I recently finished The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. This was a remainder that I bought somewhere—I don’t remember exactly where it was, but I do know that the name of the cover drew me in. I have never read Franzen with any sort of energy, but like Jonathan Lethem, David Chabon, and even David Foster Wallace, I have been aware that I am building up to reading these guys with enthusiasm. I guess I have been keeping up with Michael Chabon more than the others. But take Gentlemen of the Road, for example. I mean, I got the plot and all, but I feel like I, as a reader, left a lot on the table in my experience of the book. I felt like a lot of it went over and around my head, like I just didn’t grasp what was there to be grasped. But I am developing as a reader and my skills are blooming lately.
So it was with a bit of enthusiasm and some optimism that I cracked open The Corrections a month ago. Nearly 600 pages is no joke, even for the summer. Instantly (well, 40 or so pages in), I was engrossed. The story is about a family of five who attempts one final Christmas together before the patriarch loses his wits completely. The children—each in their particular hell—react in their own peculiar ways to the invitation: one by accepting a job exploiting gullible American investors in Lithuania, one by working herself to an emotional death in the kitchen of high-priced restaurants, and the other by fighting to the (emotional) death with his family, all of whom think he is depressed and crazy while he thinks he is the only rational one among them. Painful stuff, in other words. Some of it so laughable, though, so over the top that the heavy emotional appeals here are dulled a little bit by compassion. I can definitely see myself in all of these characters, the failing father and far-beyond-the-ability-to-cope mother. By the end of the book—one I really didn’t want to finish—Things were just so beautiful and so sad and so wonderfully happy and optimistic that I felt as if the book were about me and my life. It certainly was about the lives and families of people I know. This novel is simply brilliant. My favorite moment—one of many and one, I am sure, upon which much undergraduate ink will be spilt—is when the older boy ignores his real-life father for a day to work on his collection of framable railroad memorabilia. His father, who worked on the railroad for decades, was right there in the house aching for some attention and understanding. But the son, exasperated and beyond his ability to cope (like his mother), sought out framable memorabilia. So much more manageable, then stuff that lays flat and still and which fits into a small window. The paragraph brings some joy to the hobbyist’s chase and makes the finding and displaying of this stuff seem fun and important. Yet the disconnect between what is flat and framable and what is tangible and incontinent is what makes the tears well. And to see someone die—to love them and to watch them struggle to not let go and to then let go—well, that’s about the biggest thing a breathing person can witness. And I think Franzen found the book late. I think he thought it was going to be about a few different things –all of them less weighty and real than what he ended up with. I can imagine him not knowing where the story would end until a few pages before he finished typing that first draft. (I have had that feeling myself thinking a story was going in one direction and watching it end at a vista I had no idea was just off this trail to the distant town.) No need to go any more. The rest will be okay, or as okay as the rest of us. But it was for this most unlikely of main characters, one for whom openness was a sign of selfishness, that the book settled on in its final twenty pages and, when the ink ran out, it was he who had defined it. His peculiar brand of aloof and grudging love was what the others had all been trying to erase, overcome, justify, value, push back against, and earn through their lives. Yes, they’re going to be just fine. But there are people in our lives for whom we live. They can be those we choose to love or those we are forced to by accident. Either way, they are the audiences for our performances.
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