Everyone has that one book that they love; that one book that they feel is a high point of literature and they want to rush to the nearest mountaintop and tell the world to read this book immediately. For your humble book reviewer here, my mountaintop is this column, and that book is The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. No book I have read published in the last 10 years captures Americana quite like this one. It is a tale of morality, greed, social criticism, lust and the deterioration of old-fashioned American values and the creation of a new set of American rules as we enter the new millennium; all told through the backdrop of a dysfunctional American family.
Franzen had published two novels previously to limited critical acclaim and even more limited sales. When sample chapters of The Corrections were sent to publishers and critics, they were floored by what they were reading. Franzen was being hailed as the one new author who could bring literary fiction back to the bestseller list, something not really seen since John Updike. Oprah Winfrey had decided to name The Corrections as her book of the month selection and as any writer knows, when this happens, that means one thing: MONEY AND VAST READERSHIP! However Franzen did not really see it this way. The Oregonian newspaper published an article citing Franzen’s uneasiness with the selection of his book. He said that he didn’t want his book slapped with the Oprah logo on it as he saw it as representative of “corporate ownership”. He also lamented the fact that the selection by Oprah would result in diminished male readership. Soon after the article came out, his invitation to the Oprah Winfrey show was rescinded. While his words caused Oprah some embarrassment, she kept the book on her list. Financially, the book did not suffer however, becoming a monster bestseller and one of the best reviewed books of 2001, winning the National Book Award and becoming a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
I’m stressing the fact that this novel is literary fiction, because I feel it can stand right up there with other great works of fiction. What separates this is the fact that it is contemporary. Characters chat via emails, they perform internet searches, they search for new methods of medicine; this novel takes place in today’s America. For all the greatness of a book like The Great Gatsby, it is trapped in a time capsule of the roaring twenties.
Witness the Lambert family! Born in the Midwest in a town called St. Jude in an unnamed state, Alfred and Enid Lambert have been married for years and have borne two sons and a daughter. They raised their children with typical Midwestern values and sent them off to the world while staying behind. As Alfred slowly descends into Alzheimer’s, Enid is left to run the house, the finances and care for a man who she starts to question whether their love for each other was ever truly real. Gary, the eldest, runs off to Philadelphia and marries Caroline, a woman who is a complete antithesis of the world he grew up in. They have three sons who are being raised in a completely alien environment.
Caroline is the epitome of a new age, modern, liberated woman. She throws maternal instincts to the wind in favor of books to raise her children. She supports her one son’s hobby of installing surveillance cameras throughout their house simply because she read once that encouragement is the key to raising a healthy son. She withholds sex from Gary to get her way. She hates Gary’s parents and refuses to accompany Gary to visits to St. Jude and refuses to let their children be exposed to the Lamberts without her supervision. Denise, the sole Lambert daughter, follows Gary to Philadelphia, but rarely socializes with him in favor of her career as a top chef in one of the fanciest restaurants in the city. She is hopelessly single, a fact that her mother not only disapproves of but simply doesn’t compute in her mind that a beautiful woman would not want to make marriage a priority. Denise is a woman who oozes sexuality and uses it to both her benefit and to her eventual downfall. Chip, the youngest child, is a neurotic man who was once a college professor in Connecticut, but after unfortunate events, moves to New York and eventually Europe to participate in a money scam fully backed by the Lithuanian government.
Enid, whose doubts are becoming large by the day, tries to organize one final Christmas celebration in St. Jude with the entire family. What follows is a complete emotional breakdown for all parties involved. Grievances are brought to the forefront. Gary both hates and loves his father and has nothing but contempt for his mother, someone he views as a doormat for her father’s emotional abuse. However Gary’s confusion delves from the fact that he comes to realize soon that perhaps his family is not the perfect unit he believes them to be. Denise battles with her mother regarding her liberated view of women in society. Chip is the one child who accepts his parents’ values, but simply might be too weak to even question them. Enid light be the true protagonist of this novel, but I leave that for you to decide.
Yes, this is a dysfunctional family, but not in the cliché sense of divorce and un-wed mothers. Their dysfunction rises from a deep emotional level and all characters are either too weak or too strong to come to terms with their feelings in regard to each other and their rapidly deteriorating father. Flashbacks are used to illustrate what growing up in the Lambert household was like and serves as a reflection to the current state of affairs. What I truly love about this book is the amount of themes it covers, yet never overwhelms. Two people can read this book and draw two wildly separate conclusions as to what the book says about society. If there is only one book that any of you readers would pick up from my column, make it this one!
