The Corrections

Last updated

The Corrections
Thecorrectionscvr.jpg
First edition cover
Author Jonathan Franzen
Cover artistJacket design by Lynn Buckley.
Photograph: Willinger / FPG
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
September 1, 2001
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages568 pp (first edition, hc)
ISBN 0-374-12998-3 (first)
OCLC 46858728
813/.54 21
LC Class PS3556.R352 C67 2001
Preceded by Strong Motion  
Followed by Freedom  

The Corrections is a 2001 novel by American author Jonathan Franzen. It revolves around the troubles of an elderly Midwestern couple and their three adult children, tracing their lives from the mid-20th century to "one last Christmas" together near the turn of the millennium. The novel was awarded the National Book Award in 2001 [1] and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2002.

Contents

The novel received widespread critical acclaim and was listed as one of the greatest novels of the 21st century by publications such as Time magazine and The New York Times. [2] [3] [4]

Plot summary

The Corrections revolves around the dysfunctional Lambert family and their efforts to reconcile as they face personal crises and deep-rooted emotional struggles. The novel alternates between the perspectives of different family members throughout the late twentieth century, illuminating their individual lives and histories.

Alfred Lambert, the patriarch, is a retired railroad engineer who has Parkinson’s disease and dementia. His declining health becomes the catalyst for the family’s reunion. His wife, Enid, is obsessed with having one final "family Christmas" before Alfred’s condition worsens. Enid’s fixation on keeping up appearances and maintaining control over the family’s affairs often leads to tension with her children. [5]

The middle son, Chip, is an unemployed academic living in New York City following his firing due to a sexual relationship with a student. Living on borrowed money from his sister, Denise, Chip works obsessively on a screenplay, but finds no success or motivation to pay off his debts. Eventually, Chip takes a job from his girlfriend's estranged husband Gitanas, an affable but corrupt Lithuanian government official, later moving to Vilnius and working to defraud American investors over the Internet.

Their eldest son, Gary, is a successful but increasingly depressive and alcoholic banker living in Philadelphia with his wife, Caroline, and their three young sons. When Enid attempts to persuade Gary to bring his family to St. Jude for Christmas, Caroline is reluctant, and turns Gary's sons against him and Enid, worsening his depressive tendencies. In return, Gary attempts to force his parents to move to Philadelphia so that Alfred may undergo an experimental neurological treatment that he and Denise learn about.

Also living in Philadelphia, their youngest child Denise finds growing success as an executive chef despite Enid's disapproval, and is commissioned to open a new restaurant. Simultaneously impulsive and a workaholic, Denise begins affairs with both her boss and his wife, and though the restaurant is successful, she is fired when the affairs are uncovered. Flashbacks to her childhood show her responding to her repressed upbringing by beginning an affair with one of her father's subordinates, a married railroad signals worker.

As Alfred's condition worsens, Enid attempts to manipulate all of her children into going to St. Jude for Christmas, with increasing desperation. Initially only Gary (without his wife or children) and Denise are present, while Chip is delayed by a violent political conflict in Lithuania, eventually arriving late after being attacked and robbed of all his savings. Denise inadvertently discovers that her father had known of her teenaged affair with his subordinate, and had kept his knowledge a secret to protect her privacy, at great personal cost. After a disastrous Christmas morning together, the three children are dismayed by their father's condition, and Alfred is finally moved into a nursing home.

Following the Christmas gathering, Chip stays in the Midwest, eventually starting a family with Alfred's doctor. Denise moves away from Philadelphia, and while Gary undergoes no drastic changes, Enid's newfound freedom from her husband causes her to be happier and less critical of her children's lives.

Reception

According to Book Marks, based on American publications, the book received "positive" reviews based on thirteen critic reviews, with six being "rave" and four being "positive" and three being "mixed". [6] The Daily Telegraph reported on reviews from several publications with a rating scale for the novel out of "Love It", "Pretty Good", "Ok", and "Rubbish": Daily Telegraph , Guardian , Times , Observer , Sunday Times , and Independent On Sunday reviews under "Love It" and Sunday Telegraph and New Statesman reviews under "Pretty Good" and Independent , Spectator , and TLS reviews under "Ok". [7] [8] Globally, Complete Review saying on the consensus "Not quite a consensus, though all grant he is a gifted writer. Most are very enthusiastic, some positively enraptured". [9]

According to John Leonard, the novel explores the generation gap and the grasp of one generation on another in a way that reminds you of "why you read serious fiction in the first place". [10]

The novel won the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction [1] and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, [11] was nominated for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award, and was shortlisted for the 2003 International Dublin Literary Award. In 2005, The Corrections was included in TIME magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923. [12] In 2006, Bret Easton Ellis declared the novel "one of the three great books of my generation." [13] In 2009, the website The Millions polled 48 writers, critics, and editors, including Joshua Ferris, Sam Anderson, and Lorin Stein; [14] the panel voted The Corrections the best novel since 2000 "by a landslide". [15] The novel was a selection of Oprah's Book Club in 2001. Franzen caused some controversy when he publicly expressed his ambivalence at the club having chosen his novel, due to its inevitable association with the "schmaltzy" books selected in the past. [16] As a result, Oprah Winfrey rescinded her invitation to him to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show . [17] Entertainment Weekly put The Corrections on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "Forget all the Oprah hoo-ha: Franzen's 2001 doorstop of a domestic drama teaches that, yes, you can go home again. But you might not want to." [18]

Style and interpretations

With The Corrections, Franzen moved away from the postmodernism of his earlier novels and towards literary realism. [19] In a conversation with novelist Donald Antrim for Bomb , Franzen said of this stylistic change, "Simply to write a book that wasn't dressed up in a swashbuckling, Pynchon-sized megaplot was enormously difficult." [20] Critics pointed out many similarities between Franzen's childhood in St. Louis and the novel, [21] but the work is not an autobiography. [22] Franzen said in an interview that "the most important experience of my life ... is the experience of growing up in the Midwest with the particular parents I had. I feel as if they couldn’t fully speak for themselves. I feel as if their experience—by which I mean their values, their experience of being alive, of being born at the beginning of the century and dying towards the end of it, that whole American experience they had—[is] part of me. One of my enterprises in the book is to memorialize that experience, to give it real life and form." [23] The novel also focuses on topics such as the multi-generational transmission of family dysfunction [24] and the waste inherent in today's consumer economy, [25] and each of the characters "embody the conflicting consciousnesses and the personal and social dramas of our era." [26] Influenced by Franzen's life, the novel, in turn, influenced it; during its writing, he said in 2002, he moved "away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance – even a celebration – of being a reader and a writer." [27]

In a Newsweek feature on American culture during the George W. Bush administration, Jennie Yabroff said that despite being released less than a year into Bush's term and before the September 11 attacks, The Corrections "anticipates almost eerily the major concerns of the next seven years." [16] According to Yabroff, a study of The Corrections demonstrates that much of the apprehension and disquiet seen as characteristic of the Bush era and post-9/11 America predated both. In this way, the novel is both characteristic of its time and prophetic of things to come; for Yabroff, even the controversy with Oprah, which saw Franzen branded an "elitist," was symptomatic of the subsequent course of American culture, with its increasingly prominent anti-elitist strain. She argues that The Corrections stands above later novels which focus on similar themes because, unlike its successors, it addresses these themes without being "hamstrung by the 9/11 problem" which preoccupied Bush-era novels by writers such as Don DeLillo, Jay McInerney, and Jonathan Safran Foer. [16]

Adaptations

Film

In August 2001, producer Scott Rudin optioned the film rights to The Corrections for Paramount Pictures. [28] The rights still have not yet been turned into a completed film. [29]

In 2002, the film was said to be in pre-production, with Stephen Daldry attached to direct and dramatist David Hare working on the screenplay. [30] In October 2002, Franzen gave Entertainment Weekly a wish list for the cast of the film, saying, "If they told me Gene Hackman was going to do Alfred, I would be delighted. If they told me they had cast Cate Blanchett as [Alfred's daughter] Denise, I would be jumping up and down, even though officially I don't care what they do with the movie." [31]

In January 2005, Variety announced that, with Daldry presumably off the project, Robert Zemeckis was developing Hare's script "with an eye toward directing." [32] In August 2005, Variety confirmed that the director would definitely be helming The Corrections. [33] Around this time, it was rumored that the cast would include Judi Dench as the family matriarch Enid, along with Brad Pitt, Tim Robbins and Naomi Watts as her three children. [34] In January 2007, Variety wrote that Hare was still at work on the film's screenplay. [35]

In September 2011, it was announced that Rudin and the screenwriter and director Noah Baumbach were preparing The Corrections as a "drama series project," to potentially co-star Anthony Hopkins and air on HBO. Baumbach and Franzen collaborated on the screenplay, which Baumbach would direct. In 2011, it was announced that Chris Cooper and Dianne Wiest would star in the HBO adaptation. In November 2011, it was announced that Ewan McGregor had joined the cast. [36] In a March 7, 2012, interview, McGregor confirmed that work on the film was "about a week" in and noted that both Dianne Wiest and Maggie Gyllenhaal were among the cast members. [37] But on May 1, 2012, HBO decided not to pick up the pilot for a full series. [38]

Radio

In January 2015, the BBC broadcast a 15-part radio dramatization of the work. The series of 15-minute episodes, adapted by Marcy Kahan and directed by Emma Harding, also starred Richard Schiff ( The West Wing ), Maggie Steed ( The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus ), Colin Stinton ( Rush , The Bourne Ultimatum ) and Julian Rhind-Tutt ( Lucy , Rush , Notting Hill ). The series was part of BBC Radio 4's 15 Minute Drama "classic and contemporary original drama and book dramatisations".

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Franzen</span> American writer (born 1959)

Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel The Corrections drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His novel Freedom (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". Franzen's latest novel Crossroads was published in 2021, and is the first in a projected trilogy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Gaddis</span> American novelist (1922–1998)

William Thomas Gaddis Jr. was an American novelist. The first and longest of his five novels, The Recognitions, was named one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005 and two others, J R and A Frolic of His Own, won the annual U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. A collection of his essays was published posthumously as The Rush for Second Place (2002). The Letters of William Gaddis was published by Dalkey Archive Press in February 2013.

<i>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay</i> 2000 novel by Michael Chabon

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a 2000 novel by American author Michael Chabon that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. The book follows the lives of two Jewish cousins, Czech artist Joe Kavalier and Brooklyn-born writer Sammy Clay, before, during, and after World War II. In the story, Kavalier and Clay become major figures in the comics industry from its nascence into its Golden Age. Lengthy, Kavalier & Clay was published to "nearly unanimous praise" and became a New York Times Best Seller.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Smiley</span> American novelist (born 1949)

Jane Smiley is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noah Baumbach</span> American filmmaker (born 1969)

Noah Baumbach is an American filmmaker. He is known for making light comedies set in New York City and his works are inspired by filmmakers such as Woody Allen and Whit Stillman. His frequent collaborators include Wes Anderson, Adam Driver and his wife, Greta Gerwig.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oprah's Book Club</span> Talk show segment of books chosen by Oprah Winfrey

Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new book, usually a novel, for viewers to read and discuss each month. In total, the club recommended 70 books during its 15 years.

The term middlebrow describes middlebrow art, which is easily accessible art, usually popular literature, and middlebrow people who use the arts to acquire the social capital of "culture and class" and thus a good reputation. First used in the British satire magazine Punch in 1925, the term middlebrow is the intellectual, intermediary brow between the highbrow and the lowbrow forms of culture; the terms highbrow and lowbrow are borrowed from the pseudoscience of phrenology.

<i>How to Be Alone</i> (book) Book by Jonathan Franzen

How to Be Alone is a 2002 book collecting fourteen essays by American writer Jonathan Franzen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michiko Kakutani</span> American critic, writer (b. 1955)

Michiko Kakutani is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Kehlmann</span> German-language novelist

Daniel Kehlmann is a German-language novelist and playwright of both Austrian and German nationality.

<i>The Discomfort Zone</i> Book by Jonathan Franzen

The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History is a 2006 memoir by Jonathan Franzen, who received the National Book Award for Fiction for his novel The Corrections in 2001.

The 21st century in literature refers to world literature produced during the 21st century. The measure of years is, for the purpose of this article, literature written from (roughly) the year 2001 to the present.

<i>Freedom</i> (Franzen novel) 2010 novel by Jonathan Franzen

Freedom is a 2010 novel by American author Jonathan Franzen. It was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Freedom received general acclaim from book critics, was ranked one of the best books of 2010 by several publications, and called by some critics the "Great American Novel". In 2022, it was announced that Freedom would be adapted for television.

"Why Bother?", originally published as "Perchance to Dream: In the Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels", is a literary essay by American novelist Jonathan Franzen. It is often referred to as "The Harper's Essay". First published in the April 1996 issue of Harper's magazine, the essay concerns the persistence of reading within the context of technological growth and distraction. Franzen recounts his meditations on the state and possibility of the novel form, often against the backdrop of his personal experience, eventually concluding that the novel still has potential cultural agency in the United States, and often gains it by paradoxical drives of both culture and author.

"Mr. Difficult", subtitled "William Gaddis and the problem of hard-to-read books", is a 2002 essay by Jonathan Franzen that appeared in the 9/30/2002 issue of The New Yorker. It was reprinted in the paperback edition of How to Be Alone without the subtitle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nell Zink</span> US writer and media scholar

Helen "Nell" Louise Zink is an American writer living in Germany. After being a long term penpal of Avner Shats, she came to prominence in her fifties with the help of Jonathan Franzen and her novel, Mislaid, was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her debut The Wallcreeper was released in the United States by the independent press Dorothy and named one of 100 notable books of 2014 by The New York Times, as was Mislaid. Zink then released Nicotine, Private Novelist and Doxology through Ecco Press. In 2022 she published Avalon, again a New York Times notable book, with Alfred A. Knopf.

<i>Purity</i> (novel) English-language novel by Franzen, published in 2015

Purity is a novel by American author Jonathan Franzen. His fifth novel, it was published on September 1st, 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

<i>The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks</i> (film) 2017 American television film

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a drama television film directed by George C. Wolfe and starring Oprah Winfrey and Rose Byrne. It is based on the book of the same name by Rebecca Skloot and documents the story of Henrietta Lacks, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer in the 1950s, and whose cancer cells would change the course of cancer treatment.

<i>Crossroads</i> (novel) 2021 novel by Jonathan Franzen

Crossroads: A Novel is the sixth novel by American author Jonathan Franzen, published on October 5, 2021. It is a family saga set during the 1970s and centers on the Hildebrandt family in the fictional small town of New Prospect, Illinois. It was first announced on November 13, 2020, by Franzen's publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Claire Lombardo is an American writer. Her novel The Most Fun We Ever Had was a New York Times bestseller and was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

References

  1. 1 2 "National Book Awards – 2001". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
    (With acceptance speech by Franzen and essays by Mary Jo Bang, David Ulin, and Lee Taylor Gaffigan from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
  2. ↑ All-TIME 100 Books
  3. ↑ "A Premature Attempt at the 21st Century Canon". www.vulture.com. September 17, 2018. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  4. ↑ "The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century". The New York Times. July 8, 2024. Retrieved July 15, 2024.
  5. ↑ Rothstein, Edward (September 6, 2001). "Books of The Times; A Family Full of Unhappiness, Hoping for a Happy Ending". The New York Times. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
  6. ↑ "The Corrections". Book Marks. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  7. ↑ "Books of the moment: What the papers say". The Daily Telegraph. December 29, 2001. p. 54. Retrieved July 19, 2024.
  8. ↑ "Books of the moment: What the papers say". The Daily Telegraph. December 1, 2001. p. 62. Retrieved July 19, 2024.
  9. ↑ "The Corrections". Complete Review. October 4, 2023. Retrieved October 4, 2023.
  10. ↑ Leonard, John (September 20, 2001). "Nuclear Fission (review of The Corrections)". The New York Review of Books.
  11. ↑ "Fiction". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved January 14, 2014.
  12. ↑ "All Time 100 Novels". Time. October 16, 2005. Archived from the original on October 19, 2005. Retrieved May 25, 2010.
  13. ↑ Birnbaum, Robert. "Bret Easton Ellis", The Morning News, January 19, 2006. Retrieved on October 28, 2008.
  14. ↑ "The Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far): An Introduction", The Millions, By Editor, September 21, 2009 .
  15. ↑ McGee, C. Max (September 25, 2009). "Best of the Millennium, Pros Versus Readers". The Millions .
  16. 1 2 3 Yabroff, Jennie (December 22, 2008). "The Way We Were: Art and Culture In the Bush Era". Newsweek . New York City: Newsweek Media Group.
  17. ↑ Kachka, Boris (August 5, 2013). "Corrections". Slate. ISSN   1091-2339 . Retrieved August 17, 2018.
  18. ↑ Geier, Thom; Jensen, Jeff; Jordan, Tina; Lyons, Margaret; Markovitz, Adam; Nashawaty, Chris; Pastorek, Whitney; Rice, Lynette; Rottenberg, Josh; Schwartz, Missy; Slezak, Michael; Snierson, Dan; Stack, Tim; Stroup, Kate; Tucker, Ken; Vary, Adam B.; Vozick-Levinson, Simon; Ward, Kate (December 11, 2009), "THE 100 Greatest MOVIES, TV SHOWS, ALBUMS, BOOKS, CHARACTERS, SCENES, EPISODES, SONGS, DRESSES, MUSIC VIDEOS, AND TRENDS THAT ENTERTAINED US OVER THE PAST 10 YEARS". Entertainment Weekly. (1079/1080):74-84
  19. ↑ Brooks, Neil Edward; Toth, Josh (2007). The Mourning After: Attending the wake of postmodernism. p. 201. ISBN   978-9042021624 . Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  20. ↑ Antrim, Donald. "Jonathan Franzen". BOMB Magazine . Fall 2001. Retrieved July 27, 2011.
  21. ↑ Theo Schell-Lambert. "Village Voice 9/5/06 article". Villagevoice.com. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  22. ↑ "American Popular Culture Magazine article". Americanpopularculture.com. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  23. ↑ Laugier, Sandra. "Interview in Bomb Magazine issue 77". Bombsite.com. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  24. ↑ Merkel, Julia (October 2007). Hereditary Misery. p. 5. ISBN   9783638818230 . Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  25. ↑ Ginsborg, Paul; Ginsborg, Professor Paul (2005). ginsbor, The Politics of Everyday Life, p. 63. ISBN   9780300107487 . Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  26. ↑ "Bookpage interview". Bookpage.com. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  27. ↑ Franzen, Jonathan (May 15, 2007). Franzen, How to be Alone, p. 3-6. ISBN   9780374707644 . Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  28. ↑ Bing, Jonathan; Fleming, Michael (August 1, 2001). "'Corrections' connections for Rudin". Variety.
  29. ↑ The Corrections (2011) IMDB
  30. ↑ Susman, Gary. "Cast Away", Entertainment Weekly , January 27, 2005. Retrieved on January 25, 2007.
  31. ↑ Valby, Karen. "Correction Dept." Entertainment Weekly, October 25, 2002. Retrieved January 25, 2007.
  32. ↑ Fleming, Michael (January 27, 2005). "Zemeckis checks new draft of 'Corrections'". Variety. Retrieved January 25, 2007.
  33. ↑ Fleming, Michael. "Rudin books tyro novel", Variety, August 29, 2005. Retrieved on January 25, 2007.
  34. ↑ Watts & Pitt Undergo "Corrections" (February 4, 2005) – Dark Horizons
  35. ↑ Fleming, Michael. "Miramax, Rudin option rights to the novel: Pair pact for Pessl novel 'Calamity'", Variety, January 10, 2007. Retrieved on November 1, 2007.
  36. ↑ Andreeva, Nellie. "Noah Baumbach’s & Scott Rudin’s ‘The Corrections’ Adaptation Nears Pilot Pickup At HBO, Anthony Hopkins Circling", Deadline Hollywood , September 2, 2011. Retrieved on September 5, 2011.
  37. ↑ Tasha Robinson "Interview: Ewan McGregor"
  38. ↑ HBO Passes on the Pilot for The Corrections Adaptation
Preceded by National Book Award for Fiction
2001		Succeeded by
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.