Book review: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
This is the 25th anniversary of the publication of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, first published on September 4, 2001 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This was exactly one week prior to 9/11, a fact that all of the retrospective reviews now discussing The Corrections will note. I purchased my paperback edition a couple of years ago, because I thought I should read it. I didn't know about the books upcoming 25th anniversary and it got stuck, unread, on my bookshelf. In 2013 I read Freedom which I purchased primarily for the blue bird, a Cerulean Warbler, on the cover. I knew that Franzen was a birder from reading a couple of his New Yorker essays. Freedom kept my attention, but there were a few things I didn't like. It seemed to me to be full of character issues; just one of which I remember was the unlikely relationship between the father character, Walter, with a young Indian woman. The relationship didn't work for me because, in my view, in real life this relationship would never have happened. Later I picked up Purity. In the early pages I was not able to get into either the characters or the story and ended up aborting fairly early in the novel. It ended up as a donation to my local library for their monthly fundraising book sales event.
What I remember following the publication of The Corrections was all of the hoopla Franzen caused by expressing his discomfort to discuss his novel with Oprah and her audience on her October 2001 book club show. As many of the current remembrances note, this was a mistake not made again by any author, including Franzen himself. In fact, it's probably one of the main reasons why I didn't read The Corrections at the time of its publication. This is not because I watched Oprah's book club show with any regularity (my work schedule conflicted with the broadcast time), but because I thought Franzen protested too much and wrote him off as a young, pompous author full of himself. Coincidentally perhaps, Franzen did discuss Freedom on the Oprah Show in December 2010.
The Corrections made the 5th slot on The New York Times best books of the century and this is what returned it to my attention. There must be something about it that landed it so securely amongst the best novels of the past quarter century. Recently I read an A.O. Scott review, have read a "Three critics: 25 years ... discussion and have listened to the September 11th New York Times Book Review podcast where Gilbert Cruz interviews the writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner who believes The Corrections is essential to modern American literature. Brodesser-Akner likes the book so much that she, apparently, reads it annually. I've heard of this with Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch; but The Corrections? I'm a slow reader so I don't have this luxury of repeat reading even though there are many books that have gripped me in the best of ways. I am sure The Corrections would not be included.
Full disclosure: I have not yet finished reading The Corrections, having read almost two-thirds of its 566 pages. The second disclosure is that I am struggling to stay focused and am having to talk myself into not abandoning. I know I will finish it because of its vaunted position among important American literature and because I am sure there is so much yet to come. Even so, there is so much that I have not liked about it thus far; this being primarily Franzen's characters and the features he imbues in them. In the end, what I think I will find out is how people become so tarnished in their own lives and how families contribute to their own toxicities and if they are able to rescue themselves from their own dismay, disappointments and hatreds.
In the front part of this review I laid the ground work and will leave this review here, for now, and return to it after I have finished reading. Were my guesses correct? Am I glad I finished reading the book—that answer will be yes—but why. Hopefully other questions will arise and I will be riveted by the writing.
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