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The Corrections

by Jonathan Franzen

Reviewed: February 26, 2003 - April 07, 2003

Reviewers:

John Billingsley

Amy Boitano

Suzanne Saunders

Simon

Kasia

Sonja Fitz

Vicky Smithson

Lenore

Scott Walker

Marsha Robertson

Lilacrae

The Corrections

by Jonathan Franzen

Review by John Billingsley

One of the many extraordinary things in this extraordinary novel is the way Franzen transforms a savage social satire into something much richer and deeper in his final chapters, right at the finish line (on Christmas Day, no less), with as terrific a closing kick as I've come across in a novel in ages (it reminded me of the last chapters of Updike's Rabbit, Run).  Suddenly these thoroughly fucked-up and benighted characters, whose farcical plights throughout are horrifying, compelling, absurd, but not particularly moving, are transformed into three dimensional people who surprise us with their capability for redemption in the face of existential terror.  Terror awakens everyone (finally) in The Corrections (even Alfred) to the power of true feeling, forcefully expressed - with the key exception of Gary, who is not a villain so much as the ultimate figure of pathos, and whose final 'victory' is to embody his parents ethos of denial, anger and repression so spectacularly well that he cannot escape from this prison (Schopenhauer repudiated, not embraced) even as his parents are desperately attempting to do just that.

Redemption in the face of existential despair is such a tough theme to handle in a farcical vein!  This book for me was not at all a downer but rather an exhilarating and oddly uplifting example of a writer stretching the boundaries of his art with bravery and grace.  I thought The Corrections was a bloody marvelous high wire act - I suspect whether you think Franzen is wholly successful or not has much to do with your taste for dyspeptic (and dystopic) black humor.  Personally, I think true satire must be black as pitch, Swiftian in its vitriol, in its willingness to indict society, and human beings, for their moral failings - satire's raison d'etre is to challenge us all to examine our lives more ferociously, and the satirist uses a bullwhip because that's what it takes to cut through the pious sanctimonies of our own cant.  I don't think it's a satirist's place to offer disclaimers ('on the bright side . . . '), although I do think Franzen, in The Corrections, does provide a measure of hope to his readers at the end, and I think that asking this book to be something it's not (Anne Tyler, for instance - who I love, but for different reasons) or suggesting that somehow Franzen's a depressive because he's writing in such a scabrous vein is unfair. I don't mean to sound snotty, I realize that every book is not for every reader, it's just that I was so taken by what Franzen has achieved here that I'm feeling the need to respond to those whose interest in the book was marred by a sense that it was too downbeat. 

Anyway, it's going to be awfully reductive to blah blah blah about theme this and theme that, when I think Franzen was grappling with SO MUCH  in The Corrections - but what the hell, dive in . . .

I think Franzen is writing about the self-imposed prison sentences that are our lives; the ways in which we surveil ourselves constantly to insure we don't escape from these prisons of our own devising and the (finally) redemptive reminder that all we have to do, when we're ready for freedom, is simply push open the prison doors (fool, they were unlocked all the time).

What remarkable prisons we Americans, in particular, construct for ourselves!  The All-American 'house of corrections', built on a foundation belief that Americans are providentially destined - no, required - to prevail in our personal and national life;  built on a foundation of values from an earlier age (but not, clearly, a simpler time) that have morphed and shifted with the onset of modernism in ways too perverse to fully comprehend; built on a foundation (although we deny it) of war, the never-ending intergenerational war for independence that can never be won . . .

Win Win Win Win Win Win Win something, anything, everything, triumph over our enemies (basically, everybody else), triumph over ourselves when necessary, but above all compete.  Each character in The Corrections creates a constricted life based on his or her warped sense of 'values', values that have been murkily defined in response or reaction to the 'failed' values of other characters (and previous generations), all of these efforts an attempt to achieve the same goal ("stability depended on a glossing over of floatation's terrors") - the goal of avoiding a confrontation with the existential mystery, i.e. does life have any ultimate purpose? American's couch the goal in the terminology and philosophy of 'self-help' and achievement, but at it's heart the American ethos is an elaborate avoidance technique.

Al, Enid, Chip and Denise, at the end of this novel, are finally up against the ropes, stripped of their illusions, certainly stripped of any sense of having achieved anything in their lives, forced to confront nothingness, non-knowingness, and the absence of control.  At different points in time in this novel, different characters come close to the precipice, peak over and recoil (Enid's reaction to Sylvia Roth's story, I thought, was particularly well done - from the brink of self-knowledge, Enid runs into the comfortably numbing arms of ASLAN, i.e. Narnia, i.e. fantasy) but what makes the book, I think, so staggeringly successful is that it is only when all of the characters are brought together, as a family, that the Lambert's can EXPRESS their pain and fear and shame and betrayal, openly, to one another:  to, in effect, confront existential mystery as a shared condition of living in an ungovernable universe.  It is only in togetherness that these characters can find the courage to move forward in their lives.  Spurred by Alfred's collapse and by the ironic side-effects of that collapse (the release of his long-imprisoned humanity), and not without horror or mutual woundings, A FAMILY starts to emerge, and heal itself.

I think Franzen is finally saying that it is our ability to embrace family, the concept of family in a metaphorical sense - i.e., the concept of interconnectedness, as opposed to the compulsion to feel extraordinary and special, which leads inexorably to the compulsion to 'win' - that gives our lives meaning and offers hope to the world.  As E. M. Forster says in A PASSAGE TO INDIA:  "Only Connect".

Consequently, I think that this book's political viewpoint, albeit unstated as such, couldn't be clearer, or offer a clearer rebuke to the prevailing political ethos of our (AMERICAN) times.  I believe very strongly that this is a book about this country's pre-eminent political challenge (and the world's challenge, too, insofar as one of Franzen's points is that the world is consciously and unconsciously embracing an American form of selfishness with greater avidity then ever before): we must re-examine our extraordinarily destructive insistence on sustaining a bogus sense of our own national superiority.  In effect, America suffers from the disease of Lambertism writ large:  ME FIRST, ME MOST, ME BEST, ME RIGHT.  At the end of The Corrections the Lambert's permit themselves to fail, and become better people for it (not perfect people,  they're still doing the 8th revision, still believing in the illusion of 'a better tomorrow'), but better people, people who can, like Enid, allow themselves a chair ride at the wedding every now and again.  I can only wish this country could experience the Lambert's hard-won existential appreciation for the NEED to need other people.

Franzen repudiates every bullshit ISM we cling to that prevents deep human attachment - philosophies and ideologies, totems and religions, 'lifestyle choices' and hobbies and defense mechanisms and technological marvels and sex and food and entertainment and money and power and the bogus construct of memory  - by stunningly repudiating every single Lambert-family illusion in one beautifully non-amped-up but nonetheless achingly powerful 'implosion' in his final chapter.  An extraordinary achievement.

I won't go on and on, although I think there's something praiseworthy in every sentence of this book - so witty, so brave, and so surprisingly touching at its close.  I recently re-read my very favorite novel, Faulkner's THE SOUND AND THE FURY, about a fractious, dysfunctional family whose inability to offer each other unselfish love, love not commodified and turned into a transaction, dooms them all to misery and loneliness.  Faulkner, too, manages to write about the darkness of human loneliness without sacrificing his sense of humor.  I'm not comparing Faulkner and Franzen, by any means - I think Faulkner is the greatest writer of fiction this country has ever produced - but I think these two books are very interesting companion volumes, down to and including their final chapters, in which the redemptive actions of a community serve, suddenly, to spin us about and give us a measure of hope just as we are teetering on the brink (as readers) of utter despair.  A wedding of content and form, one of the great goals of modern literature - can the way the story is told be, in and of itself, an embodiment of the story's themes and concerns. Form = Function.  Damned hard to pull off.

The Corrections

Review by Amy Boitano

When I first picked up my copy of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, I thought that this would be a book that I could blow through without much thought. Boy was I wrong.

The Corrections is a story of a dysfunctional family and their last chance at a  Christmas at home. We meet Chip Lambert first and are immediately taken on a fast paced ride through the mind of a man who can not stay at any one thing for more than a few months. He is thrown out of the college he is teaching at due to an affair with a student. This becomes just one of Chip's obsessions. He has just about as many jobs as he does failed romances. Next up is Enid and  Alfred, the parents of this mad house. Alfred was an authoritarian father who used to control the house, but due to Parkinson's can not even control his motor functions. He is a man who still wants to be the man of the house and is now dependent upon his wife, Enid. Enid in turn is a long suffering housewife who is trying so hard to correct all the flaws she sees in her family. She tries to fix the problems by ignoring them. The daughter Denise is a chef and is not quite sure of her sexuality. She is in torrid romance after torrid romance and is never sure she has found what she wants.

The oldest child, Gary and his family are, if seen from the outside, the normal ones. Then you spend time with them and realize that you can not decide whether Gary really is crazy and suffering from manic depression or if his wife is just trying to drive him nuts so that she can get her way. Enid has one wish and that is to get this ragtag group together for one last Christmas before Alfred dies.

I noticed that while I was reading The Corrections I was searching for a redeemable quality in just one of the characters. I also had to admit to myself that the Lamberts remind me a lot of the people I know, which in a way is scary. I was hoping that my family was not as dysfunctional, which they aren't, and I was wondering why Mr. Franzen made them so completely out there. I would hope that there is not a family like that in this world, and yet you can see the love that this family has for each other. It may be a sick form of love, but it is love just the same.

The Corrections

Review by Suzanne Saunders

I found the characters as long-suffering as reading The Corrections, ultimately worth the effort. Franzen’s artistry with words, paints an image of a father who descends into absolute madness, drawing his family and the reader with him into the vortex. Repulsed, yet captivated, I found myself superimposing images as if looking through a screen door, reading of Alfred but reliving the pain of watching my own mother suffer dementia before her death from a brain tumor. If words were music, this book would be “Siegfried’s funeral March” from The Ring by Richard Wagner, for its somber tone that reaches to the heart, and gives it a gentle squeeze. If books were paintings, it would be “Le Radeau de la Meduse” (Raft of the Medusa) by Géricault who went mad in his last, few years painting the scene of 15 survivors who went mad staying alive by eating the cadavers of their fallen comrades. Perhaps all great artists become obsessed; Franzen offers opposing philosophies as he interjects references from “Chronicles of Narnia” but from the point of view of Carolyn, the manipulative, paranoid daughter-in-law who fears C. S. Lewis as a “Catholic propagandist.”  Aslan is a lion-god hero archetype, the earliest reference I found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, against which others pale in comparison, but Franzen also quotes Schopenhauer who I learned hated women, and who taught holy self-denial, that is to say, “The denial of will, self, and self-interest. A theory both of morality and of holiness, the former by which self-interest is curtailed for the sake of others, the latter by which all will-to-live ceases.”

Alfred is painted as a sympathetic, raving lunatic, as he moans about the  meaninglessness of all eternal and infinite things.” I followed with contempt as his wife Enid fails to ask for professional help for her obviously desperate husband, turning instead to her loser children and later to the cruise doctor for complete self-indulgence. The daughter Denise, another loser who tries to prove she’s a tough cookie by suffering the moment of pain of a burning cigarette, wrestles with her sexual fantasies for a woman but then sleeps with a married man. The son Gary is easily manipulated but has a slower burn, while his brother Chip runs away from each problem as he fails in business, in  bed and in character. I wouldn’t invite any of these people over for dinner but they stayed in my head throughout the depressing journey over weeks of reading until I snapped today, and gave the book a little rewrite as the mask changed from tragedy to comedy. “The Corrections, The Musical” a TV  Miniseries starring William Shatner as Alfred, descending into madness with  the voice-over narration by Patrick Stewart as the chorus in Alfred’s mind, quoting lots of Schopenhauer. Costarring Majel Barrett as his simpering,  mewling wife who turns for comfort aboard the Starship Loveboat to the affable doctor, played by John Billingsley who will steal the show in a dream sequence, with Aslan the “furry, four-pawed Christ figure” brought to life thanks to special effects and voice talents of John de Lancie, with a cameo by Louis Fletcher as the nurse.

I recommend you see the movie “Excalibur” for an introduction to Wagner playing in the background to the booming voice of Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart, read “Chronicles of Narnia” for the lion-king archetypal hero whose image lasted from ancient Egypt to modern Disney. See the painting “Raft of the Medusa” by Géricault just for the experience, I found a digital image through an easy search on the web. For other interpretations of descent into madness, see “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” if you missed Louise Fletcher in the role that inspired another must-see “High Anxiety” by the greatest comic genius of our time, Mel Brooks. 

The Corrections

Review by Simon

Watch out! Here comes a "rotten apple" metaphor… When I was eight, I had a nasty experience with an apple. It was large, bright, juicy and red; the sort of apple one sees in advertisements, but rarely at the fruiterers. The waxy skin glistened in the light, and there was not a blemish on it. I took a small bite, and felt the juice ooze through my teeth and onto the taste receptors in my tongue. What a deliciously sweet experience that was. I closed my eyes and took another, much larger, bite. Again I allowed the juice to ooze through my teeth, but this time the taste was not so sweet. It was coarse and bitter. I opened my eyes, took the apple from my mouth and looked down at its exposed core. It was a gutted nest of maggots housed in brownish apple sediment. By that time, I couldn't stop from swallowing the segment I'd just bitten. And in my mouth, I could feel the tickling sensation of a maggot lodged firmly between my two front teeth. For years afterwards I avoided eating apples, but as I grew older I realized that was an irrational fear that had resulted from a single bad experience. Since then I resumed my appetite for apples. Reason triumphed over a bad experience and the irrational sentiment that it had engendered.

As you have no doubt guessed already, that story provides a metaphor for my review of "The Corrections". When I began reading the novel, I relished the author's mastery of words, his astute observations of life, telling characterizations and urbane wit. I assured myself that this was the work of a master storyteller, and I still believe it to be so. Yet as I delved deeper into the novel, the bitterness at its core began to overwhelm my thoughts. There are characters and segments in this novel that have a gritty realism to them, yet taken as a whole, when one puts all characters and events together, it assumes a macabre unreality. I see no intellectual or literary value whatsoever in painting an over-the-top portrait of society through the eyes of a dysfunctional family. There is a saying in England and Australia, that "American culture knows no subtlety". While that's an exaggeration, this novel doesn't help contradict it.

Like many a nightmarish fantasy, which is what "The Corrections" really is, it looks and feels real enough to be truly scary. There are elements within it that struck accord, and with which I empathized. The onset of depression, and the questioning of one's own sanity in the process, certainly feels familiar. Despite all these realistic elements, I felt that the underlying philosophy of the novel was irrational and extreme, or perhaps it is more appropriate for me to say it represents a manic depressive's skewed view of life. There is, of course, a dark side to any society, but to a depressive everything about society is dark no matter what. The difference between the two is not always discernable; though in this case I've been around long enough to see it starkly.

There is a telling irony in all this for me. You know there is probably nothing I would welcome more in this club, especially at this time, than a novel that exposes and critiques the dark underbelly of US society and politics. Now if I were a cynical so- and-so I might concentrate on those aspects I agree with and ignore those that jar with my conscience. I can't do that. No matter how brilliant, astute, incisive and telling Franzen's novel is, his view of society is a more product of a depressive illness than anything else. This is a double-twisted irony, because the prevalence of depression in US society is itself a savage indictment.

The Corrections

Review by Kasia

I loathed Enid and Alfred Lambert from Alfred's first babyish screams of "Enid, Enid! [Mommy! Mommy!] * * * There's somebody at the door!" But as with anyone whom you immediately, intensely, and even irrationally despise, you have to wonder what quality that person mirrors in yourself that is so reviling, you can't even bear to see it exhibited in another.

Enid and Alfred's children loathe them, just as Enid and Alfred probably loathed the humbling, Depression-era poverty of their own parents.  Gary's kids detest him, too. And so it goes on down the line.  Each of them busily fritters away life making the "corrections" necessary not to become his or her parents, to keep up with the Joneses, and to avoid tackling the Big One--human relationships. 

Everyone in this novel is looking for security, control, and approval. Sound familiar? Franzen paints this hunger with everyday hues: 'Good Housekeeping' magazines, restaurant bustle, a cheesy investment seminar, feces, some leaky fish in paper, a stained sofa, a Yuban can, an envelope of money, a plate of sauerkraut, the drone of a copy machine, the smell of burning metal in a basement, some email messages exchanged and forgotten, the verbal shrug at the end of sentences, "so," and Robin's punctual "Whatever!"

Emasculated, Alfred mourns for his Work and fights for control over his once undisputed domain--his house and marriage.  He's from that no-room-for-slackers generation of the Men of Action, and so the loss of his mental and physical virility realizes his worst fears.  Enid wages her propaganda war to convince herself and everyone else that they are Haves, and their children are Haves, and clings to the naiveté of the days when Men were Men and children were innocent.

Gary's chief preoccupation is to assume his role as the new family patriarch, while his wife indulges a puerile hunger for her children's exclusive attention and approval.  Denise is the classic overachiever who is so scared of failure that she chooses unrealistic relationships.  Chip vilifies the hypocrisy in postindustrial western culture but desperately craves its bourgeois spoils: young women, trendy food, fame, wealth and prestige.  

The characters appear to descend into madness as they hurtle toward the big crisis point: Alfred's dementia and the dreaded family Christmas--all wrapped together in one big, warped holiday package.  It's hard to imagine that these people are capable of change, or even of love, and they begin to appear unreal.  It is difficult to imagine any family this badly dysfunctional. Franzen's artful hook reels us in. Watching these people is like gleefully rubbernecking at the scene of a really gruesome accident.

Finally, painfully, everybody bottoms out.  Alfred's descent is described in mindbendingly repulsive, hallucinogenic detail.  It's visceral.  Chip loses his job, and things in Lithuania's underworld get a little too rich for his middle-class, middle-Western blood, until finally he finds himself in a very unpleasant, un-American situation: with only the clothes on his back in a dusty border town in a second-rate nation. Denise loses her job, too, and spoils a relationship with Robin (her first Peach) that could have actually been Love, if she'd let it.  She also discovers that Daddy knows his little girl's secret--the secret carved into the bench--the real reason why her parents didn't move to Little Rock where they would have been, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Happy.  It's all her fault and she has failed miserably. Enid's bottoming out comes a little later than the others'. After all, she already has been the family doormat for decades.  Her cathartic moment is more like a final straw--the Last Christmas Together as a Family that isn't. Even angelic little Jonah—her last hope--starts bowing to the twin gods of aloof and cool--something we get to witness at the hands of his siblings, and it's like watching someone grind a spring daisy under his heel. Strangely, Gary never really does hit bottom.  In fact, he wins some of his little battles.  He is Morally Right about the shower, Axon, and selling the house, even if his mother won't concede.  And as Primogenitor, he is also right to point out his younger siblings' shortcomings. Now here comes the good part we never expected.  The family tragedy plants some seeds for change.  Enid awakens as Alfred's time comes to an end, and she will not let Gary fill those worn, old shoes.  With the children's glaring failures supping right there in her tastefully-appointed dining room, Enid finally has to admit that they did not exactly turn out how she—and Society--wanted.  Even Bea Meisner's mythical Success no longer holds sway.  It even looks a little tawdry under the harsh light of her cold-hearted homophobia.  Instead of Aslan (TM), the Savior in a bottle, Enid finds  salvation in a little window of freedom at the end of her life. When Alfred's increasingly childlike mind and heart swing open on rusty hinges, Chip gets his wings.  Turns out Dad loved him all along but just wasn't good at showing it.  Franzen's portrayal is heartbreaking: Alfred looked up at his son and into his eyes. He opened his mouth, but the only word he could    produce was 'I--' I-- I have made mistakes-- I am alone-- I am wet-- I want to die-- I am sorry-- I did my best-- I love my children-- I need your help-- I want to die-- " Alfred can't say it, but somehow Chip knows.  So what is there to prove anymore?  Chip learns to Stop Worrying and Love His MasterCard.  Or less cynically, he realizes it's all right just to want to meet a nice, Midwestern girl and settle down. That she's also a gainfully employed sugar mama doesn't hurt either, of course, and sure nurses his creative muse. Denise's eye-popper is a little more bittersweet.  Daddy knew her dirty secret. She wasn't such a good girl after all.  But he also protected her honor and continued to love her.  She survives her biggest failure and remains standing. And Gary? Now that he has assumed Alfred's mantle, we sense that Gary's time for change waits far, far in the future.  His love affair with booze is just beginning.  His three sons are growing up and they resent him.  Let the games begin. And so the parents recede and the children become the adults.  Only then do Chip and Denise really even glimpse that both parents really tried their best and loved them, despite all their shortcomings.  It's an age-old story with a moral.  At this crossroads, at least two adult children find an opportunity for transcendence, and in Alfred's example we see the form Gary's will someday likely take. Franzen hasn't just created some maddening, archetypal, dysfunctional characters.  His impressive verbal pyrotechnic display achieves that, but also more.  'The Corrections' is a kind of eulogy for the huge amount of time and energy we spend giving into our fears and insecurities, not just about our parents' love but anything that might bear upon our worth.  These fears drive our gluttonous consumption, cynicism, detachment from the suffering of others, neuroses, and cruelty toward even those who love us most.  Franzen isn't a pessimist, misogynist, or depressive.  The truth about what we do to ourselves and each other is ugly.  But the message is that if we can get over ourselves, there is still time to embrace the deeper self, others, and the big, ugly, beautiful world we live in.

The Corrections

The Corrections

Review by Vicky Smithson

This was a book that I would never have ordinarily picked up, not being my “sort of thing”.  However, it was pleasantly surprising, in a truly terrible way.

The main thrust of the book deals with the patriarch of the family, Alfred, and his slow but inevitable decline into Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.  There are two main themes which run through this book, that of the need for approval in our lifestyles, and the need to “make good” perceived shortfalls in that lifestyle.

Each of the characters in turn show both of these needs – Enid by her need to keep up a semblance of normality in the face of her husband’s decline and the need for approval from her children at the final christmas dinner.  The children of this family are now spread out in different towns.

Chip, the middle child, is now living in New York after having lost his job as a lecturer following an unwise affaire with a female student.  His inability to tell his parents the truth about his situation, and the breakneck speed with which he runs off to Lithuania to attempt to make money, and so, in his eyes atone for his past mistakes.  Of course, due to the nature of the book, he has to fail miserably, and runs away again when Lithuania becomes all too much.

Gary and his family would, at first glance, seem to be the most normal of the lot – but as we spend a few days with the family we learn that he is fighting against a perceived decline of his own – into a clinical depression which he believes mirrors his father’s decline.  Eventually, he admits his problems to his wife, but only in return for absolution.  Later he returns to St Jude and treats his father with a contempt that perhaps reflects the contempt he feels for himself.

Denise is at first glance a single and successful woman, doing what she loves in a city that she loves.  However, her life rapidly becomes more complicated throughout the story, cumulating in her eventual shame in destroying her boss’ marriage by sleeping with both him and his wife.  She seems unable to forgive herself for this, and in turn is unable to forgive her lover, Robin.  Only in asking Chip for the forgiveness she can’t meter out to herself does she get any sense of relief. 

Finally, then the story cumulates with Enid’s “last Christmas” in St Jude, where finally all three children are able to gather in the family home.  Here things finally fall apart, with the extent of Alfred's’s disease becoming apparent to all. The family’s reactions to this are varied, but a good way of summing them is to say that the family react appallingly.

Throughout the book, then the needs of each of the characters to have both absolution and approval show through. These needs would seem universal to all people – who has not felt the crushing feeling of, as an adult, still failing to win parental approval for some aspect of our lives?

Jonathan Franzen makes use of his much overblown characters to illustrate these points admirably.  The atmosphere of the book can at times be all consuming, in the total failure of each of the characters to show even one admirable characteristic.  I don’t think I’ve felt quite this despairing at a book since I read Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” – a book that should come with a government health warning!

However, bad as the atmosphere of the book is, and however dire the main characters become, it has a certain addictive quality about it, a fascination  which makes it almost impossible to put down.  This is largely due to Franzen’s skillful writing, and an ability to see snatches of those we know in the family, which makes the story seem so much more personal than if you could just write off the characters as unfamiliar and dysfunctional.

The Corrections

Review by Lenore

This was a difficult book for me to read and review.  I did not enjoy the book and I had a hard time getting through it for several reasons.

The first reason is that this is the kind of book that I would generally start reading, get into it a couple of chapters and then realize I have no interest in the subject matter and put it down.  I made myself keep going and skipped over parts that made me uncomfortable.

The second reason was the subject of Alfred.  My father is a Parkinson’s patient who has frequent bouts of dementia.  As he lives so far away from me I rarely see him and when I do it is a very difficult time.  It is hard to watch a loved one hallucinating.  Jonathan Franzen did an excellent job of portraying the hallucinating and the fears that can accompany this disease.  I was crying through the last chapter of the book as it hit too close to home for me. 

The third reason was I found the book depressing.  I believe that someone in our book club mentioned that they kept looking for something good to happen to a member of the family.  I was looking for that too, which is what kept me reading until the end.   I found myself feeling sorry for them but at the same time wishing I could sit down and tell them what to do to work things out.

I found the importance that Enid placed on having the family together for one last Christmas together fascinating.   I have known people who place so much importance on one day or event that they build their whole existence around it and when it doesn’t turn out as they dreamed it would, they are devastated.  It seemed to me also that Enid was always denying her true feelings and the truth about her husband and children. 

The Corrections

Review by Scott Walker

Can we make meaningful corrections in our lives?

Everyone wants to correct something.  I have many regrets about my conduct in certain situations where I have hurt someone through thoughtless or selfish actions. If only I could correct those mistakes then I would be a happier person.  If only I made more money, or was better looking, or taller then I would be a happier person.  Or would I?  Those mistakes are part of who I am today.  Economic status and physical appearance are an integral part of who I am.  I am happily married to a wonderful person who loves me.  I have two amazing children that are a joy to be with and to experience their growth and love.  Yet I still have regrets about past actions and still wish for more money, and a more appealing physical appearance.  If my life is unsatisfactory can I look to my wife, children, parents or friends to make the changes necessary for me to be happy and content? 

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, is about a family who look for ways to correct their own lives so that they can be loved, happy, rich, successful, or whatever it takes to have personal satisfaction.  Dysfunctional only begins to scratch the surface description the Lambert family dynamic.  The Lamberts are all obsessed with satisfying personal and social perceptions of what is acceptable and proper.  Franzen employs this pathetic group to illuminate central truths about the human condition and our collective yearning for something better.    

Chip Lambert, middle child, yearns for his father’s approval and is bitterly disappointed when it is not received to his satisfaction.  Possessed of a good shot at professional security he loses it all to his obsessions with sex and ambition.  Chip believes that his success as a sexual and academic paramour will fill the void created by his father’s inability to show love and affection for his children.  If only he can win the tenured teaching position.  If only he can make enough money.  If only he can have the love from the undergraduate or co-worker.   Then he would be happy and content.

Denise Lambert, youngest child, successful chef and compulsive adulteress looks for love without the emotional commitment necessary for a secure relationship.  Denise is only successful in her professional life where she has total control.  She sacrifices this success in an attempt to control her personal life the way she controls her professional life.  She believes that if only she could have the love and approval of her parents, husband, employer, or the wife of her employer then she would be happy and content.  Then when she wins the love of her employers wife she rejects it and then wishes to have it back again.  Denise is incapable of happiness as long as she waits for someone else to provide it for her. 

Gary Lambert, oldest child, is depressed.  Gary appears to have it all figured out as a successful bank vice president and married to a beautiful wife with three lovely children.  Gary shows how all the success in the world does not ensure a happy and content individual.  He has it all and yet he still insists on employing the “if only” mantra of his mother and siblings.  If only his wife would admit how she hurt her back.  If only his children would obey his fatherly commands.  If only his mother would cease her constant meddling in how he and his wife raise their children. 

Alfred Lambert, family patriarch, has Parkinson’s disease as well as dementia and the side effects of various medications.  Alfred had always been as happy and contented as can be because he “makes his decision and that’s final”.  Alfred always controls his situation so he can make the necessary corrections without relying on others to do it for him.  The onset of Parkinson’s disease eliminates his ability to control his situation and he has to rely on external sources to provide his necessary corrections.  Alfred requires help from Enid to save him from the “sociopathic turd” and relies on drug therapy to calm his trembling extremities.  Enid is unable to save him from his excremental delusions.  The drugs only serve to provide further confusion and lead to the beginning of a final fall.  Alfred’s pre Parkinson’s life reveals how self-correction is the only meaningful way to happiness and contentment. 

Enid Lambert, family matriarch, comes from a lower economic and social level and believes firmly in the concept of upward mobility through the achievements of husband and children.  If only Chip had not lost his job as a professor on the track to tenure and security.  If only Alfred had acted on inside information to secure lucrative stock holdings, or sold a chemical patent for a large fee, or would try a little harder, or get a better attitude about his battle with Parkinson’s disease.  If only Gary would come home with his family, or at least one grandchild, to help fulfill her Christmas fantasy.  If only Denise would get married to a successful Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer (insert profession of choice here), and start popping out grandkids.  If only all of the above had not happened or if only something else had happened then Enid would be happy and content. 

The Corrections

Reviewed by Marsha Robertson

The Corrections

Review by Lilacrae

Reading "The Corrections" made me wonder what kinds of hidden secrets my parents and siblings are hiding. It also made me hope that I am not- and hopefully will never be- as totally self-absorbed as the characters in this book.

That being said, this novel pivots around the decisions, or corrections, made by the major characters. At first they all seem unable to make major decisions, as Enid refuses to made a choice about Alfred's health, even though his mental state is clearly degrading. Denise can't choose between Robin and Brian, and Gary is unable to choose between his personal happiness, his family's happiness, and that of his parents. Chip makes a series of comically wrong decisions in an effort to avoid making the bigger decisions about what to do with his life post-Melissa. The aftereffects of the indecision experienced by the characters eventually culminates in some major choices, like Enid's finally putting Alfred into the hospital.

This novel highlights the contrasts between Enid and Alfred's world and the one where their children live. Chip's greed and Gary's materialism clash with Alfred's decision over releasing his patent to the Axon Corporation. The sexual liberation experienced by Denise goes in opposition to the inhibited and eventually non-existent sexual life of Enid and Alfred. All of the characters seem to be somewhat imprisoned by Alfred, as the dominant husband/father figure. The gradual increase of openness experienced by the family after Alfred's hospitalization shows the power that his presence held over all of them. His imprisonment in a hospital room provided freedom for his family, especially for Enid, who is finally able to acknowledge the many ways in which Alfred had wronged her and their children.

I found this book to be profoundly sad and even depressing in parts. Alfred came across as a particularly revolting character, although his sacrifice for Denise as revealed at the end of the novel did make him a bit more human. Alfred's pathetic cry for help was the only other really redeeming quality of his character. 

The Corrections

Review by Cynthia Ross

Well, hello again everyone, and hello to the new "faces".

To start with, the subject matter of this book can be depressing.  Parkinson's disease, clinical depression, adultery, denial, passive-aggressive behavior all abound in this tome.  Having said that, I'd have to say that I enjoyed this book.  I won't lie; it took a lot of Wooster and Jeeves interludes to help me change perspectives sometimes. However, I think that the novel can have a secondary, positive effect on people.  This book (club) has gotten a lot of people to share experiences, and discoveries about themselves.  I feel that we have become more aware of each other, ourselves and our surroundings because of Franzen's  writing.  I'd like to think that this increase of awareness is his intention; the alternative is that this author needs "Prozac and a polo mallet", STAT.

The plot develops as follows.  Enid, the matriarch wants her immediate family to come home for "one last Christmas".  Alfred, the patriarch, is consumed with struggling with the onset of Parkinson's disease, and the inactivity of retirement.  Gary, the eldest son, is torn between his two families.  Denise, the youngest, desires.  She wants all-consuming work, and love.  Chip, the middle child, wants to not want.  I've never seen someone work at apathy so diligently.  Franzen weaves the stories of each of the characters together well.  He makes it possible for me to get involved with the desires of each character and see their point of view.  I would think, "that seems reasonable" so many times.  Then, suddenly, I'm whisked over to another character and immediately reminded that they're all interrelated more than they're aware.  What seems a reasonable desire to one character now seems like encroachment on others; what to do?

Overall, this story and family seemed to demonstrate self-absorption over self-awareness.  In my opinion, self-awareness leads to awareness of others.  And to me, the lesson here was that awareness of oneself and others creates acceptance and happiness and multiple warm fuzzy feelings.  The disturbing aspect of this book is how alien this attitude seems in our society.  I’m really impressed with how Franzen seemed to create ultra-dysfunctional beings and families out of behaviours we all probably witness everyday.  Its mad.  We see ourselves and those around us get miserable and we do nothing.  It reminds me of an essay by Steven Fry.  The gist was that in a world where knowing what damages us, and still doing it is sane, he’d rather be crazy. 

Franzen made some interesting stylistic choices.  There was very clear imagery of surroundings and situations.  Yet, I thought his descriptions were spare.  Surroundings, and landscapes seemed to come into view through the personalities of the characters instead of through descriptions.  Franzen would inject shadows of stereotypes or two-dimensional aspects into the characters to make me picture the appropriate setting.

There was an interesting device to create the "self-absorbed not self-aware" sensation. Throughout the book, each main character had conversations running in their heads, but in the third person. Enid was perpetually complaining, Alfred would lecture, Chip was constantly defending himself, and Gary had mental health stock quotes. This technique reinforced my opinion that the characters thought that they needed external corrections in their lives for true inner happiness, or at least, relief. 

There was also some serious tunnel vision experienced by these characters.  Not only did they that think only external corrections were needed, but that only one was needed to make their dreams come true.  If Enid can just have a Christmas at home, if Alfred could just control his body, if Gary could just get Caroline to admit he's right, etc, then everything will be better.  Everyone also seemed to want to live life without really experiencing it.  It was as though the meaning of life is to go through the motions. That way, you won't experience any pain.  For example, Gary and Alfred both fantasized about other women.  But it seemed that they were fantasizing about fantasizing.

To me, Franzen painted a picture of a family, blindfolded, each trying to hit their own piñata of dreams.  They stumbled around, swinging blindly, not realizing that they were hitting each other, and not realizing what had happened when they were hit.  The saving grace of this family, was that through everything, there was always a sense of love for each other.  Pain, bitterness, regret, but somehow, also love.