Fact and Fiction

As of last Monday, Jonathan Franzen became the first writer to be
officially dropped by Oprah Winfrey's Book Club, due to several
disparaging remarks he made about the middlebrow tastes of her
viewers. Even before he became the literary world's pretentious
fool of the moment, his new novel, The Corrections, was all
anyone could talk about. Either they loved it, hated it, liked it, still
have not gotten around to reading it, or don't want to read it.

Part of the book's fascination lies in its author's ambition; The
Corrections is written from the perspectives of five vastly
different family members, and the voices shift seamlessly and
convincingly from person to person. Franzen's ability to make
believable his characters of Alfred Lambert, sufferer of Parkinson's
and Alzheimer's, Enid Lambert, docile wife and mother of three,
Gary Lambert, oldest son who suffers from depression, Chip
Lambert, the somewhat perverse ex-professor, and Denise
Lambert, successful chef and closet lesbian, is by no means a
small feat. But perhaps what readers find intriguing, perhaps what
has generated so much talk about this nearly 600-page opus, is
its relationship to its author.

In the Sept. 10 issue of The New Yorker, Jonathan Franzen
wrote an article entitled "My Father's Brain," in which he talks about
his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Franzen paints a
clear and horrifying picture of a man falling apart, of a mother
taking control of a life she had never before controlled, of
distanced brothers, non-participants in the death of Earl Franzen.
"Here's a memory," Franzen writes. "On an overcast morning in
February, 1996, I received from my mother, in St. Louis, a
Valentine's Day package containing one pinkly romantic greeting
card, two four-ounce Mr. Goodbars, one hollowed red filigree heart
on a loop of thread, and one copy of a neuropathologist's report on
my father's autopsy." What is striking about the article, or what is
striking about reading the article in tandem with The
Corrections, is that they tell the same story. Sure, the names
have been changed, as have some of the situations, but the
sentiments remain the same. The Corrections is the
Franzen family saga or, at least, a correction of the saga, a way for
Franzen to bring his family together one last time without mishap.

In any case, the Lamberts are an interesting bunch: three children
rebelling against the staid midwestern values of their parents, two
parents trying to understand where they went wrong, and amidst
all of this turmoil, the deterioration of the head of the house, Alfred
Lambert, trying to hold on to his memory as everything else slips
away. "It was possible," Alfred thinks, "that Chip, if he came, could
answer the very important question. And the question was:" During
these mental lapses, the reader can look past the
abusiveness--Alfred's brutally controlling nature (in a fit of rage one
night, he rapes Enid, the most strikingly awful act he commits in
the novel) and his disturbed stoicism--and appreciate the fragility
of a man who has lost everything. In fact all of the Lamberts, each
and every one of whom has made some serious and ethically
questionable mistakes, are still likeable by the book's end.

And the characters do ultimately redeem the book's lackluster
ending, in which everything turns out swimmingly for everyone
except Alfred, whose death, ironically, brings his family members
closer together. Why, for instance, does Franzen feel compelled to
end this calculated book with Enid's thought, "She was 75, and
she was going to make some changes in her life," when the book,
after all, is more about the Lambert family correcting itself, and not
about Enid's personal journey towards happiness? Maybe this
ending is an attempt to demonstrate the futility of starting over so
late in life, the tragedy of having wasted so much time; regardless,
the correction is not Enid's alone. It is the whole family who must
rebuild their own wasted lives and who must learn to live after
Alfred's death. Or, more appropriately, it is Jonathan Franzen who
must rebuild his life, who must learn to live after the death of his
father, Earl Franzen.

Nonetheless, The Corrections is a page-turner and a
capably constructed page-turner at that. Franzen's writing leaves
little to be desired, and his characters' mistakes--which are
plentiful--leave the reader with the knowledge that no family is
perfect, that All-American does not even exist in the heart of
America.

But the book leaves one nagging question in its wake: Is this really
fiction?

The Corrections. By Jonathan Franzen. Farrar, Sraus and
Giroux. 568 pp. $26.