The Corrections
By M on Friday 22 December 2006, 15:11 - Reference - Permalink
As this is Christmas it is an appropriate time to recommend a novel I have just
finished: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It is one long prologue
to a family Christmas which is eagerly anticipated and dreaded in equal parts.
The Christmas is both a resounding success and a complete failure, but I shall
not give away the reasons for this.
The story concerns a family of adult children and their elderly parents, one of whom is demented, possibly both. I think anyone involved in looking after parents in decline will find much that is familiar in this story, although how it will be received is entirely a matter for the individual. A friend of mine told me she finished the book in tears, while sitting in a cafe, and was comforted by the waiter. I, on the other hand, thought the book was funny, tragi-comic perhaps, but memorable for some hilarious episodes (the hallucinations of the father, while on a pleasure cruise, stand out as one of the funniest).
Franzen has drawn some very perceptive characterisations of the elderly. He dwells on their anxious preoccupations, the discontinuities of their time, their peculiar juxtaposition of the banal with the surreal, their desperate attempts to keep things right when all seems to be going wrong, both inside and outside their bodies. He also deals with the disparities in how offspring can view the same parents, and how rapidly these views can get knocked around by experience. Franzen also faces up to the disgust and ridicule declining grandparents can engender in their grandchildren.
Apart from all the family insights, there was for me a special pleasure in reading this book. Much of it is set in Seminole Street, Chestnut Hill - 100 yards from where I once lived. The location, one of Philadelphia's wealthiest and most self-regarding suburbs, was crucial to the story, since it is a symbol for the one son for whom appearances and status are priorities. Appearances and status are some of the earliest casualties in dementia. His fate is therefore sealed.
The Corrections is also well-written, creative in its use of English, and full of arresting metaphors. I could have enjoyed it on this level alone.
I'd be interested in hearing from others who have read it - to learn whether it was seen as a tragedy or a comedy.
The story concerns a family of adult children and their elderly parents, one of whom is demented, possibly both. I think anyone involved in looking after parents in decline will find much that is familiar in this story, although how it will be received is entirely a matter for the individual. A friend of mine told me she finished the book in tears, while sitting in a cafe, and was comforted by the waiter. I, on the other hand, thought the book was funny, tragi-comic perhaps, but memorable for some hilarious episodes (the hallucinations of the father, while on a pleasure cruise, stand out as one of the funniest).
Franzen has drawn some very perceptive characterisations of the elderly. He dwells on their anxious preoccupations, the discontinuities of their time, their peculiar juxtaposition of the banal with the surreal, their desperate attempts to keep things right when all seems to be going wrong, both inside and outside their bodies. He also deals with the disparities in how offspring can view the same parents, and how rapidly these views can get knocked around by experience. Franzen also faces up to the disgust and ridicule declining grandparents can engender in their grandchildren.
Apart from all the family insights, there was for me a special pleasure in reading this book. Much of it is set in Seminole Street, Chestnut Hill - 100 yards from where I once lived. The location, one of Philadelphia's wealthiest and most self-regarding suburbs, was crucial to the story, since it is a symbol for the one son for whom appearances and status are priorities. Appearances and status are some of the earliest casualties in dementia. His fate is therefore sealed.
The Corrections is also well-written, creative in its use of English, and full of arresting metaphors. I could have enjoyed it on this level alone.
I'd be interested in hearing from others who have read it - to learn whether it was seen as a tragedy or a comedy.
Comments
Thanks for bringing that up. It's one of my favorite books of all time. I read it once before the reality of dementia had set in in our family, and then read it again afterward. There is a well-read audio version (unabridged) available at Audible.
As for the tragedy or comedy question, it certainly is one of the funniest books I've ever read, but a lot of it is that excruciating laughter of recognition. I don't think you could really categorize this book any more than you could categorize life.
I've been interested to notice that many people violently DISLIKE the book, and Franzen's writing in general. They tend to find his characters "dysfunctional" or "self-abosorbed." To me, they just seem real.
I guess most of your readers would know that Franzen's own father had Alzheimers, and he wrote an essay about it called "My Father's Brain," which is included in his book "How to Be Alone." I found the essay interesting, but in general his fiction is more gripping.
Redcedar
Thanks for mentioning My Father's Brain, Franzen's essay about his father. I meant to mention it myself, but got distracted. I am thoroughly surprised to hear that Franzen has ardent detractors, and agree with you that the characters seem real first and foremost - and therefore imperfect and sometimes unpleasant. Not a criticism in my book either.
Yet another try on commenting on this. I read with my book club "The Corrections" soon after it was published. Everyone LOVED it. Except for me and another woman who is a few years younger than me, all the women are 65+. One member is my mother's age. As I recall, tragedy was not the overwhelming sense the members got from the book; all of us considered it hilarious. Each of us, in one way or another, identified with sections of material in it. I think it was easy for us to lean toward hilarity rather than tragedy, as so many of the women had experienced very similar relationships through born-into-families, which they had left fairly far behind, the families they created and, then, the families their families have created. Me, well, quite a bit of it was familiar to me through my sisters' adult lives. As well, all the women in the book club being highly literate, (many of them were or remain professional educators; one is a state consultant for literature {no, not literacy} education) enjoyed the acute writing. Most of us admitted that we raced through the book.
At that time, I was still attending book club meetings and bringing my mother along. This was one of the last I attended. My mother's health was precarious and troublesome and her participation, that meeting, did not involve reading the book. As I recall, she snoozed in her chair during the meeting.
I remember thinking, at that time, that the tone of the writing about the elderly/demented was probably much like the tone of my sisters' thoughts about my mother. It probably still is. Also, many of the women in the book club were extremely thoughtful about these parts. They are much closer to the realities of old age than many...some are firmly entrenched in old age and surprised at how different it is than they imagined. Some of the meeting was devoted to discussing how younger people view the old versus how the old experience being old. Considering that none of the women in the book club who could be considered "old" has personally experienced the portrait of the old caricatured in the book, the discussion was amazing. Some of this discussion involved comparing Franzen's portraiture to Anne Tyler's and Willa Cather's portraits of the very old who are ailing...sort of an exterior vs interior discussion.
Interesting about the "dysfunctional character" thing. A few days ago my mother and I watched "Little Miss Sunshine". At some point in the movie I realized that it's likely that there is no such thing as a dysfunctional family or, for that matter, a dysfunctional character. We all "work". We just don't necessarily "work" in the way we idealize and sometimes it takes years to realize that we are "working". I think some people never figure this out, and that's where the tragedy lies. I think I also got this feeling from "The Corrections", but at the time I read it, I was so taken with the objective experience of the story and the writing that I didn't become consciously aware of this realization and, thus, set it aside.
In retrospect, I don't think "Little Miss Sunshine" would have been created if "The Corrections" had been written and so widely read.
Remembering all this makes me want to reread "The Corrections". I wonder if I'll be able to maneuver that soon or if I'll have to put this On The List...