The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – No Corrections Required
The Corrections is a Jonathan Franzen novel from 2001, winner of awards and much critical praise. It tells the story of the Midwestern Lambert family – Alfred Lambert, a railway engineer, his wife Enid, and their children. The narrative moves between each main character, and between the family’s past, and turn of the millennium present. The sprawling story focuses on Enid’s efforts to persuade her adult children to return home for ‘one last Christmas’.
Correction is the process of righting things that are wrong. So, did The Corrections win awards for suggesting solutions to problems? That would be a no. Do I recommend you read this book because it will help you with shortcomings in your life? Once again, the answer is no. Like good fiction in general it won’t really correct anything. So why would I recommend you read it? Here’s why.
About half way through the book, during a section describing the Lambert siblings’ childhood, there is a long account of a terrible family meal. Alfred has just returned from a trip inspecting a decrepit railway network that his own efficient railway network is looking to buy. He gets back home and all the things that make him a brilliant railway engineer – practical competence, analytical lack of emotion, self discipline, decisiveness – metamorphose into the rather scary characteristics of an overbearing, stubborn figure trying, and failing, to be a good husband and father. Life has so many different scenarios and sets of circumstances. Whales are wonderful at swimming in the ocean, not so good if they ever had to live on land. Does that mean a whale is a good or bad creature? Does life allow for such judgements when it poses such varied challenges, requiring different attributes?
Anyhow, the family meal – Alfred, Enid, and their two young boys Chip and Gary sit down to a meal of liver and bacon, with a root vegetable called rutabaga. Gary eats with relish, proclaiming the food delicious. Meanwhile poor Chip, who seems to have some kind of food issue, can barely even look at the mess on his plate.
The book is like that meal, presenting people and their lives not as disgusting on one hand, or delicious on the other, but somehow both at the same time. It’s not even as simple as saying the characters are a mixture of good and bad. They are both of those things, to the exclusion of the other, depending on circumstances, or from the angle you look at them. That’s the irony of The Corrections. Deficiencies to correct, and qualities to celebrate, are never clearly defined.
This contradiction is explored in a long, painful and funny book, as Enid Lambert tries to persuade her grown up children to come back home and enjoy that one last Christmas. There is an end-of-an-era feeling, as we follow Albert and Enid into old age. But we also feel there are no straight forward answers and neat endings to problems. There is no last Christmas in this vague situation. There will always be another.
The Corrections is non judgemental in a judgemental age. Whether you consider this neutral quality good or bad is up to you. But I would ask this question – would you prefer a book that provided a final correction, or another Christmas?
