Rating: 
Summary: This Book is Why I Read
Review: This book has altered my life in several significant ways. I am fifty-seven with a dead sister and a brother ten years younger than I. We grew up in a world similar to the world Enid and Albert raised their children in. My dad, going on ninety, shared the work ethics of Albert. My dad's name is William, and he has Alzheimer's disease.
Jonathan Franzen's portrayal of Albert's interior life knocked me to my knees. Sad as I am about the almost daily deterioration of my father as the man I use to know, I can't honestly say that I gave him credit for occasional moments of lucidity until I meant Albert in the pages of The Corrections. Near the end of the novel,Albert has a very telling moment that may very well be right around the corner for my dad.
It had not occurred to me to try and get inside my father's head and appreciate what the world has become for him. It took me three months to finish this novel mostly because it causes me physical pain all along the way. Periodically I stopped to take a breather.
Last month, a young colleague of mine came to me to ask if I had read this book. I had almost forgotten its existence, but I said that yes, I was in the process. She said she didn't really like the book but because it took place in Philadelphia where I grew up, she thought often of me as she read it.
She said she didn't like the book because she didn't like any of the main characters. I said, "Not even, Denise?" "You haven't read her section yet have you?", she responded. And I hadn't. I went back to reading it the same night.
I was glad that it was Jen that brought Franzen's book to my attention again. I would have thought that it was my age that kept me from enjoying it more. Jen, however, is only 28 or so. Her connection with Franzen's world is more real than mine. The lifestyles of the main characters, including the use of drugs and rampant promiscuity and countless partners, etc. kept me from relating at first. Then I discovered the book is really about families and intimacy and characters who live and breathe as real people that we can only know in this way when they are our siblings.
Franzen's photo on the inside back flap of the cover makes clear that he is Chip. It is Chip that you can finally relate to and even feel some degree of affection for. This book is the kind of novel you set down because you don't want to be made to feel anything. You, the reader, are going to feel a great deal. You are going to understand something about knowing people, really knowing people, and then forgiving them. I have a great need to speak with the author mostly because I want to know how he knows what he knows about growing old, despising it, and ultimately dealing with it. Mostly I want to know how to do what Franzen did. He crawled inside the minds of divergent people and revealed them through their own thoughts. I think Jonathan was right when he turned down Oprah. Her audience strikes me as not being up to the task. I also don't think he needed Oprah's stamp of approval. I think that his is a book people need to force themselves to read because they will be ultimately changed by it. Let me just add that his vocabulary can be quite interesting; he truly used some words I had never seen or heard before. Never! Trust me when I say I read all the time and have since I was six. I like that. I like knowing their are still surprises out there. In the end these people, Enid, Albert, Gary, Chip, and Denise are like my family. You can't choose your family, and you can't choose these characters either. They exist for you in the same way and you learn to accept them. They are still out there somewhere for me but I am not yet ready to talk to them.
Rating:
Summary: Writing that simply took my breath away
Review: I love good writing, and read it all the time. But this book--every single word--from page one to the last page just held me enraptured. How can someone do this with words? with just words? Rarely have I been in the company of such a genius. Yes, I laughed at the satire; I loved characters like Gary whom I'd want to strangle in "real" life. I even understood my role in my own unfortunate marriage so much more deeply. The writing doesn't just aesthetically make you jump for joy, but it changes you--unless you're too much like poor, sweet clueless Enid and unwilling to see what's right in front of you. Damn, I just love this book. I'm re-reading it, recommending it to everyone in the world who loves literature. Thank you, Mr. Franzen!This novel resonates so deeply inside me, I feel like it's more than a book, it's--omygod--family!
Rating: 
Summary: did we have to go through Therapy with Jonathan?
Review: Let me first begin with this statement: I Am An Avid Reader!!!
I first heard about this book and was intriqued by it when I learned of the controversial flak regarding Jonathan's disdain for being chosen as Oprah's latest pick. His attitude suggesting that he was above and beyond Oprah's recommendation was intriquing in its own right. I borrowed the book from a friend who purchased it from a garage sale. That alone should tell you something. I was not put off at first by the thickness of the book as I've read all the Harry Potter books to my children. The beginning pages (say the first 30) were interesting and compelling. The parents depicted in the story reminded me of my own at their geriatric stage. The sibling rivalry and dysfunction mirrored my own. But then, Jonathan started really getting into the character's heads. We knew so much about each one so fast that there was NOTHING left for speculation...nothing left to surprise us later. After the first 100 pages I started feeling like I was along with Jonathon at his personal Therapy Sessions. I felt like I should start charging him. The book went on and on...often disjointed...almost as if the real story was never decided upon so he decided to just throw everything in. I finally made it through to the end...not without skipping several parts and then going back through them, thinking that I might be missing something if I did that...But NO..I missed nothing...
Rating: 
Summary: Ad Nauseam
Review: What a bore. Jonathan Franzen is really taken with himself, or so it would seem. He reminds me of a salesman I know that just can't shut up long enough to hear anything except the sound of his own voice. The book is about 250 pages too long. Talk about being verbose! Personally, I found the book to be extremely boring. There wasn't one character in the book that I cared what happened to them. I cannot understand what all the hype was about. Hopefully, if Mr. Franzen decides to write another epic he will implore his editor to "edit", "edit", "edit", and not spend so much time on promotion.
Rating:
Summary: THE DUMBEST BOOK EVER!!
Review: I enjoy reading and since this book rec'd such rave reviews from professionals I bought it as a Christmas Gift for me. I forced myself to read the thing since it cost so much (hardback). I can't believe people like this stuff. This guy just liked to use big words and sound impressive in telling a stupid story about a dysfunctional but ordinary family. The story goes nowhere and you hear way to much details about all the characters in the book. The youngest son going to Russsia is just stupid. This was one of the most over-rated books I have ever read. Give me a break. I will never buy a book again that I havent read a review by a normal person. Professional critics like pain and suffering I guess.
Rating:
Summary: Slow, confusing, distasteful
Review: I couldn't get into this book at all. I have read a lot of the Oprah Book Club books. This was totally different from any of those. Most of the books she chooses has a lesson to learn. This book did not. I do not recommend this book at all.
Rating:
Summary: _The Corrections_ made Oklahoma and Texas fly by...
Review: I was first exposed to books on tape during a cross-country trip from Nashville, TN, to Seattle, WA. My patience severely taxed by the god-talk and pop-country radio that dominates the big middle of the country, I ended up buying a book on tape at a truck stop. That was another (bad) book, which shall remain unnamed, but I discovered I loved being read to as an adult at least as much as I did as a pre-literate toddler. I nearly passed up _The Corrections_ due to a snobbish resistance to all things Oprahfied, but when I realized that Dylan Baker, one of the best (if not THE best) character actors working today, was the reader, I gave in. The fact that _The Corrections_ would provide many, many hours of listening and I had only gotten as far west as Little Rock also influenced my decision. The story is described in detail in other reviews. As far as the audio book is concerned, the quality of the performance is excellent and the characters' voices are well-differentiated. I enjoyed the tape well enough that I ended up purchasing and reading the book, and found that I agree with the judicious edits made in the taped version - they are minor and serve to remove plot slumps and ramblings that drag in the print version. That said, I would recommend either the book or the tape to any serious reader (or serious long-distance driver). Having read several Oprah books before they became "hers," I was surprised that she made *this* selection for her book club. Frankly, _The Corrections_ is just too mean-spirited and acid to appeal to readers for whom _She's Come Undone_ (which I liked) represents an uncharacteristically "serious" choice. There are no characters to fall in love with, no triumphs, no uplift. Everyone is fairly unpleasant and remains moderately unhappy to the bitter end. Still, a good story is not necessarily a happy story and many disappointed reviewers need to keep that in mind...
Rating: 
Summary: Franzen Doth Protest Too Much
Review: Based on all the hype and lofty comparisons to Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace, I expected a difficult read, one that would require a dictionary at my right hand. Imagine my surprise when, upon finishing the novel, Franzen has more in common with Danielle Steel than Wallace or DeLillo. I came to the conclusion that the main reason Franzen was so upset by the selection of his magnum opus as an Oprah™ selection is that down deep, he realizes that this book is the perfect Oprah™ selection; that save for the verbiage and occasional placement of a few multisyllabic words (that may send the average reader to the dictionary), The Corrections is a very middle-American, not-too-terribly-highbrow, only slightly above average novel. Perhaps he's concerned that his big secret --if you dazzle them with wholly overwritten prose, they'll be so stupefied they'll call it a Masterpiece™ -- would be discovered once enough people, i.e., the members of the Church of Oprah™ were exposed to it. ...The Corrections isn't a terrible book. On the contrary, I found it an engaging and enjoyable read. I would certainly recommend it to friends and/or buy a copy as a gift. His commentary on American pharmaceutical culture, the fractured American family, and (upper) middle class consumerism is solid. It's just not anything new. The book reads as if Franzen set himself out on a dare, on a quest to write the seminal American novel, and while he tried valiantly to do just that, he ran out of steam, or passion, or booze. Whatever it was, the end result of his four years spent locked away in Harlem a good story, but not the definitive American novel. The Corrections is a smart novel written by a smart guy. Despite Franzen's protestations regarding mass culture, it doesn't exist in the rarified air of Infinite Jest. I'm left wondering whether the moniker Great American Novel™ is a hoary, overused cliché, a sloppy bit of literary shorthand that can't be measured quantitatively, and is passed around far too frequently to have any real meaning. And perhaps that's the best lesson of all.
Rating:
Summary: Overwritten, Overpraised-but Still Worthwhile
Review: Jonathan Franzen's novel,"The Corrections", provides an object lesson on how to garner lavish critical praise, and ultimately the Pulitzer Prize:1) Select as your subject matter that by now wearisome topic, The Dysfunctional American Family, 2)Take obligatory aim at the follies, fatuities,pretenses and everyday annoyances of modern technological society, and 3)never fail to show off your facility with obscure polysyllabics, when simpler, more comprehensible prose will suit just as well. Franzen's novel focuses on the Midwestern Lambert family consisting of parents Enid and Alfred, two sons Chip and Gary,a and daughter Denise. True to the dictates of dysfunction conventions, Enid and Alfred's relationship has become basically estranged and non-communicative, both between themselves and vis-a-vis their children - a situation greatly exacerbated by Alfred's intensifying senility and Parkinson's Disease, as well as Enid's obsessive sense of dutiful "correctness" and unquestioning allegiance to middle American orthodoxy. Naturally, their three children, all of whom have moved to the implicitly Godless East(Philadelphia and New York), have gone about more or less making untidy messes of their own lives: Chip, a 39 year-old radical college professor who manages to get himself fired for having an affair with one of his students, borrows money shamelessly from his sister, works as a part-time proofreader for a law firm, while laboring endlessly on a screenplay that stands little chance of making it onto the big screen. Through a series of plot contrivances, he winds up flying off to post-Communist Lithuania with his ex-girlfriend's husband to pursue an Internet dummy company funding fraud. The other son, Gary, a successfulbut weak-willed investment manager,allows himself to be badgered and nagged by his manipulative wife and two elder sons, while obsessing on whether he's depressed or not, and, if so, to what degree. The daughter, Denise, a cordon bleu chef, is a workaholic who is wrestling with her sexual identity -jumping from failed marriage, and heterosexual affairs to the arms of female lovers-while working 16-hour days trying to open her own successful haut cuisine eatery. The trials and tribulations of this off-kilter clan is the subject matter of this alternately exhilirating, exasperating, and much too often distasteful read (much too much tortured prose is devoted to eliminatory and excremental matters). Also,when dealing with Denise, Franzen irksomely bedevils the reader with line after line of culinary arcana, as if trying to impress with his gourmet erudition. This reader got quickly, (pun intended), "fed up". This last complaint crystallizes too much of what, in the final analysis, is wrong with "The Corrections". The book is simply shamelessly overwritten -at times the reader almost feels as though he needs a machete to hack though the dense prose. When Franzen, forgoes his self-conscious desire to be "oh so literary", the book is quite entertaining and lively, but too often he bogs himself down and becomes downright dreary. Some episodes go on far too long towards unsatisfying dead-ends(this is especially true in the "Denise" portion), while Chip's misadventures in Lithuania seem hurried and superficial. There are also confounding contradictions in his attitudes towards his characters. For example, Franzen implicitly takes son Gary to task for using "insider" information to make a killing in the market, but than is critical of the father Alfred for not doing the same in a similar situation earlier in his life. Finally, although the ending of "The Corrections" is reasonably moving, the reader cannot help but feel that it is somewhat illegitimately grafted on- not quite earned or following logically from all that preceded it. In the last analysis, Franzen's sprawling novel is a worthwhile read, but it is flawed, too often as annoying and tiresome, as it is provocative, insightful and entertaining. But, I suppose, 3/5ths of a loaf is better than none!
Rating:
Summary: It's good
Review: I stayed away from this book for a while; I'm not totally sure why -- I wasn't swayed by (was, in fact, unaware of) the hype or controversy or whatever -- but I think it might have had something to do with the cover, with which, having read the book, I have no qualms, but which bothered me somehow at the time. It looked boring. Kind of embarrassing, but true. Anyway, I finally read it, and it's actually good, albeit rather depressing. The characters were well-drawn and their dialogue realistic. The sections on Lithuania were a little unbelievable, but didn't hurt the novel.
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