of lightning into the salad of trees on the Illinois horizon." pg. 360
"It was better to work hard and see nobody. Life, in her experience, had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at yourself from one perspective and all you saw was weirdness. Move your head a little bit, though, and everything looked reasonably normal. She believed she couldn't hurt anybody as long as she was only working." pg. 383
"The wagon's engine sang of the work involved in propelling a chunk of metal down a road. Brian played a track from a girl-group album on his pullout stereo. Denise liked the music, but this was no surprise. Brian seemed intent on playing and saying and doing nothing that she didn't like. For three weeks he'd been phoning her and leaving low-voiced messages. ('Hey. It's me.') She could see his love coming like a train, and she liked it. Was vicariously excited by it. She didn't mistake this excitement for attraction (Hemerling, if she'd done nothing else, had made Denise suspicious of her feelings), but she couldn't help rooting for Brian in his pursuit of her; and she'd dressed, this morning, accordingly. The way she'd dressed was hardly even fair." pg. 384
"The main difference between America and Lithuania, as far as Chip could see, was that in America the wealthy few subdued the unwealthy many by means of mind-numbing and soul-killing entertainments and gadgetry and pharmaceuticals, whereas in Lithuania the powerful few subdued the unpowerful many by threatening violence." pg. 444
"She asked him to build a fire. She stood and marveled as her comptent gray-haired son walked steadily to the woodpile, returned with a load of logs on one arm, deftly arranged them in the fireplace, and lit a match on the first try. The whole job took five minutes. Gary was doing nothing more than function the way a man was supposed to function, and yet, in contrast to the man Enid lived with, his capabilities seemed godlike. His least gesture was glorious to watch. Along with her relief at having him in the house, though, came the awareness of how soon he would leave again." pg. 480
"'You hit me rather hard. Why did you do that?''Because I don't want you here. I don't want to be part of your life. I don't want to be part of anybody's life. I'm sick of watching myself be cruel to you.'" pg. 509
"The bacon fat and the browned ribs and the boiling kraut smelled good. The dish, as prepared in this kitchen, bore little relation to the high-art version that she'd plated for a thousand strangers. The Generator's ribs and the Generator's monkfish had more in common that the Generator's ribs and these homemade ribs had. you thought you knew what food was, you thought it was elemental. You forgot how much restaurant there was in restaurant food and how much home was in homemade." pg. 515
"She'd never really known her father. Probably nobody had. With his shyness and his formality and his tyrannical rages he protected his interior so ferociously that if you loved him, as she did, you learned that you could do him no greater kindness than to respect his privacy." pg. 525-526
"The odd truth about Alfred was that love, for him was a matter not of approaching but of keeping away. She understood this better than Chip and Gary did, and so she felt a particular responsibility for him." pg. 526
"A holly wreath was on the door. The front walk was edged with snow and evenly spaced broom marks. The midwestern street struck the traveler as a wonderland of wealth and oak trees and conspicuously useless space. The traveler didn't see how such a place could exist in a world of Lithuanias and Polands. It was a testament to the insulatory effectiveness of political boundaries that power didn't simply arc across the gap between such divergent economic voltages." pg. 539
"Chip was breathing hard. The door of the cage was closing on him fast. The sansation he'd had in the men's room at the Vilnius Airport, the feeling that his debt to Denise, far from being a burden, was his last defense, returned to him in the form of dread at the prospect of its being forgiven. He'd lived with the affliction of this debt until it had assumed the character of a neuroblastoma so intricately implicated in his cerebral architecture that he doubted he could survive its removal." pg. 551
"With no plan in his head and no power in his hands he attempted to loosen the belt so he could take his pants off and dry himself. But the belt was as maddening as ever. Twenty times he ran his hands along its length and twenty times he failed to find a buckle. He was like a person of two dimensions seeking freedom in a third. He could search for all eternity and never find the goddamned buckle." pg. 559
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
Book coincidences: I happen to be reading two books about families right now. This one, The Corrections and The Nest and both of them have characters named Bea.
"How he hated and how he loved the lilt in her voice, the bounce in her step, the serenity of her amour propre! She got to be her and he didn't. And he could see that he was ruined--that he didn't like her but would miss her disastrously." pg. 61
"Now, as his telephone began to ring, it occurred to him that a depressed person ought to continue staring at the TV and ignore the ringing--ought to light another cigarette and, with no trace of emotional affect, watch another cartoon while his machine took whoever's message.That his impulse, instead, was to jump to his feet and answer the phone--that he could so casually betray the arduous wasting of a day--cast doubt on the authenticity of his suffering. He felt as if he lacked the ability to lose all volition and connection with reality the way depressed people did in books and movies. It seemed to him, as he silenced the TV and hurried into his kitchen, that he was failing even at the miserable task of falling properly apart." pg. 77
"Fortunately, the shadows cast by her accusation of depression long, and dark though they were, did not yet extend to his corner office at CenTrust and to the pleasure he took in managing his managers, analysts, and traders. Gary's forty hours at the bank had become the only hours he could count on enjoying in a week. He'd even begun to toy with the idea of working a fifty-hour week; but this was easier said than done, because at the end of his eight-hour day there was often literally no work left on his desk, and he was all too aware, besides, that spending long hours at the office to escape unhappiness at home was exactly the trap his father had fallen into; was undoubtedly how Alfred had begun to self-medicate." pg. 194
The play-by-play when Gary tried to fend off the accusation of not being depressed in front of his family and how far he went to "prove them wrong" by trying to be energetic and normal, but dying inside and then slicing his hand open. Genius. pg. 229-235
"Alfred, by the phone, was studying the clock above the sink. The time was that malignant fiveishness to which the flu sufferer awakens after late-afternoon fever dreams. A time shortly after five which was a mockery of five. To the face of clocks the relief of order--two hands pointing squarely at whole numbers--came only once an hour. As every other moment failed to square, so every moment held the potential for fluish misery.And to suffer like this for no reason. To know there was no moral order in the flu, no justice in the juices of pain his brain produced. The world nothing but a materialization of blind, eternal Will." pg. 261-262
"Lately she had taken to feeding him grilled cheese sandwiches all day long, holding back for dinner the yellow and leafy green vegetables required for a balanced diet and letting Alfred fight her battles. There was something almost tasty and almost sexy in letting the annoying boy be punished by her husband. In standing blamelessly aside while the boy suffered for having hurt her.What you discovered about yourself in raising children wasn't always agreeable or attractive." pg. 263
"Her life would have been easier if she hadn't loved him so much, but she couldn't help loving him. Just to look at him was to love him." pg. 269
"The suspicion that everything was relative. That the 'real' and 'authentic' might not be simply doomed but fictive to begin with. That his feeling of righteousness, of uniquely championing the real, was just a feeling. These were the suspicions that had lain in ambush in all those motel rooms. These were the deep terrors beneath the flimsy beds.And if the world refused to square with his version of reality then it was necessarily an uncaring world, a sour and sickening world, a penal colony, and he was doomed to be violently lonely in it.He bowed his head at the thought of how much strength a man would need to survive an entire life so lonely." pg. 275
"When it was very, very dark in the house, the unborn child could see as clearly as anyone. She had ears and eyes, fingers and a forebrain and a cerebellum, and she floated in a central place. She already knew the main hungers. Day after day the mother walked around in a stew of desire and guilt, and now the object of the mother's desire lay three feet away from her. Everything in the mother was poised to melt and shut down at a loving touch anywhere on her body.There was a lot of breathing going on. A lot of breathing but no touching." pg. 277
"This was a bad husband she had landed, a bad, bad, bad husband who would never give her what she needed. Anything that might have satisfied her he found a reason to withhold." pg. 279
"Denise watched the sky stick forks of lightning into the salad of trees on the Illinois horizon." pg. 360
"It was better to work hard and see nobody. Life, in her experience, had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at yourself from one perspective and all you saw was weirdness. Move your head a little bit, though, and everything looked reasonably normal. She believed she couldn't hurt anybody as long as she was only working." pg. 383
"The wagon's engine sang of the work involved in propelling a chunk of metal down a road. Brian played a track from a girl-group album on his pullout stereo. Denise liked the music, but this was no surprise. Brian seemed intent on playing and saying and doing nothing that she didn't like. For three weeks he'd been phoning her and leaving low-voiced messages. ('Hey. It's me.') She could see his love coming like a train, and she liked it. Was vicariously excited by it. She didn't mistake this excitement for attraction (Hemerling, if she'd done nothing else, had made Denise suspicious of her feelings), but she couldn't help rooting for Brian in his pursuit of her; and she'd dressed, this morning, accordingly. The way she'd dressed was hardly even fair." pg. 384
"The main difference between America and Lithuania, as far as Chip could see, was that in America the wealthy few subdued the unwealthy many by means of mind-numbing and soul-killing entertainments and gadgetry and pharmaceuticals, whereas in Lithuania the powerful few subdued the unpowerful many by threatening violence." pg. 444
"She asked him to build a fire. She stood and marveled as her comptent gray-haired son walked steadily to the woodpile, returned with a load of logs on one arm, deftly arranged them in the fireplace, and lit a match on the first try. The whole job took five minutes. Gary was doing nothing more than function the way a man was supposed to function, and yet, in contrast to the man Enid lived with, his capabilities seemed godlike. His least gesture was glorious to watch. Along with her relief at having him in the house, though, came the awareness of how soon he would leave again." pg. 480
"'You hit me rather hard. Why did you do that?''Because I don't want you here. I don't want to be part of your life. I don't want to be part of anybody's life. I'm sick of watching myself be cruel to you.'" pg. 509
"The bacon fat and the browned ribs and the boiling kraut smelled good. The dish, as prepared in this kitchen, bore little relation to the high-art version that she'd plated for a thousand strangers. The Generator's ribs and the Generator's monkfish had more in common that the Generator's ribs and these homemade ribs had. you thought you knew what food was, you thought it was elemental. You forgot how much restaurant there was in restaurant food and how much home was in homemade." pg. 515
"She'd never really known her father. Probably nobody had. With his shyness and his formality and his tyrannical rages he protected his interior so ferociously that if you loved him, as she did, you learned that you could do him no greater kindness than to respect his privacy." pg. 525-526
"The odd truth about Alfred was that love, for him was a matter not of approaching but of keeping away. She understood this better than Chip and Gary did, and so she felt a particular responsibility for him." pg. 526
"A holly wreath was on the door. The front walk was edged with snow and evenly spaced broom marks. The midwestern street struck the traveler as a wonderland of wealth and oak trees and conspicuously useless space. The traveler didn't see how such a place could exist in a world of Lithuanias and Polands. It was a testament to the insulatory effectiveness of political boundaries that power didn't simply arc across the gap between such divergent economic voltages." pg. 539
"Chip was breathing hard. The door of the cage was closing on him fast. The sansation he'd had in the men's room at the Vilnius Airport, the feeling that his debt to Denise, far from being a burden, was his last defense, returned to him in the form of dread at the prospect of its being forgiven. He'd lived with the affliction of this debt until it had assumed the character of a neuroblastoma so intricately implicated in his cerebral architecture that he doubted he could survive its removal." pg. 551
"With no plan in his head and no power in his hands he attempted to loosen the belt so he could take his pants off and dry himself. But the belt was as maddening as ever. Twenty times he ran his hands along its length and twenty times he failed to find a buckle. He was like a person of two dimensions seeking freedom in a third. He could search for all eternity and never find the goddamned buckle." pg. 559
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
Brilliant writing. I borrowed this book from a friend, and now I'm going to have to buy my own copy. That's how great it was.
reflective
slow-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