The Corrections: A Novel (Recent Picador Highlights)

Winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction
Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award
An American Library Association Notable Book

Jonathan Franzen's third novel, The Corrections, is a great work of art and a grandly entertaining overture to our new century: a bold, comic, tragic, deeply moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of greed and globalism. Franzen brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty, of Cub Scouts and Christmas cookies and sexual inhibitions, into brilliant collision with the modern absurdities of brain science, home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and the anti-gravity New Economy. With The Corrections, Franzen emerges as one of our premier interpreters of American society and the American soul.

Enid Lambert is terribly, terribly anxious. Although she would never admit it to her neighbors or her three grown children, her husband, Alfred, is losing his grip on reality. Maybe it's the medication that Alfred takes for his Parkinson's disease, or maybe it's his negative attitude, but he spends his days brooding in the basement and committing shadowy, unspeakable acts. More and more often, he doesn't seem to understand a word Enid says.

Trouble is also brewing in the lives of Enid's children. Her older son, Gary, a banker in Philadelphia, has turned cruel and materialistic and is trying to force his parents out of their old house and into a tiny apartment. The middle child, Chip, has suddenly and for no good reason quit his exciting job as a professor at D------ College and moved to New York City, where he seems to be pursuing a "transgressive" lifestyle and writing some sort of screenplay. Meanwhile the baby of the family, Denise, has escaped her disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man--or so Gary hints.

Enid, who loves to have fun, can still look forward to a final family Christmas and to the ten-day Nordic Pleasurelines Luxury Fall Color Cruise that she and Alfred are about to embark on. But even these few remaining joys are threatened by her husband's growing confusion and unsteadiness. As Alfred enters his final decline, the Lamberts must face the failures, secrets, and long-buried hurts that haunt them as a family if they are to make the corrections that each desperately needs.

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The Corrections is either a five star, or a one star book for most people. . . depending on your perspective. I graded the book a three, because I had quite a lot of both reactions that I share below. In deciding whether or not you should read this book, ignore the book's award and the book's controversy, but do pay attention to the next two paragraphs.

Here's who will hate it: Anyone who dislikes reading about unending emotional turmoil, depression, dementia, people messing up their lives, ugly family scenes, emotionally cold families, and the views of the well-educated, self-satisfied towards everyone else. Further groups who will be offended will include those who dislike extreme writing styles, slowly developing stories, and a strong sense of irony. Also, anyone from Lithuania or of Lithuanian ancestry will probably feel offended.

Here's who will love it: Anyone who liked John Cheever's Wapshot Chronicle and Wapshot Scandal, but would also like to see more of the interaction among the family members; those who enjoy writing that takes characters to the edge and tests them thoroughly with temptation and challenge in order to let their actions describe their personalities; those who enjoy satirical treatment of foibles of the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom; and those who would like to read about a family with more problems than their own has. The writing itself will interest people who like to see new forms of narration, and appreciate an ability to switch smoothly between stream of consciousness and straight narration.

If you are in the latter category, read on.

I found the book noteworthy for capturing the politics and manipulation within families in an extremely convincing and revealing way. This subject is normally a taboo in our society.

The theme of corrections (whether in financial markets, in dealing with misbehavior, adjusting to new circumstances, or choosing the right path) is a good one for a novel about families, and I thought the theme was most imaginative and extremely well developed. If you are like me, be aware that the theme's full relevance will not start to hit you until the last 100 pages or so.

The book's focus, to me, was on the limits of our self-perceptions. We have a self-image and a way of internalizing the world. Often, the self-image and way of internalizing the world poorly capture what is really going on. As a result, we can misunderstand our circumstances, what others think of us, what is being communicated to us, and even ourselves. Getting past any self-delusion is important to freely finding and taking the right choices for ourselves. As you laugh while you read this book, I suggest that you laugh a little at yourself . . . and learn in the process.

The book's two best scenes are when Alfred comes home from an 11 hour day and runs into a little turbulence over dinner, and the scene in the ship's cabin when Alfred cannot wake Enid up. I wished that more of the writing had been this good. I look forward to reading more novels by Mr. Franzen in the future.

Where should you be more open to alternatives? What are others trying to tell you?

92 of 100 found the following review helpful:

Hard core reality, brilliantly written.Jan 08, 2002
By CAM
As a "matoor" woman of 58 raised in the Midwest, a member of the "working poor", and as one-half of a couple who doesn't understand why even though "we are smart, we aren't rich", it was gratifying to learn that at least SOMEONE recognizes we're here.

The myopic Enid and I are sisters. The highly principled, stoic Albert and my husband (albeit, sans illness) are made from the same cloth. We have a "Gary" and a "Denise" and five more independent, self-reliant, contributing members of society who refuse to be "Dollys" in a culture of consensus mentality.

Not EVERYONE has a hunky-dory existence. Some of us intelligent, well-educated people are struggling. Our children are far from perfect and struggling too. But we get up every morning, put one foot in front of the other, do the best we can, and hide our secrets behind forced smiles.

I was awestruck by JF's ability to get inside our minds and speak our thoughts, fears, so well. The dichotomy between the parents and their baby-boomer children, the difference in priorities, each defining "family values" as it suits them from a smorgasbord of choices, no two alike. It's amazing that, in the end, each Lambert does the right thing. They are a family after all.

God bless you, Jonathan Franzen, for writing a novel that needed to be written. Somehow I feel less alone knowing Enid is with me. For the rest of you naysayers, finish the book. Read and savor the first few pages. The writing is smooth as silk...

59 of 66 found the following review helpful:

Wonderfully observed and very shallowMar 29, 2003
By A. Anderson "Book Person"
After all the hype, how could I not read the book? Easily, as it turns out.

Franzen is an extremely observant man. He can capture and dissect people with a perception and thoroughness that any writer could envy. He notices and describes the actions and manipulations of relationships, the effects of needing love and recognition, the sometimes funny but often just unkind interactions between people who do not understand themselves or others. He is dead on particularly, in the clever manipulation of the Yuppie character, Gary, by his wife. He is persuasive in the sexual character of Denise. Chip is the comic character and his scenes veer between merely pathetic and truly funny. The characters are recognizable, and generally carry the burden of their assignments well.

The book is a series of stories of the main characters, each of whom are 'correcting' what came before. They want to correct each other, their parents, their partners, their siblings and themselves. Each of them seems to think that if they change a behavior, the outward appearance of their lives, they will be successful is becoming the person they want to be. Or more accurately, avoid becoming the person they do not want to be. The inward journeys of the characters do not go deep. These are not thoughtful people. There is no moral basis for action, no questioning, no intellectual component to their lives, no weighing of choices, no wrestling with larger themes. Their lives and decisions are nearly always a reaction to something else and Franzen cooly, coldly and unkindly just watches.

The result is like being at a cocktail party,listening to an intelligent, perceptive and well spoken drunk skewer everyone else in the room. It's entertaining, but after a while, you begin to hope he will either reach a conclusion or just go home.

Franzen see everything, and understands a good deal less. Or he is cleverly telling us that modern society understands nothing--which he could have done a good deal more briefly. For me, the book becomes distasteful in its lack of sympathy for the characters who are largely all flaws. Perhaps the requirement of contemporary writing is terminal cynicism. Perhaps the author thinks there is little redeeming about any person. Perhaps it is a clarion call to deepen the public psychological discussions of ourselves. If so, the snide, scarcastic and superior tone and lack of empathy ovewhelmed a larger message.

There is no doubt he writes well, can sustain a narrative or, rather, a series of narratives barely tied together by a single Christmas. The day finally arrives, and for no reason, Chip's behavior changes, Enid is reconciled to her martyrdom, Gary fades away entirely, and Denise continues on. The father's physical and mental unravelling is detailed but unresolved. The day carries very little weight, no heavy lifting.

I ended up saying to myself, "Yeah? SO...? And...?" Is it the writer's obligation to tie up, find conclusions, illustrate important things, simulate thoughts of what might have been, or what really was, or anything beyond the surface of the story? Perhaps not. Corrections has been hailed as a masterpiece. It is a very good act of observation. Because he does little else, I found it hard to care about the book, the characters or the author's point of view.

123 of 143 found the following review helpful:

"A Tragedy Rewritten as a Farce"Feb 15, 2004
By Debbie Lee Wesselmann
Jonathan Franzen has written an ambitious, hugely human novel about a middle class family suffering from too many expectations. In chapters that are closer to novellas in length, THE CORRECTIONS manages to evoke the deeply seated emotions of its characters without taking itself too seriously. Alfred suffers from Parkinson's disease and possibly Alzheimer's, while his wife Enid believes that his failing is not what he has, but who he is. Oldest son Gary is a control freak who is losing control of his marriage, while middle child Chip is an unemployed Ph.D. whose hopes hinge on selling a hopelessly bad script. The youngest, Denise, is the hard-working chef of an acclaimed Philadelphia restaurant whose choices in love are almost always disastrous. While their problems weigh each down, the details of their lives are often wryly humorous. That Chip really believes a screenplay that begins with a six page lecture on sexual imagery in Tudor drama can be a blockbuster, and that Enid falls in love with the lion-y (and illegal) yellow capsules of a mood enhancer called Aslan despite her rigid ethics, balance the downward spiral of their lives. As a former Lithuanian U.N. ambassador says as he and Chip are chased through a country in political crisis, "[. . . ] it's mostly posturing. A tragedy rewritten as a farce." No other sentence more aptly describes this novel's distinctive flair.

Franzen's writing can be pretentious and off-putting at times, with obscure words mixed liberally with vulgarities. Occasionally, a dialogue passage goes on for too long, or a descriptive paragraph fails. However, these lapses are rare. On the whole, this novel is tightly written with a keen eye to the larger significance of petty moments. With THE CORRECTIONS, Franzen has proven himself an astute and witty observer of human nature.

Readers who prefer commercial novels may find the novel's multiple plots too slow-moving. Its strength definitely lies in its characterization and social observations, not in its story. Readers of literary fiction should find it immensely satisfying. Highly recommended.

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