A friend gave me a copy of The Corrections, a novel by Jonathan Franzen which garnered many heaps of praise when it was published in 2001. A significant reason this long-awaited literary novel became a bestseller and bubbled up out of the literary world is because Franzen refused Oprah’s invitation to have his novel as part of her book club. This surprising refusal — Oprah’s blessing is worth $$$$$ — moved the book from anticipated by the literati to eagerly anticipated by a wider public… and maybe even means more people read the book. The obvious speculation, that this contrarian reaction was expected, and therefore provoked, doesn’t take into account Franzen’s reputation (obsessive is part of the story).
With all that said, I often wish I could read a book like this without knowing anything about it other than a friend enjoyed it and suggested I would, too. The cover of this paperback edition is filled with more than the usual awards, alongside plenty of the usual puff quotes from recognizable sources. The sum total of my pre-knowledge, therefore, was (a) this book has received a lot of attention (b) it’s author is a fussbudget, putting it politely and (c) a good friend enjoyed it. That last, at least, was enough to get me reading, although I admit that the first two left me predisposed to move this one to the top of my pile.
I liked the book.
OK, lukewarm words, and I suppose I should be stronger, or at least more precise, in my economiums. I thought the story was compelling, even as the individual family members are more or less so. The entire tale follows two parents and three adult children, all playing their family roles, with true personal change only coming as a form of post-script.
I felt like I was reading David Foster Wallace with an editor: that’s a compliment. I found Infinite Jest a crazy, exciting read — but I longed for some reining in of the words and ideas that spilled into pages of footnotes and slowed the story down. Wallace’s story was fun, almost despite his obstructions. Franzen, by contrast, keeps to a tighter focus, while still finding some places to ‘flex’ his verbal flair. None of these authors would be compared to the conciseness of Hemingway. But Franzen tied his tone and verbal confections to the character whose voice or inner mind he was channeling, which I didn’t realize until just now when I was flipping through for an appropriate quote. I won’t find any single quote that represents the novel, but here’s one example of the careful injection of humor along the way.
As a global player, Lithuania has been fading since the death of Vytautus the Great in 1430. For six hundred years the country was passed around among Poland, Prussia, and Russia like a much-recycled wedding present (the leatherette ice bucket; the salad tongs).
To me, that phrase is along the lines of Vizzini [The Princess Bride] saying: “You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The first is never get involved in a land war in Asia. ….” It’s not as funny as Vizzini, but it’s in the same direction: jokes for adults. (I expect I’ve lost everyone with this comparison, but do see The Princess Bride if you haven’t already.)
Let me end this ramble by adding a personal amusing note. On page 435 of the paperback edition, Franzen drops a reference to nbci.com, the unlamented, long-gone site which I spent 3+ years building from 1997-2000 (originally snap.com). Chip, one of the adult children, is leading a team of Lithuanian ‘webheads’ in perpetuating a fraud on American investors, and Chip wants his foreign team to understand what Americans would think of as reliable and cool. “He made [the Webheads] study American sites like nbci.com and Oracle.” NBCi.com died as an independent would-be Yahoo about the same time this book was initially published and NBCi.com was, in many ways, a fraud on investors, too. I and many others were working as hard as we could to make it a service that deserved to be mentioned with Yahoo and the other portals (remember that word in that context?), but the irony is all the tastier to this ex-employee.
Oh yeah… read the book.