The Corrections J Frantzen

Count me in on the Houellebecq front! As for Franzen - I thought it was a very good book but not a great book. It just didn't connect sufficiently with me, the characters didn't come really alive. Yet one of our great supporters here at ABC who is also a very senior agent with Curtis Brown claims it as the greatest book she has ever read. Now that's some recommendation!

In complete agreement with you - The Corrections is certainly in the top 5 of best American novels of recent years (along with, say, Philip Roth's The Human Stain, Michael Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil and J Robert Lennon's Mailman) - it's comic, erudite, wise, frail, and human - but more than all these things, it feels like the product of somebody who was absolutely giving their all (you hear the stories that grew up around the writing of The Corrections - he wrote in a tiny room, listening to The Mekons with a scarf over his eyes, apparently . . .) . . . You get the feeling that - if The Corrections had not succeeded in the way it did - Franzen would've given up the novel lark and jumped into writing for magazines fulltime (his collection of nonfiction How To Be Alone is also very good) If you like The Corrections you may also like Purple America by Rick Moody...

I need to give this another go - you know the chapter with the screenwriter who puts in a 'hump' in the scene to make it difficult to get into, deliberately to exclude people with short attention-spans? Well, I crashed and burned on the next chapter. But before then, I'd enjoyed it enormously - I will give it another try. I did a front page on abc (back when it had front pages...) about a paragraph that did character really well on the "Show don't tell" basis. It is the one that ends "What was he doing carrying a bowl of nuts down to the basement?" "He wanted something to do in his chair."

This book sounds great. Will pick it up. Maybe skive it out of a relative for Xmas. [%sig%]

Will give some of those other titles a try. Frantzen has certainly written his heart out with this novel but he also seems to know his styles and techniques inside out, without seeming tricky or trying to show off and say hey, look at this folks, ain't I smart?! The way the "truth" of the relationships between the family shifts and rolls as the narrative develops is pulled off brilliantly. I normally find something to criticise, but the only bad thing I can say about this is that Robert Altman is bound to make another crap film out of it.

I met Franzen briefly a couple of years ago and he seemed like a pretty straight up guy (I've heard mildly conflicting reports since then - I interviewed a guy from the ULA - which is a sort of underground literary agit group - who was riled by the fact that Franzen picked up an award usually given to struggling writers and spent it on purchasing art; plus he mentioned that Franzen sat on a board that awarded various financial aid packages and Franzen pushed for an award to Rick Moody despite the fact that Moody is incredibly wealthy . . . Things like that stick in my craw somewhat, but you can't get away from the fact that the guy wrote a great book.)

Just noticed I've been spelling the guy's surname wrong as well... Okay, he's a self obsessed Chip type of a guy and writers are an incestuous bunch - but like u say, a great book. Franzen not Frantzen Think I've got it now

I had a mixed reaction to it. I found the parts about the old couple very painful and annoying to read. The rest of it was quite competently written, and some of it zipped along like an adventure tale. All in all, though, it's a bit like the cardboard shipping container that UPS used to ship The Human Stain. The two books are in different leagues.

Interesting. In the beginning I found Enid and Alfred irritating and the boat section is quite a rough ride for the reader. By the end though, when they'd been filtered through their three children and then were responding to the three of them back in St Jude, I found the old couples absurdities and deceptions understandable and incredibly readable. Got The Human Stain out yesterday from the library.

Franzen seemed to be trying very hard to come across as hipper than Tom Wolfe. That's understandable, as Tom Wolfe has had a huge impact on American writiers since the 60's, but it does not make the novel all that great. It just makes it a better imitation than some others. I'll be interested to see what he does next. I will concede, though, that after slogging through all that drivel between the old couple, the rest of it was reasonably good, but for me, nothing special. I was vaguely disgusted by one aspect of the ending, namely the bit about how the old man's illness, and especially his death, was a great thing because Enid got all the money and could at last lead the life she was meant to lead, or words to that effect. The notion that the old man was a human being himself was completely lost in the story, much like the notion of males being human beings is largely a lost concept in American society in general.

I think Alfred was given real humanity when Denise discovered that her father knew about the affair with Don Armour. That he had not buckled to Armour's blackmail, but sacrificed his good pension and better wages by quitting his job - two years from retirement. A decision that Enid never understood - because he stubbornly refused to discuss it - and something that increased Enid's bitterness towards her husband and added another fracture to their marriage. I think also, in the end, Chip came across very warmly in the way he helped his father and mother back in St Jude. He'd ditched that hangover adolescent selfishness that was tripping him up in whatever he did previously. As for Enid, in no way did I think she would be happier without Alfred. That idea was another illusion, another lie to get her through each day. I think you're right, Franzen did nurture the idea that caring for someone who is seriously ill is a burden. Given that Enid was so absorbed in her own selfhood, I found that notion of freedom from Alfred as consistent with her deeply flawed and believable personality. I thought the links were closer with Saul Bellow myself, rather than Tom Wolfe (who I haven't read enough of) but then I've recently read Herzog so perhaps I'm seeing connections that aren't there.

I've never read Bellow, so I can't say. The Wolfe connection is more stylistic than content. Then again, I could even make a similar connection to Stephen King because of the American tendency to include lots of pop culture details in the story. In the case of King, sometimes the whole story reads like an inventory of some kid's toy closet from the 70s. Wolfe is more the 'grand sweep of history' guy, but since America is a lot about pop culture, you can't have one without the other. Anyway, it was not a bad novel by any means, and I did get into it after the first 150 pages or so. I just didn't find it all that trailblazing. For me it was just a reasonably competent version of a fairly common thread in American writing. I will grant, though, that I don't know much about current American novelists, except those like Roth who have been around for ages.

It's probably just been a while since I've read a decent, readable book by a relatively new, modern writer, bar Atomised and Platform by Houellebecq. You're right though, the yanks who strive for the - takes a deep breath - "Great American Novel" do like their lists...

wooohoooo....another Houellebecq fan! That makes two of us on this site. :)) I haven't been able to drum up any interest in him around here in over a year, so I gave up.