1 post tagged “the corrections”
THE CORRECTIONS Jonathan Franzen
Also known as how to write an enormous, 500 plus page behemoth of lost potential. This book killed me. Partly because it was so fucking pretentious, and partly because I could've seen myself really, really liking it if Franzen knew how to shut up once in a while.
I think my real beef was the fact that Franzen just doesn't know how to trim the fat. He's so in love with every word, every phrase, every anecdote that he just has to pour them all in. At some point, the description just becomes too much. We already know how rotten everyone feels, and how terrible society is, and how we should burn this mother down Pookie, so all of Franzen's self indulgent in-jokes pretty much become overkill. And also, literary masturbation! Just in case you don't know how indignant I am at this point.
Also, Franzen needs to learn when the surreal becomes just... ridiculous. Not black-comedy! Not absurdist! Not clever! Just plain idiotic. It's new, true; it's novel, too! But only because everyone else has had the sense -- or their editors had the balls -- to Cut. That. Shit. Out. I mean, for godssakes, Alfred spends approximately 20 pages talking to an imaginary turd. The turd develops character traits and a background story. At some point, when plied with an appropriate amount of coke and acid, this seems clever! And groudbreaking! Coming off from the high, you quickly realize that this is in fact self-indulgent. And retarded. Without any redeeming value whatsoever.
FRANZEN, A NOTE: There are so, so, so many other, less laughable ways to convey a mental breakdown.
And that's the book in a nutshell. Coming away from the book, you just feel an overall sense of relief over being done. There is that little man sitting in the back of your mind saying, "But what of the tragedy! What of the ironic farce!", but he's easily muffled out by the fact that you've spent the last hundred pages beating your chest and crying "OH GOD, I'M ALMOST THERE. HOLD ON GIRL." Every nice literary trick, every particular phrase that worked, and every moment of gold is drowned out by all the pure crap that surrounds it.
FRANZEN, ANOTHER NOTE: Cut to the quick. Read up on your Strunk and White, boy-o. Omit needless words.
But, I've got to admit, I fell in love with Gary and his black gloom of depression. Oh Gary! Your twisted, Boy-Scout sense of responsibility! Your weirdly masochistic relationship with your parents! Your overwhelming paranoia! Your terrifying relationship with your children! Your overwhelmingly bitchy and manipulative wife! It's beautiful! Beautiful! A+ WOULD READ AGAIN. DID YOU SEE MY EXCLAMATION POINTS? I MEAN, REALLY.
Franzen does imagery and does imagery well in Gary's passage. It may just be that I can relate more to someone stuck in limbo and paranoid and hateful than someone who is... banging his students and flying off to Lithuania or someone else who is an ace chef and a maybe-part-time lesbian. SO! It might just be personal preferance, or, as I like to think of it, I might be that Franzen has written a chapter of untouchable brilliance and astounding complexity!
SO IN SHORT, get Franzen to turn down his loud mouth and it just might all work!
AN AFTERTHOUGHT: Franzen's book isn't exactly... plot-driven, so it might be that all that slow plodding was actually character-development. Essential character-development! But, sweet Jesus, there had to have been a less painful way. THERE MUST BE.
Also known as how to write an enormous, 500 plus page behemoth of lost potential. This book killed me. Partly because it was so fucking pretentious, and partly because I could've seen myself really, really liking it if Franzen knew how to shut up once in a while.
I think my real beef was the fact that Franzen just doesn't know how to trim the fat. He's so in love with every word, every phrase, every anecdote that he just has to pour them all in. At some point, the description just becomes too much. We already know how rotten everyone feels, and how terrible society is, and how we should burn this mother down Pookie, so all of Franzen's self indulgent in-jokes pretty much become overkill. And also, literary masturbation! Just in case you don't know how indignant I am at this point.
Also, Franzen needs to learn when the surreal becomes just... ridiculous. Not black-comedy! Not absurdist! Not clever! Just plain idiotic. It's new, true; it's novel, too! But only because everyone else has had the sense -- or their editors had the balls -- to Cut. That. Shit. Out. I mean, for godssakes, Alfred spends approximately 20 pages talking to an imaginary turd. The turd develops character traits and a background story. At some point, when plied with an appropriate amount of coke and acid, this seems clever! And groudbreaking! Coming off from the high, you quickly realize that this is in fact self-indulgent. And retarded. Without any redeeming value whatsoever.
FRANZEN, A NOTE: There are so, so, so many other, less laughable ways to convey a mental breakdown.
And that's the book in a nutshell. Coming away from the book, you just feel an overall sense of relief over being done. There is that little man sitting in the back of your mind saying, "But what of the tragedy! What of the ironic farce!", but he's easily muffled out by the fact that you've spent the last hundred pages beating your chest and crying "OH GOD, I'M ALMOST THERE. HOLD ON GIRL." Every nice literary trick, every particular phrase that worked, and every moment of gold is drowned out by all the pure crap that surrounds it.
FRANZEN, ANOTHER NOTE: Cut to the quick. Read up on your Strunk and White, boy-o. Omit needless words.
But, I've got to admit, I fell in love with Gary and his black gloom of depression. Oh Gary! Your twisted, Boy-Scout sense of responsibility! Your weirdly masochistic relationship with your parents! Your overwhelming paranoia! Your terrifying relationship with your children! Your overwhelmingly bitchy and manipulative wife! It's beautiful! Beautiful! A+ WOULD READ AGAIN. DID YOU SEE MY EXCLAMATION POINTS? I MEAN, REALLY.
Franzen does imagery and does imagery well in Gary's passage. It may just be that I can relate more to someone stuck in limbo and paranoid and hateful than someone who is... banging his students and flying off to Lithuania or someone else who is an ace chef and a maybe-part-time lesbian. SO! It might just be personal preferance, or, as I like to think of it, I might be that Franzen has written a chapter of untouchable brilliance and astounding complexity!
SO IN SHORT, get Franzen to turn down his loud mouth and it just might all work!
AN AFTERTHOUGHT: Franzen's book isn't exactly... plot-driven, so it might be that all that slow plodding was actually character-development. Essential character-development! But, sweet Jesus, there had to have been a less painful way. THERE MUST BE.
