Winfrey Family Book Club: The Corrections

Going into The Corrections, I knew very little about the book other than that it was supposed to be really good and that most people probably don't really read it. I actually took the book with me on a Winfrey Family vacation. Obviously I didn't read it and that's probably for the best, because this book is a little bit of a downer. Like, maybe you'll be depressed for a couple days. That type of a downer.

You'll notice that there is no grade at the beginning or the end of this post. That's because Winfreys don't believe in assigning grades to art. But if I was going to assign a grade, you know, it would probably be an A+. It was really good. Yes, there were parts of the book that interested me much less than others. However, even these parts (Chip in Lithuania) that I tried to convince myself I was bored with, were still interesting. There were some really stressful parts too. Actually, the whole book was really stressful, but particularly Gary's house and the cruise ship. Of course there was some weird sex and **SPOILER ALERT** some weird talking turds, but that's to be expected.

The coolest part about the book was Jonathan Franzen's ability to write convincingly for such a wide variety of characters (which I guess is what writers do?) He also managed to write a novel about white-upperclass angst, and still make it seem interesting and important (and not dumb). One of my favorite scenes of the novel was when young Chip was forced to stay at the kitchen table and finish his dinner, which we often had to do.

Chipper heard and saw things but they were all in his head. After three hours, the objects surrounding him were as drained of flavor as old bubble gum. His mental states were strong by comparison and overwhelmed them. It would have taken an effort of will, a reawakening, to summon the term "place mat" and apply it to the visual field that he had observed so intensely that its reality had dissolved in the observing, or to apply the word "furnace" to the rustle in the ducts which in its recurrence had assumed the character of an emotional state or an actor in his imagination, an embodiment of Evil Time. The faint fluctuations in the light as someone ironed and someone played and someone experimented and the refrigerator cycled on and off had been part of the dream. This changefulness, though barely noticeable, had been a torment. But it had stopped now.

In conclusion, this book probably did everything that it was supposed to do, and I'm not smart enough to really say anything else about it. I like it a lot, and I'm glad I read it.

NEXT MONTH'S BOOK IS THE MOVIEGOER by WALKER PERCY. Kerry and I have yet to determine the weekly page amount, but it will be significantly less than what we did for The Corrections.