The Corrections

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.

Jesus' Son

Jesus' Son
by Denis Johnson
read: 2019

I guess this is considered a short story collection. I view it as more of a novel, with a consistent narrator and a vague plot—the struggles of the unnamed narrator to find peace despite crippling drug addiction. I guess it doesn't really have much of a plot. I laughed out loud at one point in "Steady Hands at Seattle General," one of the funniest scenes I've ever read.

Foundation Series

Foundation Series
by Isaac Asimov
read: circa 1996
Guardian 1000 Novels, Hugo Award

When I was a freshman in high school, I had to read an autobiography and deliver an oral presentation in character as the person in question. I chose Isaac Asimov, although I had never read any of his novels. My introduction to his fiction came via Foundation, and I wound up reading the entire saga, at least the seven books Asimov wrote.

There's a lot of dystopian fiction about the horrors of the destruction of individual identity (Brave New World and 1984 are two examples), but the Foundation series ultimately makes an argument for the collective mind over the individual.

The Assistant

The Assistant
by Bernard Malamud
read: 2020
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

The key scene in The Assistant, to me, takes place towards the end of the book when Morris Bober, desperate for stable income as his grocery spirals towards insolvency, comes groveling to his former business partner Charlie Sobeloff, who had cheated him in their prior dealings. Morris works a day as a cashier, at the end of which Charlie checks his register.

"You're short a dollar, Morris," Charlie said with a little chuckle, "but we will let it go."

"No," the grocer heard himself say. "I am short a dollar, so I will pay a dollar."

He pays Charlie, quits on the spot and walks "with dignity" out the door.

Just a few pages earlier, Morris had described himself as having "the will of a victim, no will to speak of." He shows that mentality throughout the novel, blaming bad luck and his wife making him quit pharmacy school, among other things, for his lack of success. Even here, Morris isn't quite a deliberate actor: the "heard himself say" construct is telling.

But at the same time, there is a choice here. Charlie invites him to let the small discrepancy slide, and Morris has every moral right to cheat his former partner after being swindled in the past. But instead he chooses honesty and making things right. While paying his small debt is presented as almost involuntary, his integrity and dignity are Morris' alone.

Morris is made to suffer repeatedly for his honesty, continually cheated by others while refusing to cheat in turn. No one understands his choices, either, not his wife (presented somewhat one-dimensionally as a nag) or his daughter, who laments his uncompromising nature even at Morris' funeral. Frank Alpine, the titular assistant, has spent his whole existence lying and cheating, making him the least likely person to understand Morris' integrity. And yet, ultimately it is Frank who follows Morris' path. Adhering to the grocer's strict principles of honesty, even at great personal cost, becomes Frank's way of breaking free of his cycle of rambling and crime.

The Natural

The Natural
by Bernard Malamud
read: circa 2002

"Some mistakes you never stop paying for."

The ending is different, and darker than the movie version of The Natural, which is obviously iconic, but a little harder to square with the theme as stated above.

Lovecraft Country

Lovecraft Country
by Matt Ruff
read: 2020

When I wrote about Hellboy, I opined that only a good-hearted demon with a fist of stone could withstand the sanity-crushing revelations of Lovecraftian fiction. Matt Ruff begs to differ, suggesting a more elegant solution: Jim-Crow-era African-Americans, who were forced to endure various other horrors with regularity. If people want to refuse you food, terrorize you when you move in, try to lynch you in the woods, try to murder your family in its home ... really, what can a Shoggoth do you that's any worse?

The World According to Garp

The World According to Garp
by John Irving
read: circa 2002

At one point in the novel, the titular T.S. Garp opines that "the autobiographical basis—if there even was one—was the least interesting level of which to read a novel." What makes this even more amusing is that Garp's life mirrors author John Irving's in many ways; Garp is a writer, he coaches wrestling, he knows nothing of his father. I think about this sentence a lot, both whether it is true or not, and whether Irving meant it to be true or if it was kind of a joke.