The Corrections
Like bookends of the past half century, the two generations of the Lambert family represent two very different aspects of America. Alfred, the patriarch, is a distant, puritanical company man; he is also slipping into Parkinson's-induced dementia. His wife, Enid, is a model Midwestern housewife, at once deferential and controlling. Their three children--Gary, an uptight banker, baffled by his own persistent unhappiness; Chip, and ex-professor now failing as a screenwriter; and Denise, and up-and-coming chief in a hot new restaurant--have little time for Enid and Alfred. But when Enid calls for one last Christmas at the family home, the trajectories of five American lifetimes converge. With this important, profoundly affecting work, Jonathan Franzen confirms his place in the top tier of American novelists. His unique blend of subversive humor and full-blooded realism makes The Corrections a grandly entertaining family saga.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
11mentions
9people
2010–2023years
73% recommend27% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Novels, in particular long ones with extensive casts of well developed characters, have really shaped and enabled my empathy. They do this partly through allowing you to occupy multiple and usually quite different POVs, and by elaborating on the reasons which are often adopted by people. Characters are often 'types', but it's the exposure to novel types that is what allows you to come away from a novel with a new outlook on a particular occupation, position, personality, politics, or relationship.
The disdain for novels by some people (Sam Bankman-Fried as a particularly egregious example) is really rather pathetic. Fiction, and more broadly storytelling, plays a vital role in shaping who we are, how we present ourselves to others, and how one can learn to do those things as well, in the midst of a community. Besides, their are more great books than one can read in a lifetime. It's a resource that can't be spent.
Some excellent examples:
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Brothers Karamazov, or Crime and Punishment, by Dostoyevsky
Madame Bovary by Flaubert, or Bel-Ami by Maupassant
The Book of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
The Corrections by Franzen
Recognitions by Gaddis
Foster by Claire Keegan (short but incredible)
(That's a personal list, and by no means exhaustive, just some recommendations.)
- How do you mean exactly? Long, complex sentence? FWIW I don't think this is a particularly good one. But if you like this writing style, Jonathan Franzen does it quite a bit, and really well. Check out The Corrections.
From a snarky perspective, n+1 is a "postmodern" type magazine that caters to theorists, critics; the types who attempt to convey abstract meaning (words are just endless signifiers, after-all!) while sniffing their own farts caused by holding their breath writing long sentences. Mark Grief, one of the founders of n+1 wrote a really horrible collection of essays called "Against Everything" that is moderately popular. It's full of this kind of self-absorbed writing.
Anywho, n+1 seems to have gone a bit more mainstream lately, as witnessed by their modern web design and recent presence on HN.
- - Underworld, Don Delilo
- A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James
- NW, Zadie Smith
- The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Multiple narrators, sweeping plot, not always easy to follow, not too postmodern.
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
It was the first/only book that put into words feelings I've had for my entire teenage-->adult life around the complexities of a dysfunctional middle class family.
- Jonathan Franzen's book, The Corrections, contains some very vivid scenes & chapters through the eyes of a man suffering from dementia -- I can't speak to their accuracy, but they are very powerful.
- Go buy a good novel. Here's some random picks for you:
The road by Cormack McCarthy (a real page turner), The New York trilogy by Paul Auster, Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, The stranger by Albert Camus.
