Rating: 
Summary: A down to earth tail as rich as the soil
Review: This book embodies the soul of the human equation of living in the heartland of Americana in this generatrion in much the same way THE GRAPES OF WRATH did generations ago. A classic and a re-read to be savored.
Rating: 
Summary: Wanted: An Editor With A Red Pen
Review: I just finished Mr. Franzen's laborious novel which took me 6 weeks to complete. Why so long one might ask? Well this verbose long winded work is not exactly a page turner. Mr Franzen is obviously well versed in character development. Unfortunately, there really is no story here. I pushed myself through the book to see how the monumental Christmas dinner would pan out. This dinner you see is the crux of the book. A whole lot of hoopla and no payoff. This last sentence sums up everything.
Rating: 
Summary: I really enjoyed this book!
Review: This book was a pleasant surprise. I had been avoiding this book specifically because it was on the Oprah Book Club, however I really enjoyed it. I may have liked it better because I fit in the demographic which Franzen writes about: 30ish, educated, grown up in the Midwest, with a dysfunctional nuclear family. Like other readers I wonder when did Franzen meet my family?
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but much to be unhappy with.
Review: Corrections is a contemporary family story - father, mother, 2 grown sons, and a daughter, each of whom has their own time on stage. There is a major generational gap, the parent's marriage is dysfunctional, and the younger son and daughter are finding themselves during most of the book. The older son leads the suburban dream life and is married to a great woman - as long as she gets her way. She made me angrier than than any fictional character I can recall, which is a testament to Franzen's writing. Most of the writing is superb, with changes in tone and style befitting the vast difference in personalities involved. The family dynamics are very familiar, yet fresh. Franzen's evocation of senility from a first person viewpoint is high art. Yet, I was not completely happy with the book. I would warn the prospective reader that the young son takes stage early, and his funk was not sufficiently transformed by art for my tastes. His adventures in Eastern Europe, as well as his sister's story, are superficially interesting at best, and the political satire heavy handed. Surprisingly, the mother emerges as the true hero of the book, despite her very conventional aspirations and reactions to things, while the character Franzen seems to most dislike is a do gooder.
Rating: 
Summary: A Mess
Review: I cannot believe this gigantic mess of a book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. The first 100 or so pages were OK but then it degenerated into complete silliness. Here's an example of what you have to wade through: "Gary could hear, with strange clarity, the rustle of dissatisfaction from Enid's nostrils. He could hear the seashore of her respiration, and all at once he realized." Yeecchhh. ("Hey, Enid, is that your nostril I hear rustling??") ("Hey, Enid, your respirating sounds kind of seashorish....") This is yet another instance where I got ripped off buying what was supposed to be a "great novel". I think I've finally figured it out: The past twenty years of prosperity gave writers nothing to write about! All we get is navel-gazing, slice-of-life, smug blather with little, if any, plot and no viewpoint. (The only one who can write social commentary is Tom Wolfe and he only publishes one book a decade.) The characters in this book end up exactly as they started out: self-absorbed, pitifully amoral, and boring.
Rating:
Summary: Something amusing or intriguing on every page
Review: ...At least, that's how I experienced this book. I don't read a whole lot of new fiction, so I can't compare Franzen with his contemporary peers, but I enjoyed his writing quite a bit. His observations of modern American life made me laugh and offered substantial entertainment value, and contrary to some of the other reviews, I had no problems with his style or the length of the book at all. I can concede that some scenes could have been shortened at no great loss to the whole, but overall I respect Franzen as a writer and so I see no reason to second-guess his decision to include what he did. There is plenty of stuff to "not like" in the story, if one is inclined to view it negatively - the main characters are all messed up, self-absorbed, lacking in virtue. But they are also a lot like many of us, maybe just screwed up to a more exaggerated degree. Maybe not! Some will be put off by an air of "big city condescension" toward the midwest and more conservative personality types that is evident on the surface of things and probably runs deeper than that too. But I also wonder if those who are offended or displeased by this book for such reasons aren't being overly sensitive here. I don't see that Franzen is trying to hold up any particular attitude or behavior as "the best one." He's just desribing people as he observes them. His book lacks an exemplary role model - there's no one worth emulating as far as I could see, not even the children! I'm not sure how this novel will play out or resonate over time. The main enjoyment I got out of it was based partly on the book's connection to recent times and Franzen's skill at crafting language and injecting humor into most situations. So it may well turn out that this novel was over-hyped. The hype is definitely a factor in getting me to read it, but I have no regrets. It was worth my time, and I could conceivably read it again some day.
Rating:
Summary: Real fiction
Review: I was trying to figure out why some reviewers don't like this rather extraordinary novel. At first I thought it was the "American Beauty" thing, you know, the desecration of middle America through satire that the Heartland will not tolerate in either Oscar-winning movies or attempts at The Great American Novel .... Then I thought it was the sheer length of Franzen's tome (as one reviewer so succinctly and dryly observed, "He left nothing out") and his "Look Ma, I'm writing" grandstanding. But along about page 370 or so I realized the truth: yes, it is some of the above, but more than anything it's the sexuality and especially the sexual portrait of Denise Lambert that some people don't like. Did Franzen come up with a living, breathing Portrait of the Lesbian as a Young Woman? I don't think so. I don't think that Denise's character and her sexuality were properly integrated. He has Denise learn her attitude or "technique," if you will, from three different older men, a somewhat crude threesome that no self-respecting Sappho would imitate even for contrast. Her "childlessness," (that Enid frets over) is a result of being involved with the wrong men.
Additionally, while circumspect and careful to avoid the grossest of crudities in his recollecting of human sexuality, Franzen nonetheless sometimes shows a distinct lack of sensitivity. Furthermore, the depressing story of Alfred Lambert, particularly his physical and mental decline told in excruciating detail, made us wonder about the purpose of life and left us more than a little afraid for ourselves when contemplating our declining years. Could Franzen have used a better editor? Perhaps. But what editor would have the confidence to trim a Great Artist in the Making? Editors today are largely acquisition experts and salespersons. Today's novelist is essentially alone. Maxwell Perkins died a long time ago. Okay, what is the strength The Corrections? (Incidentally the title refers to not only to the Heartland of America in need of corrections scenario that Franzen so well chronicles, but with the coming "correction" in the stock market, and the corrections that Enid urged on everyone including herself, and finally the correction of life itself with death.) Franzen's strength is in his vivid and consistent characterizations, his complete narrative control, his sharp dialogue and his inner monologues, as right as rain, and his veracious social and cultural detail. He recalls the spats of domestic infighting so vividly that we feel we are there (perhaps again). He can take both sides in equal appreciation and then show us in commentary and steams of consciousness just how delusive are the combatants, just how blind they are to their narrow-minded, selfish behaviors. For example, Gary and Caroline are arguing about whether they should go to his parents for Christmas (the main plot line of the novel). Caroline faults her mother-in-law: "...as soon as I leave the room she's going to...take food from the trash and feed it to my children-" At the same time she tells Gary he is clinically depressed and needs to seek treatment. Meanwhile Gary sneaks gin and obsesses with control issues. He feels laughed at in his own home (and he is). It is all a battle for the upper hand, domestic politics at the front, which means in bed, at the dinner table, using the kids as allies, blaming the in-laws for the bad nurturing and the flawed genetic input. In other words, life at home next door. Naturally this will not sit well with some people. Life seen up close and full of warts is not the sort of thing that many people want in their fiction. They want to be uplifted and made glad. If they wanted gross reality and the sheen rubbed off they'd go see an art film or visit THEIR in-laws. So I can understand how some people feel that a sign reading "this way lies depression" ought to be affixed to this novel; indeed Franzen's characters leave us uninspired and a little sad realizing how close we are to them. They achieve a superficial level of self-awareness and then stop. Cold. (Do we do that?) They are the blind, and Franzen has cleverly persuaded us that we the readers are the sighted. There's a lot of sex in this novel, but then again there's a lot of sex in human beings, whether we like it or not. Franzen's technique is to employ an unsettling honesty. His inner monologues with Chip and Gary may seem excessive, but if we can recall ourselves at thirty-something we know that sexual obsession was always just beneath the radar of overt consciousness, occasionally rising bodaciously to the surface. In the final analysis I think that Franzen tried to do too much. Some of his readers are annoyed that they had to read such a long novel, and "had to" is appropriate because Franzen's narrative is compelling. We want to finish the book because his characters are interesting and we want to find out what happens to them. This in itself is a great triumph for a novelist. I just think that Franzen could have spared us most or all of (for example) Denise's sexual misadventures. The satire of the seniors aboard the cruise ship was fine and the Lithuanian and biomed excursions familiar but tolerable. The long drawn out decline and fall of Alfred and how it affected his family, especially his wife, was really the emotional and thematic heart of the novel: We are flesh; partly sighted, partly blind; we decline, decay, lose our faculties and expire. Rhyme or reason notwithstanding. Read this book. You may like it, you may not. Regardless, it will be hard to deny that this is a genuine novel, an all-too-rare attempt at going inside the human psyche to reveal something psychologically real. As I like to say, "What could be truer than fiction?" Real fiction, that is.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Waste Your Time
Review: This book was very difficult to slog through. The characters were unpleasant and the writing mannered, distracting, and at times unreadable. And it goes on for 600 pages. Where was the editor? Pages and pages of a man's hallucination of talking poop--has Franzen even seen South Park? I know this book was supposed to be a satire, but I found very little of it funny or insightful. It was mostly just painful to read. It won the National Book Award, I know, but why? Most of the people I've talked to about the book disliked it as much as I did. I can think of numerous other books that are much better written and much more of a pleasure to read than this one....
Rating:
Summary: Overrated due to publicity
Review: Overly descriptive, whining, and condescending, not to mention dense with self aware writing. The author's refusal to accept Ophra's invitation to her club must have been a strategy to get readers. This pitiful family tale seen through the point of view of spoiled kids is a sure fire tonic for putting the reader to sleep.
Rating:
Summary: bringing an unfamiliar style to a familiar topic
Review: I looked at a few of the (713) reviews of this book and had the feeling that I was looking at a clash of cultures. An Anne Tyler novel, this is not. This is a book about family, which is (I guess) why it caught Oprah's eye. It is a look into the dark heart of family life, but it isn't particularly melodramatic (except for Alfred's Parkinson's disease). Hysterical behavior is described in an hilarious fashion that leavens the sadness, embarrassment and shame that you feel for the character. Or rather, that I felt for the characters. If you cannot relate to these characters then either you had a nice wholesome family life (lucky you) or you are in complete denial about the dysfunctionality of your family life (which, in my experience, seems more likely). Franzen never really describes what any of the Lamberts look like and yet I found myself creating images of them in my mind based on people I know (or knew). This, I feel sure, is his intention rather than some sort of oversight. Anyone who believes that Jonathan Franzen has no writing style has a pretty limited idea of what "writing style" means. Among those 713 reviews here are readers condemning him for having too much style, not enough and none at all. Hmmm. I didn't like any of the Lamberts. I felt badly for them and knew that they were not bad people, but they are not the kind of people that I would enjoy hanging around with. If one of your requirements of enjoying a novel is that at least one of the main characters should be likeable, then don't spend $15 on this one. Probably the most sympathetic person in this book might have been Gitanas, the Lithuanian UN ambassador/"crimelord". At one point he jeers Chip because his cigarette burns are self-inflicted, while Gitanas's own were received during secret police inquisitions. Chip and Gitanas are presented as döppelgangers (in the east/west sense that you find in the film The Double Life of Veronique). In the East they get you from the outside and in the West they drive you to do it to yourself. Who are "they"? "They" are bourgeois establishment. In this book "they" are represented by Gary's Old Main Line wife Caroline, the Axon Corporation, the Wrouth brothers and a variety of other characters who make decent people live lives full of shame. Shame is the overriding theme in this novel. The Lamberts are at heart good people who just want to play by the rules and lead successful lives by doing so. But the world keeps telling them that they are missing out by being such goody-two-shoes. All of the second generation of Lamberts are drawn into lives and acts that are wholesale transgressions of their parents' values. Chip is a post-modern theorist and descends into a living hell when he begins to live out his transgressive ideas. Denise is quite confused about her sexuality. Gary is consumed by WASP-envy and is a complete materialist. Enid lives a life consumed by envy as she grows older surrounded by contemporaries who have not played strictly by the rules and have been rewarded with material wealth. Alfred clings desperately to an antique idea of propriety that is so out of step with the world around him that he is driven deeper and deeper into emotional isolation. The Corrections referred to in the title are numerous. All of them conspire to reward the moral uprightness that has served as both a beacon and an albatross to the Lamberts. The correction to the financial markets that occurred after the summer of 2000 is the most obvious one and because all the events in the book lead up to it, it has an almost Biblical feeling of being an act of God to reward the righteous. The temporal structure of this book is also fascinating. The narrative consists of long segments devoted to one member of the Lambert clan. You are allowed into the mind of each of them one at a time. Each segment begins in the past and leads you through that person's life toward an event that you have already seen from another family member's point of view, and then advances the overall narrative another step. In this way you witness meetings between the Lamberts from several points of view and experience those meetings from the perspective of one character at at time. This allows you to understand what a mystery each is to the other. This is a brilliant literary device for showing the reader how much better life would be if family members actually talked to one another, rather than operating on extrapolations from information received from secondary sources and your memory of what motivated that person when you knew them years ago during your shared homelife. So, readers looking for a heartwarming saga of suffering and redemption are not going to get what they want out of this novel. This is a novel about how things are, not how they ought to be. At the end of this novel everything has not been worked out, but neither is everything in ruins.
|
