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The Corrections

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The Corrections
First edition cover
AuthorJonathan Franzen
Cover artistJacket design by Lynn Buckley.
Photograph: Willinger / FPG
LanguageEnglish
PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
September 1, 2001
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages568 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBNISBN 0-374-12998-3 (first edition, hardback) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
OCLC46858728
813/.54 21
LC ClassPS3556.R352 C67 2001

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-twentieth century to "one last Christmas" together near the turn of the millennium. The novel was awarded the National Book Award in 2001 and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize[1] in 2002. It was also shortlisted for numerous honors, making it one of the most honored works in recent history.[1]

Plot summary

Alfred Lambert, the patriarch of a seemingly normal family living in the fictional town of St. Jude, suffers from Parkinson's disease and dementia. Enid, his longsuffering wife, suffers from Alfred's controlling, rigid behavior and her own embarrassment at what she perceives as her family's shortcomings. Their children all live in the Northeast. Gary, the eldest Lambert son, is a successful banker whose personal and family life is controlled by his beloved wife, a gifted manipulator and reader of pop-psychology books. Chip, the middle child, is a former academic whose disastrous affair with a student loses him a tenure-track job and lands him in the employ of a Lithuanian crime boss. Denise, the youngest of the family, is successful in her career as a chef but loses her job just at the peak of her career after interlocking romances with her boss and her boss's wife.

Reception

The novel won the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 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 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2005, The Corrections was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels.[2] In 2006, Bret Easton Ellis declared the novel "one of the three great books of my generation."[3] In 2009, website The Millions polled 48 writers, critics, and editors, including Joshua Ferris, Sam Anderson, and Lorin Stein.[4] The panel voted The Corrections the best novel of the first decade of the millennium "by a landslide".[5]

The novel was a selection of Oprah's Book Club in 2001. Franzen caused some controversy when he publicly expressed his ambivalence at his novel having been chosen by the club due to its inevitable association with the "schmaltzy" books selected in the past.[6] As a result, Winfrey rescinded her invitation to him to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show.[7]

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."[8]

Criticism

With The Corrections, Franzen turned his back on postmodernism and opted instead for a form of literary realism.[9] Critics pointed out many similarities between Franzen's childhood in St. Louis and the novel,[10] but the work is not an autobiography.[11] 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, and 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."[12] The novel also focuses on topics such as the multi-generational transmission of family dysfunction[13] and the waste inherent in today's consumer economy,[14] and each of the characters "embody the conflicting consciousnesses and the personal and social dramas of our era."[15] 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."[16]

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."[6] According to Yarboff, a study of The Corrections demonstrates that much of the apprehension and disquiet that is seen as characteristic of the Bush era and post-9/11 America actually 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.[6]

Film adaptation

In August 2001, producer Scott Rudin optioned the film rights to The Corrections for Paramount Pictures.[17] 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.[18] In October 2002, Franzen gave Entertainment Weekly a wish cast-list for 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 really don't care what they do with the movie."[19]

In January 2005, Variety announced that, with Daldry presumably off the project, Robert Zemeckis was developing Hare's script "with an eye toward directing."[20] In August 2005, Variety confirmed that the director would definitely be helming The Corrections.[21] 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.[22] In January 2007, Variety wrote that Hare was still at work on the film's screenplay.[23]

References

  1. ^ a b "Honor roll:Fiction books". Award Annals. 2007-08-16. Retrieved 2010-06-24.
  2. ^ "All Time 100 Novels". Time. Retrieved 2010-05-25.
  3. ^ Birnbaum, Robert. "Bret Easton Ellis", The Morning News, 2006-01-19. Retrieved on 2008-10-28.
  4. ^ "The Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far): An Introduction", The Millions, By Editor, September 21, 2009 .
  5. ^ "Best of the Millennium, Pros Versus Readers", The Millions, By C. Max Magee, September 25, 2009
  6. ^ a b c Yarboff, Jennie (December 22, 2008). From "The Way We Were: Art and Culture In the Bush Era". Newsweek. Retrieved January 10, 2009.
  7. ^ New York Times article Oct. 24, 2001
  8. ^ 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
  9. ^ Brooks, The Mourning After: Attending the wake of postmodernism, p. 201
  10. ^ Village Voice 9/5/06 article
  11. ^ American Popular Culture Magazine article
  12. ^ Interview in Bomb Magazine issue 77
  13. ^ Merkel, Hereditary Misery", p. 5
  14. ^ ginsbor, The Politics of Everyday Life, p. 63
  15. ^ Bookpage interview
  16. ^ Franzen, How to be Alone, p. 3-6
  17. ^ Bing, Jonathan; Fleming, Michael (2001-08-01). "'Corrections' connections for Rudin". Variety.
  18. ^ Susman, Gary. "Cast Away", Entertainment Weekly, 2005-01-27. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
  19. ^ Valby, Karen. "Correction Dept." Entertainment Weekly, October 25, 2002. Retrieved January 25, 2007.
  20. ^ "Zemeckis checks new draft of 'Corrections'". by Michael Fleming, Variety. 2005-01-27. Retrieved 2007-01-25. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  21. ^ Fleming, Michael. "Rudin books tyro novel", Variety, 2005-08-29. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
  22. ^ Watts & Pitt Undergo "Corrections" (February 4th 2005) - Dark Horizons
  23. ^ Fleming, Michael. "Miramax, Rudin option rights to novel: Pair pact for Pessl novel 'Calamity'", Variety, 2007-01-10. Retrieved on 2007-11-01.

External links

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