The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
read: 2020
Time 100 Novels,
Guardian 1000 Novels,
National Book Award,
James Tait Black Prize
I've been on a good run with reading the past couple months, but I started to flag about halfway through
The Corrections. The novel shares some themes with
White Noise and other novels that deal with the modern middle-class condition, and I slogged through reading extended passages of middle class misery. The section where depressed, alcoholic Gary resists admitting to his wife that he's a depressed alcoholic because she's manipulative and emotionally abusive, especially dragged. Siblings Gary, Chip, and Denise all rebel against their conventional Midwestern upbringing, but their rebellion does not liberate them and becomes its own prison. The children, along with parents Enid and Alfred, are all wildly unhappy.
At this point, two miracle cures are introduced that promise to fix Alfred and Enid: Corecktall, a potential solution to Alfred's Parkinson's, and Aslan, a Narnia-named and sketchily-prescribed pill that temporarily alleviates Enid's shame and unhappiness. At this point, I was fully expecting a redux of
White Noise and the role Dylar played.
The novel goes in a different direction, however. Ultimately, neither Corecktal nor Aslan fulfills its promise, yet this doesn't necessarily mean salvation is lost to the characters in
The Corrections. Sylvia, a minor character, provides a template in explaining how she got over the tragic murder of her daughter:
[A]bsolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before? You see things more clearly and you know that you're seeing them more clearly.
Franzen takes us inside the characters' heads so much when they are miserable so he can set up these kinds of epiphanies that allow them to transcend that misery, at least potentially. The children come to realize they are running from rather than running to; ultimately rebellion for its own sake holds no more agency than conformity for its own sake. Once they understand that, they can start working towards building the kinds of lives they want to lead.
