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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
Several weeks into quarantine, I went digging for my 20-year-old copy of Infinite Jest. Failing to locate it, I settled for a slightly-newer copy of The Corrections. This book was published ten days before 9/11. It’s strange that it became a bestseller at the moment it became suddenly irrelevant except as an epitaph for “the [white] American way of life.” (Maybe it took a while to sink in.) Nevertheless, for a piece of “serious” literary fiction, it’s an enjoyable and funny page-turner — it’s easy to get sucked into the swirling narratives of the Lambert siblings and their parents at the turn of the last millennium. What we have here is Death of a Salesman staged by a pre-Me Too Woody Allen, with the spotlight relocated from Willy to his children. Sadly, there is no grand statement to this well-crafted novel beyond the vanity of life. We turn to Tolstoy or Dostoevsky to tell us “how, then, ought we live?” Franzen is here to answer the related question, “what the Hell was that?”
Some people love Jonathan Franzen and some people hate him. Some people sort of race through his book without deciding if they love him or hate him but understanding that he is an excellent writer. And that person is me. This is my second Franzen book, the first being “Freedom” and both times I have gotten caught up in his writing, find it affecting me, creeping into my own life, making me question what the hell I am doing with my life. So, yes, he is a powerful writer. Someone who can make you really take a good, hard, cold look at people. I feel like he understands people. In all their fucked up glory.
With “The Corrections” we get another family saga. We have Enid, the wife who cares too much what everyone else thinks, Alfred, the stern, depressed and ill father, and the three children Gary, Chipper and Denise. The characters all get a piece of the book and they are all hate-able in their own ways. I guess that is what makes them real. By the end of it, I only really hated Gary though. Gary needs to take a good , hard look at himself.
I think every time we read, in a way we have to understand something in it, something has to poke us in the chest and affect us in order for us to connect with it. This book did that for me in many ways. Enid, in many ways reminded me of my mother and the relationship between her and Denise was bang on to a lot of mother/daughter relationships, I am sure. They way we hide our true selves from our families, the way we put up a veneer.
The characters are strong, there is enough drama to keep the plot moving and the descriptions often hit you right in the gullet. There are plenty of ups and downs and surprising twists to keep the reader widely engaged.
When I finished I took a deep sigh of relief, I imagine Enid doing the same.
If anything, maybe drop your disguises within your own relationships. We will find out we the real us was always there all along.
4/5 stars.
With “The Corrections” we get another family saga. We have Enid, the wife who cares too much what everyone else thinks, Alfred, the stern, depressed and ill father, and the three children Gary, Chipper and Denise. The characters all get a piece of the book and they are all hate-able in their own ways. I guess that is what makes them real. By the end of it, I only really hated Gary though. Gary needs to take a good , hard look at himself.
I think every time we read, in a way we have to understand something in it, something has to poke us in the chest and affect us in order for us to connect with it. This book did that for me in many ways. Enid, in many ways reminded me of my mother and the relationship between her and Denise was bang on to a lot of mother/daughter relationships, I am sure. They way we hide our true selves from our families, the way we put up a veneer.
The characters are strong, there is enough drama to keep the plot moving and the descriptions often hit you right in the gullet. There are plenty of ups and downs and surprising twists to keep the reader widely engaged.
When I finished I took a deep sigh of relief, I imagine Enid doing the same.
If anything, maybe drop your disguises within your own relationships. We will find out we the real us was always there all along.
4/5 stars.
About 20 years late to the party, but quite enjoyable.
I can't argue with any of the plentiful praise on the back cover of this edition. This is an impressive piece of writing and one that I found hard to put down. I was particularly impressed by how the characters seemed painfully realistic ("Dear God, I KNOW these people!") and yet somehow they ended up in entirely improbable situations. These were then played with high realism. There's something about how he made the implausible seem SO plausible that made me wonder what crazy extreme event might suddenly roll into the realism of my own life.
My only complaint was that after sharing the story lines of so many of the characters, a few of them not getting substantive resolutions at the end was a little frustrating. I guess that's kind of like life, too though. You don't always know what happened to everybody.
My only complaint was that after sharing the story lines of so many of the characters, a few of them not getting substantive resolutions at the end was a little frustrating. I guess that's kind of like life, too though. You don't always know what happened to everybody.
"The Corrections" is a bunch of pretty words about a bunch of shitty people. Chip was the only interesting character (to a point), and he got the least amount of screen time. I felt bad for Alfred throughout the book in that his health continued to decline, but his vapid, self-centered family - particularly his kids - cared more about their petty trivialities than their own father. This is the kind of family that you know won't realize what they've got 'til it's gone (save for Enid, who's much happier when the burden that has become her husband is finally gone and she can get back to *enjoying* her life), and this is also the kind of family that you hope yours never turns into when you're too old to fend for yourself and your life is left in their hands. I walk away from this book despising every character in it.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I picked up this book. I saw another reviewer describe it disparagingly as 600 pages of word vomit, and I do think that's pretty accurate. However, it's absolutely enthralling and incredibly written. Alternating between perspectives of the five Lambert family members, The Corrections goes into so much detail about each of their lives, thoughts and struggles that you can't help but get to know and root for them, even thought they are each pretty terrible, depressing people. I picked it up because I recognized Jonathan Franzen's name as a popular author, but the premise isn't something I would normally go for. Everyday family struggles might not seem interesting enough to hold anyone's attention for so long, but it certainly captured mine.
Incredible writing ruined by a boring story. (Kidding, kind of!). I am not the fastest or most attentive reader so the Corrections took me a long time to get through (over 3 months...). Franzen's writing is exceptional. He describes emotions that you thought no one else had in ways that capture the feeling to a tee, it was uncanny to even read it. That said, he is detailed to a fault. It's obviously intentional but not my preferred style of storytelling: to go into great depth and detail for a side story that only minutely supports the overall narrative. It felt a bit futile to me and a waste of time and energy invested into reading parts that don't ultimately impact the story. The Corrections is a book that is bizarrely mundane. Entirely relatable for the way it captures American family dynamics yet not relatable at all in other ways. I don't love reading books that feel like reading a reflection of one's own life. I didn't enjoy taking on the stress of reading about another family and their dysfunctional dynamics. Again, impressively good writing, but not the style of storytelling (or story itself) that I find entertaining. The juice wasn't "worth the squeeze."
Reading this on the road for my September tour dates... http://willdailey.com/2013/08/fall-tour/
I think Corrections is better than Freedom by far, the characters were more interesting from the start and even though the characters had few, if any, redeeming or sympathetic qualities - it was still a must find out what happens next.
I don't understand the hype about this book. Quit halfway thru. Read far enough to find a written version of the grace my mom use to say at the speed of light: "Blessalor this foodier use nusta thy service make asair mindful neesa others Jesus name amen."