The Corrections

By: Jonathan Franzen
This book has been incredibly interesting to read, due to the hype surrounding it. First off there's the famous Oprah incident, and subsequent debate over what is "literature", and what is "popular fiction", and whether the Queen of All Media gets to decide which is which. Second, as I sat reading it in the Green Room, this book more than any other drew comments from passers by. "Ohmygod that's my favorite book!" "Oh that book is sooo good but it's really depressing, especialy if you have elderly relatives." "I love that book! It really nails the character of the midwesterner. Are you from the midwest?" And so on.
So I was curious, was this a good piece of literature? The answer is yes. Was I going to see myself and my family in these characters? Kind of, but (thankfully) not really. After finishing the novel I think of it as an alter reality in which my family could have turned out like this had my parents stayed married and grown old together. In effect, miserable and co-dependent.
And I wonder if I would have been more involved in the book had I not heard these opinions from others.
That is not to say I didn't find the book engaging. At times incredibly funny and by turns incredibly sad. I also found it to be a good picture of society today, and not only for midwesterners. Frantzen taps into the materialism of America with a nice touch of the absurd. From Chip's desire to impress his parents with his New York life-so he steals a salmon filet, to Edith's obsession with her baby Jesus advent ornament made of a walnut, the characters are constantly striving for more and as usual for American's it is never enough. The culmination is Edith's (the matriarch's) desire to have one last Christmas in St. Jude. Which happens-but not in the Norman rockwell card that was envisioned.