Hundred Book Challenge #3: "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen

So.... “The Corrections.”

I went into this novel completely blind. Somehow I missed the whole brouhaha with author Johnathan Franzen saying he didn't care that it was chosen as an Oprah book of the week book and the seemingly billions of copies that are floating out around there.

Divorced from all that, this book is not safe. I mean that in the “Never Ending Story” way.

What this book does is take all the little weaknesses and disfunction that exists in family life and explodes it out in a way that is not uncommon enough to let you remove yourself from the situation. In other words, you can't pretend that the characters in the book have nothing in common with you and your family.

Let me tell you, briefly, about my family. We are pretty darn close to perfect. Out of my siblings, no one is estranged, we all get along with each other and with our parents. Children outnumber adults by a pretty good number.

I say that to stress the fact that my family is nothing like the family in “The Corrections.” And still... and still...

Here are the basics. “The Corrections” feature the Lambert family. Alfred, the patriarch, is emotionally stunted and overbearing. He is also falling into the depths of dementia. His wife, Enid, suffers under Alfred's tyranny and survives by turning passive aggressiveness into an art form. Alfred and Enid have three grown children. The oldest boy, Gary, is a successful banker who believes his wife and kids are conspiring against him. Chip, the middle child, is a Marxist failed academic who can't get a handle on life. Denise is the youngest and a successful chef, but has issues based on her sexual confusion.

Each member of the family is horrible in their own way but all of them share a disastrous flaw in that they can't help but try and force the world into the illusions they create.

Above and beyond this, the story has tendrils poking into a lot of different concepts. There is the old world being swallowed up into the new world. There is the tyranny of capitalism gone crazy. There is sexism, racism, ageism and so forth.

At the bottom of it all, however, is the story of a family trying to have one last Christmas together.

Remember how I said each character is terrible? Well, the are. And I kind of want to talk about that.

Often, when I relate to people about a story I experienced wherein the characters are horrible people, they don't see the point in it. They don't want to watch a story where people are bad. They want a hero to root for. They want someone to identify with- but only the parts of them that are good and hopeful. They don't want to see the other side of humanity without a huge redemption.

This book is called “The Corrections” and that is important. What happens in this story is not a hero's journey, it's about people making corrections to their lives.

Why do I like these stories about characters that are-I almost said unrelateable but that's not the right word- deeply flawed? It's, perhaps, because they are so relateable.