The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

Entertaining as hell. Franzen can write, that is for certain, and he has a National Book Award to support that. This story around which he displays his talent is tight, funny and insightful. At a certain level it resonates strongly with me where it didn’t for my wife or sister. Perhaps it is a gender thing, but I find it hard to see how the story shows a gender bias. He crucifies and exalts all his characters. The story moves toward one final Christmas in the Lambert household. The three children are grown with their own lives on the East coast (and Lithuania where the middle child, Chip, is helping a Lithuanian politician scam western investors) while mom and dad still live in the small Midwestern town in which they were raised. All dysfunctional, but no more so than most of us walking around (I think one of the more powerful features of the story), and shown in a wickedly delightful and funny way. One can read the story as an inexorable march toward one final gathering. I read it as a familial maelstrom swirling around the father (Alfred) who is suffering from parkinsonian dementia. The climax/resolution, as it were, is a dissolution of this storm. The title of the story refers to our failings as children to correct the errors of our parents, to our failings as parents to correct the errors of our children and our obsessive need, often futile and pointless, to correct those things in our life that we find unacceptable. In the end, it is probably only ourselves that need correction.