The Corrections: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen (2002)

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.

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1336126...

Long and tedious book about the disastrous Christmas celebrations of an elderly couple and their three adult children. Was probably meant to be funny in places, but I did not laugh. ( )

I'm getting sick of the use of family's as a structure / lens into society. This is the umpteenth novel that goes "hey look what capitalism does the nuclear family structure". Franzen's a good writer and there's lots of fun lines but honestly I'd rather read Pynchon or Gaddis or somebody with something more unique to say. ( )

Amazing work of fiction, but sad. I had to regroup after reading it. ( )

Nope. ( )

I read this too soon after my father's diagnosis with Parkinson's (not being aware that the father had this disease also) and found it quite unbearable at times. A part of me appreciates its literary merit but I do not like this book and plan to never touch it again. ( )

What I think makes this book amazing is that is only about a rather ordinary family, a character portrait of a father at the end of his life, his wife and his three adult children. Yet it remains absolutely engrossing from beginning to end. Would we find our own families as fascinating if we were allowed into every nook and cranny of their lives, into their most secret thoughts? Franzen has flayed open each member of the Lambert family and shown us everything with no flinching, from insanity and death and wasted lives to failures of marriages, careers and love affairs—all the messy stuff that gets to the heart of what it means to be human. As Franzen sums it up: “The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid the price for the privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself.”

Despite all that, I wouldn’t say that The Corrections is a downer. It mirrors life in that way, too: sometimes melancholy or depressing, some points of utter despair and other spikes of hope, but mostly just moving on. ( )

america, american literature, family, social, morals, midwestern, society, dysfunctional, parkinsons disease ( )

It's inaccurate to write a review before finishing the book, but I need to say this is a terrific read and people I've talked to about it are confusing it with Million Little Pieces, I guess because there was an Oprah controversy about both. Jonathan Franzen is being maligned as a plagiarist by those who caught half a story somewhere. It's very unfair to this tremendously effective work. I'm almost finished and cannot wait to learn the resolution. If there is one. ( )

brilliant and depressing. could be shorter ( )

Franzen's novel may just be the "Great American Novel". This work has the makings of a masterpiece of American society and all its faults.
A family, decaying from within, brought together by a mother so concerned by appearances and by holding things together. Her three children, each of whom are struggling to hold their lives together, are dealing with the rapidly ailing figure of their father, Alfred, who is in the first stages of Parkinson's Disease when the novel opens. The trembling hands, memory loss and confusion, and loss of motor skills is making Alfred miserable. It is loss of control to a man who has kept all emotions in check for nearly fifty years.
The wife, Enid, is overwhelmed and determined to have one final "perfect" Christmas a their home in St. Jude, the heartland of America. Her determination to get her three children and their families to St. Jude are at the heart of the novel.
This is just the surface of the novel. Franzen takes a relatively simple story and layers it with symbolism and meaning. His novel, in effect, is a broad social commentary on America, capitalism, consumerism, materialism, gay rights, the mental-health community, eldercare, spousal abuse; the list goes on. His title, "The Corrections", is a play on everything his characters are trying to fix - their lives, their health, their looks - as well as on the whole outlook of America.
The materialistic fervor of the oldest son, Gary, is in direct contrast to the proletarian son, Chip. That Chip becomes the caregiver and devoted son in the ending is a direct comment on how consumerism and devotion to acquiring material wealth can often get in the way of emotion, feeling, and connection to other human beings.
A close reading of the novel could reveal the many layers Franzen has given his characters. Gary is depressed, becomes more and more like his father every day. Chip, the middle child who felt he failed his father in every way his whole life, becomes the one person his father relies on in his world of Parkinson madness. Denise, the last child, the only girl, is the bearer of her father's secrets, as well as of her own. Her father's ally. And Enid, the devoted wife and mother, sentenced to stuff her own wishes in a box, locked tight, only surfacing when her husband, decaying, is locked inside a nursing home to die.
(Read November 2001) ( )

I took a quick look at the Amazon reviews for this book and was quite surprised. I just assumed everyone would love it—I certainly did!

The Corrections is an massive work. The plot is simple on the surface: an elderly woman wants to bring all of her children together for one final Christmas in the family home. Franzen allows us into the minds of all three kids, as well as their parents. This is where things get interesting.

The mother is mildly psychotic from dealing with the dementia of her husband. The kid’s lives are all tragic in their own different ways. Franzen manages to explore all of these tragic lives and relationships while making you laugh at the same time.

Yes, it’s long. Yes, it sounds a bit like verbal diarrhea at times—but that’s the point! One of the best paragraphs in the book is a massive run-on sentence that details the single thought of the Father as he’s drifting into dementia.

The Corrections is tragic, funny, and mildly redemptive in one package. What more could you ask for? ( )

This is a tragi-comic tale of the Lambert family, and Enid Lambert's attempts to get her three grown-up children to come home for Christmas for one last time.The book is broken down into sections focusing on the stories of each of the five members of the family. The book is very well-written, and the little daily family incidents that can often seem mundane are raised to a new level through Franzen's eyes. Many of the observations seem vaguely familiar, such as the fridge magnets which are so weak that any vague gust of wind will send them flying, along with whatever they are holding. When the family get together in their various permutations, the way in which the characters each carry on their own conversation, and don't really listen to each other, is another familiar and funny aspect of daily family life.However, this book is not consistent in its portrayal. There are long passages of descriptions, that I have to admit I skimmed over. The Lithuanian subplot, while amusing, is overly long and in my opinion goes into far too much detail.When this book focusses on the family relationships, it is very funny and insightful, but, as I've said, its unfortunately not consistent all the way through. Still worth persevering with, though... ( )

If The Great Gatsby is the quintessential book for the 1920's and Bright Lights, Big City is the quintessential book the 1980's, it's hard not to see The Corrections as going down in history at the quintessential book for the 2000's. Devastating, heartbreaking, and so true to life that parts of it are almost physically difficult to get through. I can't believe that anyone doesn't know these people, while at the same time, I believe that every character is as unique as a real person. Outstanding work. ( )

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, is one of the most disappointing books I’ve read in years.

It starts off quite well, with lively initial sketches of its main characters, i.e. a family comprising aging parents and their three adult children. But somehow the longer Franzen goes on (and this is a looong book; nearly 600 pages) the more his characters become caricatures. That’s quite a trick.

The themes here are drably Oedipal. Our Parkinson’s-stricken Midwestern patriarch has always been a ‘responsible’, traditional, hard-working kind of guy who’s bossed around his status-obsessed wife. He’s been tough on his kids, too, and they’ve compensated for this harshness by: 1) getting rich and trying to outdo Dad (Son #1); 2) getting a PhD in a useless academic discipline (critical theory/literature) and then squandering the chance for a nice slack life by sleeping with a sophomore (Son #2); and, most incredibly, becoming a nationally-known chef and sleeping (separately) with both her restaurant’s owner and his wife (Daughter).

The plot is simple: Mom wants to get all the kids home for one last Christmas. Along the way, however, she and Dad are mercilessly lampooned and derided, as their unsophisticated corn-fed values are steamrollered by their children, and by the relentless ‘advances’ in greater late-20th-century American society.

Franzen’s revenge on dear old Dad is noteworthy: it goes beyond satire or criticism into outright cruelty and deriding. We must witness, in gross detail, his incontinence, his delusions, his debased helplessness – right down through the final pages of the book. He is beyond redemption, clearly -- a straight, white, stand-up guy cannot be granted even a measure of grace. At the book’s very lowest point, Franzen’s got Dad spouting racist remarks; this sure-fire mark of essential evil seems like a nicely-calculated vaccine for any dense readers who might be tempted to sympathize with our villain.

I could go on and on here, but I will close with this. Franzen became quite notorious for throwing a tantrum when a label identifying this book as a choice of Oprah’s book club appeared on its cover. He shouldn’t have: it was well deserved.

It's a pity Franzen's approach is such a bore; he writes very well.

Not recommended. ( )

Jonathan Franzen's rejection of the Oprah's Book Club sticker might actually be one of the least shocking or controversial aspects of The Corrections. The Oprah sticker, at least, would only go on the cover of the novel. Once you open it up and begin reading, you encounter adultery, drugs, alcoholism, abusive relationships, feces, pharmaceutical corporations (not unlike feces), and, believe me, that's just the start of the list. I had a professor who includes this novel in her course on Literature of Dysfunctional Families, and with good reason. The selfish members of the Lambert family treat themselves and everyone near them so horribly that I began to wonder if any character within the novel were capable of a single compassionate thought or action.

So then, why read The Corrections? If you're not looking for your reading to be a pleasant few hours of escapism, you might appreciate the ferocity with which Franzen overturns the sod of the turn-of-the-21st-century American family and exposes its hidden flaws like so many dirty and wriggling worms. Franzen offers his observations with a twist of the mouth and a twist of the knife. Although The Corrections does not evade smugness, it stands up as a literary time capsule, especially in regard to our "current economic crisis." ( )

A normal Midwestern couple raise three annoying children who resent them for being normal and hardworking. The children all turn out to be disappointments while the elderly couple back home soldier on, dealing with declining health and wealth. Gee, think I idenified more with the parents than the children? ( )

Stopped reading while they were on the boat. TOO MUCH TIME ON THE BOAT, Mr. Franzen! ( )

Blimey. I had a mixed relationship with this one. I found it frustrating at times - a bit like a conversation where you want to hear the point but someone keeps rambling off topic. I also found it quite hard-going to read, and yet by about half way through it was approaching un-put-downable. I didn't exactly like any of the characters but I loved the way they gradually earnt more and more sympathy (mostly) as the book went on. I was utterly gripped by the end and found it quite devastating. Exhausting! ( )

I kept thinking I wouldn't enjoy the book…let alone finish it. However, it was an interesting read and I wanted to know what happened to the characters. ( )

He works too hard and lets you see him doing it. ( )