The Corrections

by Jonathan Franzen

It’s the fate of most Ping-Pong tables in home basements eventually to serve the ends of other, more desperate games.

But his entire life was set up as a correction of his father’s life,

There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn’t have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool?

The calculus was cruel in its regression.

It was true that Al had asked her to move the jars and magazines, and there was probably a word for the way she’d stepped around those jars and magazines for the last eleven days, often nearly stumbling on them; maybe a psychiatric word with many syllables or maybe a simple word like “spite.”

Only silence was acceptable in its potential to be endless.

She said to herself: “I’m too young to be so old.”