He tries not to get the three confused.
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He tries not to get the three confused. |
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Home Recent Publications Fiction HIV/AIDS Opinion Reviews Miscellanea     1 March 2003 |
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Jonathan Franzen I've just finished reading The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen's "International Number One Bestseller". David Foster Wallace (who he?) on the front cover of the UK paperback says it is "funny and deeply sad, large-hearted and merciless ... a testament to the range and depth of pleasures that great fiction affords". On the back Tim Adams in the London Observer praises its "edgy satire and laugh-out-loud comedy", while Blake Morrison in the Guardian (also Bangkok-based) calls it "funny, moving, generous, brutal and intelligent." Will Blyth, in that well-known literary magazine Elle, says it is "a genuine masterpiece, the first great American novel of the twenty-first century". I only read the above quotes when I had finished the book. From reviews in newspapers, I had been aware of The Corrections for some time and placed it on my mental "to read" list. However, I tend to skim reviews and before I bought the book I could have told you no more than it was a portrait of a modern US family that (the book, not the family) had been nominated for, and possibly won, the Pulitzer Prize. I therefore came to it with few preconceptions and prepared to like it. When I saw it in Don Muang airport, 650 pages long, but at 530 baht (£8 / $12.60) cheaper and presumably better value than the standard airport fare, it seemed perfect for the twelve hour flight back to London. I was wrong. Obviously out of step with my contemporaries, I found it long and tedious, a waste of a good talent. Moving at times, yes. Generous? Not in the least. And although I have a well-exercised sense of humour, I neither laughed nor smiled as I read. Since putting it down, I have struggled to recall what scenes might have caused chuckles or chortles, giggles or guffaws in my fellow-reviewers. One or two come to mind, but they struck me as sad rather than mirthful. The Corrections tells of the various members of the Lambert family: mother Enid and father Alfred in their seventies, sons Chip and Gary and daughter Denise in their thirties and forties. Alfred suffers from Parkinson's Disease and the onset of dementia while Enid puts a brave face on the situation. The only bright spot on Enid's horizon is Christmas when, she hopes, all her children (and, since Gary is the only offspring who is married, at least one grandchild) will come together. As the novel progresses, the focus moves from one to other, unveiling lives, secrets, failures and success. Hundreds of pages later, Christmas finally arrives, predictably painful. At last the story ends, to be followed by an eight page epilogue. There is no doubt that Franzen can write. Most of his characters are realistic, the exception being Chip and the ridiculous situations he finds himself in. [On reflection, I think I was supposed to laugh most at Chip, the author of an unproduced, appallingly bad screenplay (been there, done that), and his escapades in Lithuania, but whenever that fictional nation appeared (one that bore little relation to the actual country) boredom sent me skipping forward through the pages until we were back in St Jude or Philadelphia.] Two specific reasons - more accurately one of two reasons - made me hostile to the book. Either it was too long or the characters were too unlikeable. If it had been half the length I would have praised its depiction of dysfunction. (I still wouldn't have laughed - I laugh at pain only when those who suffer it are cyphers; when people I know are embarrassed or saddened, I am embarrassed or saddened with them.) Or if I had felt empathy for at least some of the characters I would have enjoyed the time spent in their company. But only Enid and Alfred aroused my sympathy and they were too put-upon, too accepting of their fate for that sympathy to last. And so I found myself spending page after page, hour after hour, with unpleasant people in unpleasant situations, where uplifting and happy moments were rare and even love was symbolised by little more than deception, greed and insult. I know that many people are unpleasant - many of my own characters are people with whom I would not want to spend time with. And good books can be written about unpleasant people. But if you do not want to try the patience of your reader, either make some of your characters likeable, or shorten your work to focus on the essentials. And if you want humour, remember that not everyone wants to laugh at other people's embarrassments and misfortune and a humour that is generous is a humour that is more humane. Like this review, the book went on and on. In the modern style, there were no chapters, no opportunity for rest and relief. By the end I had the impression of being present at a never-ending vomit where Franzen disgorged all his contempt for the human race into a steadily growing pool of embarrassment and failure. To his credit, he spared us graphic violence and the sex was left mostly to the imagination. Paradoxically, however, few of the book's failings can be laid at the author's feet. There is no question that the man can write. The problem is that, as good writers usually do, he is responding consciously or unconsciously to the market that beckons him. We live in an age of flabby, fat books, where talent is measured in bulk; it is not surprising that he takes size as his model. Look at some of the successes of the last ten years. Caleb Carr's The Alienist completed its task of describing its characters and 19th century New York 200 pages before the novel ended. Stephen King, potentially one of the best writers that US has ever produced, regularly blows 250 page masterpieces into 600 page excesses. Anne Rice, who has had a couple of good ideas, takes ten pages to say what better authors can say in ten lines. Only writers of the stature of Margaret Atwood can handle length; wisely she does so only occasionally. It is not only writers that are at fault. Editors, readers and reviewers are equally to blame. Editors no longer have the courage to edit, and readers no longer the inclination to read critically. Our minds have grown as lazy as our bodies, exercising little and consuming whatever is placed in front of them. Reviewers, fed on the same diet, are unable to distinguish nutrition from carbohydrate, and the leanness of a short well-crafted novel from the same well-crafted novel that has been stuffed with irrelevance. For me, The Corrections came alive in the final eight pages. Here was the essence of the book; as a short story it worked better than the 640 pages that had preceded it. If Franzen only knew the difference between the detail that holds back a story and the detail that moves it forward and written the whole book as economically as he wrote the epilogue, he might have written a great book. Whether it would have been published to such praise is a different question. |
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© Martin Foreman |