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The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
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The Corrections: A Novel

by Jonathan Franzen

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations
7,333109201 (3.72)118
Info:

Picador (2002), Paperback, 576 pages

Member:edwardhenry
Collections:Your libraryRating:****
Tags:contemporary, novel
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English (107)  Dutch (1)  German (1)  All languages (109)
Showing 1-5 of 107 (next | show all)
The Corrections: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen (2002)
  mykl-s | Nov 22, 2009 |
Beeindruckend: Worum es geht?

Im Mittelpunkt der Geschichte steht die Frage, ob es Enid Lambert gelingt, ihre Familie zu versammeln, um ein letztes gemeinsames Weihnachtsfest zu feiern.

Nach und nach erhält der Leser tiefe Einblicke in das Leben der Lamberts. So schildert der Autor das schlechte Eheleben von Enid und Alfred Lambert. Im Gegenzug dazu wird das Bemühen von Gary, Chip und Denise deutlich, alles anders zu machen als ihre Eltern. Sie möchten die Fehler der Eltern in ihrem eigenen Leben korrigieren.

Gesellschaftskritisch

Das Interessante an diesem Buch ist meines Erachtens nicht das Bemühen um dieses letzte gemeinsame Weihnachtsfest, sondern den Gesellschaftsquerschnitt, den Franzen hier bietet.
Er spricht eine Vielzahl von Themen an, die in der heutigen Gesellschaft eine große Rolle spielen, z. B. Drogen, sexuelle Beziehung mit Schutzbefohlenen, das "Abschieben alter Leute, bei diversen Krankheiten", die Scheinwelt, in die sich viele zurückziehen etc. etc. etc.
Manches wird genau ausgeleuchtet, anderes nur angerissen - auf jeden Fall regt das Buch zum Nachdenken an.

Angenehm ist bei Korrekturen" im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen Büchern, die den gleichen Anspruch haben, dass Franzen zu keinem Zeitpunkt mit der Moralkeule herumwedelt. Er wertet in seinem Buch nicht und überlässt es stattdessen dem Leser die Geschehnisse einzuordnen. Dies gelingt ihm unter anderem dadurch, dass er einzelne Erlebnisse immer aus mehreren Blickwinkeln betrachtet. Ein "richtig" oder "falsch" gibt es bei ihm nicht.

Authentisch

Dieses Buch wirkt absolut glaubwürdig, vor allem, da die Charaktere sehr gut gezeichnet sind - sie sind sehr vielschichtig.
Das sind echte Menschen in diesem Buch, mit ihren guten und schlechten Eigenschaften.

Die Lektüre dieses Buches hat mich sehr bereichert. Und es ist garantiert eines der Bücher, die ich wieder und wieder lesen werde, weil man immer noch einen neuen Aspekt entdeckt.
  r1hard | Nov 22, 2009 |
I think people are tired of hearing me rave madly about this book, but it completely blew my mind, so they'll just have to deal with it. ( )
  alissamarie | Oct 25, 2009 |
I think people are tired of hearing me rave madly about this book, but it completely blew my mind, so they'll just have to deal with it. ( )
  alissamarie | Oct 25, 2009 |
I think people are tired of hearing me rave madly about this book, but it completely blew my mind, so they'll just have to deal with it. ( )
  alissamarie | Oct 25, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 107 (next | show all)
Franzen’s brilliant achievement is that he creates a set of stereotypical characters and then opens the door and allows us see, in suspenseful, humorous, mesmerizing detail, their defining moments. What was once a silhouette becomes three-dimensional. The complexity becomes a dim mirror of our own complex interiority—writ large, the way we like it writ, because then we can’t help but see ourselves in it.
 

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (2)

Oprah's Book Club

The Corrections

Book description
The Corrections is a 2001 novel by American author Jonathan Franzen. It revolves around the troubles of an elderly Midwestern couple and their three adult children, tracing their lives from the mid-twentieth century to "one last Christmas" together near the turn of the millennium.

Amazon.com (ISBN 0374129983, Hardcover)

Jonathan Franzen's exhilarating novel The Corrections 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.

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:

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.
Franzen is funny and on the money. This book puts him on the literary map. --Tim Appelo

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400)

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