false 3805 53 Jonathan Franzen's exhilarating novel <I>The Corrections</I> tells a spellbinding story with sexy comic brio, and evokes a quirky family akin to Anne Tyler's, only bitter. Franzen's great at describing Christmas homecomings gone awry, cruise-ship follies, self-deluded academics, breast-obsessed screenwriters, stodgy old farts and edgy Tribeca bohemians equally at sea in their lives, and the mad, bad, dangerous worlds of the Internet boom and the fissioning post-Soviet East. <p> All five members of the Lambert family get their due, as everybody's lives swirl out of control. Paterfamilias Alfred is slipping into dementia, even as one of his inventions inspires a pharmaceutical giant to revolutionize treatment of his disease. His stubborn wife, Enid, specializes in denial; so do their kids, each in an idiosyncratic way. Their hepcat son, Chip, lost a college sinecure by seducing a student, and his new career as a screenwriter is in peril. Chip's sister, Denise, is a chic chef perpetually in hot water, romantically speaking; banker brother Gary wonders if his stifling marriage is driving him nuts. We inhabit these troubled minds in turn, sinking into sorrow punctuated by laughter, reveling in Franzen's satirical eye: <blockquote> Gary in recent years had observed, with plate tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts.... Gary wished that all further migration [could] be banned and all Midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategic national reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to feel extremely civilized in perpetuity. </blockquote> Franzen is funny and on the money. This book puts him on the literary map. <I>--Tim Appelo</I> 941200 book 2001 The Corrections total:16503|5:4403|4:5772|3:3696|2:1581|1:1051| 16503 60404 21110 1908 2 22 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon May 07 06:52:06 -0700 2007 Thu Jan 03 14:04:57 -0800 2008
Leaving aside for a moment the irony of that statement in ...more...]]> 1 18 true false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Sep 04 05:37:49 -0700 2007 Tue Jan 15 01:28:41 -0800 2008
I can think of no other way to describe this thing.

I really, really despised almost everything about The Corrections. I finished it solely so that I could write a horrible review and have it be valid.

At no single point bef...more...]]> 5 8 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Apr 13 17:02:44 -0700 2007 Fri Apr 13 17:07:02 -0700 2007
One thing I kind of noticed...more...]]> 5 8 false false Sun Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Sun Mar 18 11:59:08 -0700 2007 Wed May 23 12:00:41 -0700 2007
One point Kate makes is that this book is full of rotten characters and some of them don't ...more...]]> 5 6 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Apr 21 21:09:56 -0700 2008 Sat Apr 26 10:16:52 -0700 2008
That's not to say this book didn't h...more...]]> 5 5 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2001 Thu Aug 23 14:50:59 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 23 14:50:59 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 4 false true Sat Jul 05 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 07 09:40:43 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 29 11:05:38 -0700 2008
For the most part, I’m glad I didn’t just quit reading it. It starts with a section on the parents, then does one on each of...more...]]> 4 5 false false Thu Apr 10 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Mar 28 16:17:32 -0700 2008 Tue May 13 18:24:36 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 4 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 21 08:59:53 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 09 18:07:54 -0800 2008 The Corrections. While Franzen is undoubtedly a supremely talented writer, I can’t help but feel that what could have been a legitimate classic novel was ruined by the author’s idiosyncrasies.

Unlike most people, my c...more...]]> 2 2 false false Mon Aug 04 11:47:36 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 04 18:40:17 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 2 false false Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 11 12:51:22 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 21 06:24:44 -0700 2008 The Corrections. It was almost amazing. Franzen has managed to write a riveting story wherein nothing much happens and none of the characters are that likable. The book was carried purely by his writing. (In that regard, it was the "Anti-Da Vinci Code"--a horribly written book with a l...more...]]> 4 2 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 27 14:15:49 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 01 01:54:53 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 2 false false Thu Jul 19 06:04:35 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 19 15:24:24 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 2 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Jun 23 11:34:47 -0700 2007 Tue Nov 27 08:12:40 -0800 2007

"I distrusted book clubs for treating literature like a cruciferous vegetable that could be choked down only with a ...more...]]> 4 2 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 04 22:19:05 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 16 13:08:11 -0800 2008 more...]]> 0 3 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Oct 15 15:31:20 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 15 15:31:20 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 3 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 19 22:10:46 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 19 22:10:46 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 4 false false Sun Apr 01 05:17:34 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 18 12:41:39 -0700 2007
That image of the boy at the dinner table, given the choice of staying until he had forced himself to clean his place or accepting the threatened spanking, sitting there, and sitting there, and sitting...more...]]> 1 3 false false Wed Mar 14 18:09:32 -0700 2007 Wed Mar 14 18:12:47 -0700 2007
Three possible reasons for my Corrections-related-apathy:
1. The characters are kind of despicable...more...]]> 2 1 false false Wed Oct 22 11:56:55 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 27 12:53:06 -0700 2008 The Corrections, was written by Jonathan Franzen. This novel is about a family, the Lamberts. It talks mostly about the past of each person: Denise’s life as a chef, Chip’s recovering from an ex-professor and bankruptcy, Gary’s improvements in his marriage and family, and th...more...]]>