The Corrections (2001)

Just... so bad. I really only read it because after reading (& similarly hating) Freedom, I figured that I should at least try another Franzen book, just in case Freedom was a whiff. Having completed all 566 miserable pages, I can confirm that I hate Mr. Franzen's writing with all of my little black heart.

There is not a human being portrayed on these pages——and don't get me started on how poorly Mr. Franzen writes women——nor is there much of a plot outside the unending backstory provided in some of the most turgid prose you'll ever willingly read. Of particular scorn is Mr. Franzen's penchant for finding the most obtuse way to say something, most memorably "having achieved non-virginity before college."

I can honestly find not a single commendable aspect of the book. For a comic novel, it only elicited one laugh from me, and it was one I let out in manic frustration when I realized that Mr. Franzen had finally decided to write a character arc in the last 10 pages of the novel.

If I had one word to describe this book, I would use bloated. And not in the sense of like, "oh honey, I loved your dinner but I'm feeling rather bloated for some reason." I mean bloated in the sense of total, unrelenting, unnecessary gargantuation. That is, right up until the very end, when everything could get really interesting, when the five characters whose interactions we've been craving for the previous five hundred pages all finally get into a room together. We have slogged through their BS time and time again and they will finally confront each other, have some good, old-fashioned human drama, will face the consequences of their actions, and——oh crap, it's over. The scene ended quicker than it took me to write that sentence. All I can say is that this novel builds you up, self-felating the entire time, like a town preparing for nuclear disaster: children running into bunkers, families killing other families over morsels of food, the construction of enormous barracks and barriers between each other, desperation on the faces of every human being in a hundred mile radius as this bomb threatens to drop. Only, when it finally does, you discover all the hullaballoo was over a pebble.

The Corrections had a time and a place. Unfortunately, it has passed. As a young person reading this novel in college, I can safely say that nobody from my generation will find any interest in this book. It served as a litmus test post 9-11, but Gen Z all already know what our lives are like, and we certainly don't want to hear Mr. Franzen's warped fever-dream ramblings on it. No thank you. ( )

painful in its realism ( )

The writer has a reputation for being smug, but this work stands out as a classic like him or not. It's nearly twenty years at the time that I'm writing this review and I believe it is still relevant in it's assessment of the depression and sadness of so many American lives. Occasionally it's a little too cute, but the writer also has some fantastic scenes, characters, and drama packed into this novel. I couldn't put it down as there were insights that I could personally relate to or at least feel like I've witnessed in the lives of friends and family. I'm skeptical of what I understand is his more experimental writing, but in this novel Franzen demonstrates a remarkable eye to notice the detail of what it is to be American in the 21st century. ( )

Hmmm. That was interesting and also kind of a messy book. I think there were genuinely intriguing criticisms of pre-Y2K society, but also some genuinely stupid sexual generalizations about women. I think three stars should call it even (though probably a little generous). ( )

My entire book club hated this book...it was torture to finish. ( )