Comments on: CLS: The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

By: obooki

obooki — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 09:11:06 +0000

I might check him out then. I seem to remember seeing his books in those nice Harvill editions I used to collect.

By: leroyhunter

leroyhunter — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 13:49:25 +0000

Re: Salter: absolutely not! It’d be hard to think of a writer less like Franzen.

By: obooki

obooki — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:56:48 +0000

He’s a bit like Tom McCarthy then? – claims to be avant-garde, but actually writes dull sub-c19th novels.

I’ve never read James Salter, and will become wary of him if you’re implying he’s anything like Franzen.

By: leroyhunter

leroyhunter — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:51:25 +0000

You could be right about avant-gardism: at the time of his Oprah imbroglio he described himself as “solidly in the high-art literary tradition” of writers. Others have demurred in this regard.

I wonder what you’d make of James Salter.

By: obooki

obooki — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:23:33 +0000

Ah, I see – writing c19th novels with c20th subject-matter. I wonder then if he isn’t too avant-garde: if he only stuck to foolproof plots – love stories, war, accounts of childhood – his works wouldn’t be so boring. Maybe he should try his hand at a thriller.

I do have a terrible problem, I know, with novels about the ordinary lives of ordinary Americans.

By: leroyhunter

leroyhunter — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 13:35:28 +0000

I finished this, many years ago, and it wasn’t a painful experience but not a particularly thrilling one either. There’s an episode about internet start-ups in Latvia, I think. And the domestic war Tom mentions. Fact is I can remember practically nothing about the book otherwise, and the hype about Franzen had grown to such repulsive levels by the time his new one came out that I actively avoided reading it (or about it).

Tom’s right – he can write, that’s the mystery. Some of his essays are really good. But he seems to think that in his novels he’s creating modern replicas of 19th century originals, and supplying a Tolstoyan vista of bourgeois existence in the US while he’s at it. Perhaps the mistake he’s making is that even Tolstoy would have struggled to make the existences of commuters and pensioners in Buttfuck, Minnesota a thrilling read, as compared to (say) the Napoleonic Wars.

By: obooki

obooki — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 21:54:40 +0000

I can take writing about everyday “life” if it’s well enough written – if it’s interesting enough. It usually tends to be the more avant-garde, though, that gets this right (although, of course, there are plenty of counter-examples). Why Chekhov actually works is for me one of those eternal mysteries? – Perhaps it’s easier to take in short passages.

For a moment then, I thought you meant that Don Delillo was also a talented domestic novelist who unfortunately wants to be Important. I suppose it’s pretty much my opinion of him.

I was going to mention a few other writers in this, like Dreiser and James T Farrell – other American realists I’ve found too tedious to read. (And then, of course, there’s Flaubert. But some people unaccountably seem to like him!).

By: Amateur Reader (Tom)

Amateur Reader (Tom) — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:06:19 +0000

They are, although I think they replace “trivia” with “life.”

I thought the best episode by far belonged to the older brother, Gary. It is a domestic story about a husband who is succumbing to depression and finds himself at war with his wife. This is Part 3. If you didn’t want to finish Chip’s story, there was no way you were going to make it through the sister’s (Part 2), which is even dimmer – not written or imagined as well.

Franzen is a talented domestic novelist who unfortunately wants to be Important, like Don DeLillo or whoever it is he has in mind. He should embrace the trivial. It is what he is good at.

By: obooki

obooki — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 22:56:29 +0000

I’d be interested to hear, in fact, from anyone who has actually finished this book (if there are such people) – see if they can confirm whether there are any more interesting episodes later on. Flicking through, it just seemed to be the same kind of stuff. The Corrections seems part of an experiment in Anglo-American literary fictions (both realist and avant-garde) to see who can come up with the dullest narrative possible.

I do think it’s an issue of subject-matter – and even wonder at times if it’s just my fault; that I just don’t find these kinds of things interesting. Perhaps other people are interested in reading about everyday trivia.

By: Bettina @ Liburuak

Bettina @ Liburuak — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:21:16 +0000

Thank you for that! I felt exactly the same about it and gave up very quickly, so I’m kind of glad to hear I’m not alone. I was bored to tears by “The Corrections”. It also didn’t help that the German translation (I tried my mother’s copy) was absolutely terrible and I could “hear” the English original through it all the time. Not my cup of tea.