I’ve been reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. What can I say? Or, really, where should I begin? It’s a Post-Modern novel, by which I mean that it’s not terribly dense, nor terribly engrossing, nor terribly interesting. In fact, in an earlier draft I wrote of this post I found the process of breaking down the novel—as well as The Crying of Lot 49 and A Wild Sheep Chase, each of which I was seeking to incorporate into the discussion—so tedious that I decided to ditch what I’d written and instead create a list of the other things I’d rather critique instead. Of course, in the list below I did include a few of my points from the first draft for good measure. Waste not, want not!
1) The Fact That Politicians Are Allowed To Lie Outright: Weheavebeards.com favorite, The Daily Show, ran a clip last week of Newt Gingrich on Fox News not just mischaracterizing Obama’s proposed changes to the U.S.’s nuclear retaliation policy, but asserting—with the host’s agreement—that the policy will do the exact opposite of what, in reality, the language of the proposal states. That’s like me using this platform to claim that all Congressmen are honest, solicitous statesmen, who have only the country’s best interests in mind, when, in reality, most of them are complete dopes. And I’m not just saying that because Rep. Hank Johnson recently expressed his concern during a hearing that Guam ran the risk of capsizing due to overpopulation. Egads!
2) Post-Modern Naming: In The Corrections, the protagonist’s doorman is named Zoroaster. Is this a two-percenter joke for everyone who took a course on ancient religion in college? Is it meant to draw readers into teasing out the possible meanings of this name appearing in the text? Is it meant to satirize the very idea of critics parsing every name and reference in a novel for meaning? Also, who cares?
3) The NFL Draft: In sports, there is nothing more asinine than the authoritative judgments made about the unknowable direction of the careers of each of the players who will be drafted next week. TMQ, my favorite sports columnist, will post his annual article deriding the entire process on ESPN.com next week. Even if you are not a football fan, I encourage you to read it.
4) It’s All A Big Joke Joke: The Corrections is about middle-class disillusionment, which—whether Franzen was informed by the novel or not—leads me to compare it to Richard Yate’s Revolutionary Road, which deals brilliantly with the same topics. But, whereas Yates treats the frivolous and trivial concerns of his characters with complete seriousness, heightening the tragedy, Franzen plays the same material for laughs, reducing his depiction of the human condition to a farce.
5) Gmail Ads: Am I the only one who despises—what Google labels as—the “non-intrusive” advertisements that appear at the top of my email box based on the content of my messages? I know I write for a blog, but I’m really starting to hate the Internet. I’m about five years away from moving to a ranch in Texas with no broadband and no cell signal, just a pile of books and a newspaper subscription, if either of those things still exist in 2015.
6) Fake Artists: I recently watched We Live In Public, which chronicles the exploits of Internet “pioneer” Josh Harris, and which is filled with people who are identified on screen as an “Interrogation Artist”, a “Weapons Artist”, a “Performance Artist”, and “Instillation Artist” respectively. Inserting a qualifier into one’s title is like advertising the limits of one’s abilities. It’s the difference between calling someone a Manager and an Assistant Manager, if, in this case, the Manager was an Artist and the Assistant Manager was a person with no artistic talent who instead resorted to esoteric/meaningless/down right obscene public displays in order to gain attention and notoriety.
7) Negativity: Like this post, The Corrections is unrepentantly negative. I tried reading the novel once before, and put it down after a day. But, it’s one of those titles that you keep coming across in lists of books that authors and critics recommend, so I returned to it, thinking there’s something I’m missing. There isn’t, and today I put it down for the second time.
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