 First edition cover | |
| Author | Jonathan Franzen |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Jacket design by Lynn Buckley. Photograph: Willinger / FPG |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | September 1, 2001 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 568 pp (first hardcover edition) |
| ISBN | 0-374-12998-3 |
| OCLC | 46858728 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3556.R352 C67 2001 |
The Corrections is a2001novel by American authorJonathan Franzen. It revolves around the troubles of an elderlyMidwestern couple and their three adult children, tracing their lives from the mid-20th century to "one last Christmas" together near the turn of the millennium. The novel was awarded theNational Book Award in 2001[1] and theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2002.
The novel received widespread critical acclaim and was listed as one of the greatest novels of the 21st century by publications such asTime magazine andThe New York Times.[2][3][4]
The Corrections revolves around the dysfunctional Lambert family and their efforts to reconcile as they face personal crises and deep-rooted emotional struggles. The novel alternates between the perspectives of different family members throughout the late twentieth century, illuminating their individual lives and histories.
Alfred Lambert, the patriarch, is a retired railroad engineer who hasParkinson’s disease anddementia. His declining health becomes the catalyst for the family’s reunion. His wife, Enid, is obsessed with having one final "family Christmas" before Alfred’s condition worsens. Enid’s fixation on keeping up appearances and maintaining control over the family’s affairs often leads to tension with her children.[5]
The middle child, Chip, is an unemployed academic living inNew York City following his firing due to a sexual relationship with a student. Living on borrowed money from his sister, Denise, Chip works obsessively on a screenplay, but finds no success or motivation to pay off his debts. Eventually, Chip takes a job from his girlfriend's estranged husband Gitanas, an affable but corruptLithuanian government official, later moving toVilnius and working to defraud American investors over the Internet.
The elder son and oldest child, Gary, is a successful but increasingly depressive and alcoholic banker living inPhiladelphia with his wife, Caroline, and their three young sons. When Enid attempts to persuade Gary to bring his family to St. Jude for Christmas, Caroline is reluctant, and turns Gary's sons against him and Enid, worsening his depressive tendencies. In return, Gary attempts to force his parents to move to Philadelphia so that Alfred may undergo an experimental neurological treatment that he and Denise learn about.
Also living in Philadelphia, their youngest child Denise finds growing success as an executive chef despite Enid's disapproval, and is commissioned to open a new restaurant. Simultaneously impulsive and a workaholic, Denise begins affairs with both her boss and his wife, and though the restaurant is successful, she is fired when the affairs are uncovered. Flashbacks to her childhood show her responding to her repressed upbringing by beginning an affair with one of her father's subordinates, a married railroad signals worker.
As Alfred's condition worsens, Enid attempts to manipulate all of her children into going to St. Jude for Christmas, with increasing desperation. Initially only Gary (without his wife or children) and Denise are present, while Chip is delayed by a violent political conflict in Lithuania, eventually arriving late after being attacked and robbed of all his savings. Denise inadvertently discovers that her father had known of her teenaged affair with his subordinate, and had kept his knowledge a secret to protect her privacy, at great personal cost. After a disastrous Christmas morning together, the three children are dismayed by their father's condition, and Alfred is finally moved into a nursing home.
Following the Christmas gathering, Chip stays in the Midwest, eventually starting a family with Alfred's doctor. Denise moves away from Philadelphia, and while Gary undergoes no drastic changes, Enid's newfound freedom from her husband causes her to be happier and less critical of her children's lives.
WithThe Corrections, Franzen transitioned from thepostmodernism of his earlier novels towardliterary realism.[6] In an interview with novelistDonald Antrim forBomb, Franzen reflected on this stylistic shift, stating, "Simply to write a book that wasn't dressed up in a swashbuckling,Pynchon-sized megaplot was enormously difficult."[7]
Critics have noted strong parallels between Franzen's childhood inSt. Louis and the novel’s setting.[8] However, Franzen has emphasized that the work is not autobiographical.[9] He explained in an interview that "the most important experience of my life ... is the experience of growing up in the Midwest with the particular parents I had. I feel as if they couldn’t fully speak for themselves. I feel as if their experience—by which I mean their values, their experience of being alive, of being born at the beginning of the century and dying towards the end of it, that whole American experience they had—[is] part of me. One of my enterprises in the book is to memorialize that experience, to give it real life and form."[10]
The novel explores themes such as the multi-generational transmission of family dysfunction[11] and the excesses of modern consumerism.[12] Each of the characters "embody the conflicting consciousnesses and the personal and social dramas of our era."[13]
Franzen has acknowledged that writingThe Corrections influenced his own perspective. He noted in 2002 that the process led him "away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance – even a celebration – of being a reader and a writer."[14]
In aNewsweek feature on American culture during theGeorge W. Bush administration, Jennie Yabroff observed that despite being released less than a year into Bush's presidency and before theSeptember 11 attacks,The Corrections "anticipates almost eerily the major concerns of the next seven years."[15] She argued that the novel reflects an underlying apprehension and disquiet that characterized post-9/11 America, suggesting that these anxieties predated the attacks. Yabroff also posited that thecontroversy with Oprah, which led to Franzen being labeled an "elitist," foreshadowed a rising anti-intellectual strain in American culture. According to her,The Corrections stands apart from later works on similar themes because, unlike its successors, it does not become "hamstrung by the 9/11 problem" that preoccupied Bush-era novels by authors such asDon DeLillo,Jay McInerney, andJonathan Safran Foer.[15]
According toBook Marks, from American press, the book received a "positive" consensus, derived from thirteen critics: six "rave," four "positive," and three "mixed."[16]
The Daily Telegraph compiled reviews from multiple publications using a rating scale: "Love It," "Pretty Good," "Ok," and "Rubbish." Reviews fromThe Guardian,The Times,The Observer,The Sunday Times, andThe Independent On Sunday categorized the novel under "Love It." TheSunday Telegraph andNew Statesman rated it "Pretty Good," whileThe Independent,The Spectator, andTimes Literary Supplement classified it as "Ok."[17][18]
Globally,Complete Review noted a lack of consensus, summarizing that "all grant [Franzen] is a gifted writer. Most are very enthusiastic, some positively enraptured."[19]
CriticJohn Leonard praised the novel’s exploration of thegeneration gap and intergenerational dynamics, stating it reminds readers "why you read serious fiction in the first place."[20]
The Corrections won the 2001National Book Award for Fiction,[1] the 2002James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was a finalist for the 2002Pulitzer Prize for Fiction,[21] as well as the 2001National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the 2002PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the 2003International Dublin Literary Award.
In 2005,The Corrections was included inTIME magazine'slist of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.[22]
In 2006,Bret Easton Ellis called it "one of the three great books of my generation."[23] In 2009, the websiteThe Millions polled 48 writers, critics, and editors, includingJoshua Ferris, Sam Anderson, andLorin Stein;[24] the panel votedThe Corrections the best novel since 2000 "by a landslide."[25]
The novel was selected forOprah's Book Club in 2001. However, Franzen publicly expressed ambivalence about the selection, criticizing its association with what he viewed as "schmaltzy" books. As a result,Oprah Winfrey rescinded his invitation to appear onThe Oprah Winfrey Show.[26]
Entertainment Weekly includedThe Corrections in its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, stating, "Forget all the Oprah hoo-ha: Franzen's 2001 doorstop of a domestic drama teaches that, yes, you can go home again. But you might not want to."[27]
In August 2001, producerScott Rudinoptioned the film rights toThe Corrections forParamount Pictures.[28] The rights still have not yet been turned into a completed film.[29]
In 2002, the film was said to be inpre-production, withStephen Daldry attached to direct and dramatistDavid Hare working on the screenplay.[30] In October 2002, Franzen gaveEntertainment Weekly a wish list for the cast of the film, saying, "If they told meGene Hackman was going to do Alfred, I would be delighted. If they told me they had castCate Blanchett as [Alfred's daughter] Denise, I would be jumping up and down, even though officially I don't care what they do with the movie."[31]
In January 2005,Variety announced that, with Daldry presumably off the project,Robert Zemeckis was developing Hare's script "with an eye toward directing."[32] In August 2005,Variety confirmed that the director would be helmingThe Corrections.[33] Around this time, it was rumored that the cast would includeJudi Dench as the family matriarch Enid, along withBrad Pitt,Tim Robbins andNaomi Watts as her three children.[34] In January 2007,Variety wrote that Hare was still at work on the film's screenplay.[35]
In September 2011, it was announced that Rudin and the screenwriter and directorNoah Baumbach were preparingThe Corrections as a "drama series project," to potentially co-starAnthony Hopkins and air on HBO. Baumbach and Franzen collaborated on the screenplay, which Baumbach would direct. In 2011, it was reported thatChris Cooper andDianne Wiest would star in the HBO adaptation. In November 2011, it was confirmed thatEwan McGregor had joined the cast.[36] In a March 7, 2012, interview, McGregor confirmed that work on the film was "about a week" in and noted that bothDianne Wiest andMaggie Gyllenhaal were among the cast members.[37] But on May 1, 2012, HBO decided not to pick up the pilot for a full series.[38]
In January 2015, theBBC broadcast a 15-part radio dramatization of the work. The series of 15-minute episodes, adapted byMarcy Kahan and directed byEmma Harding, also starredRichard Schiff (The West Wing),Maggie Steed (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus),Colin Stinton (Rush,The Bourne Ultimatum) andJulian Rhind-Tutt (Lucy,Rush,Notting Hill). The series was part ofBBC Radio 4's15 Minute Drama "classic and contemporary original drama and book dramatisations".
| Preceded by | National Book Award for Fiction 2001 | Succeeded by |