Families disrupted
Tolstoy's dictum that "each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" is played out in each of these fine novels. The dysfunctional family in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections mirrors the dysfunctions of the wider society. In this, his third novel, Franzen pulls off a hat trick, successfully combining domestic drama (à la John Updike), black comedy (à la Philip Roth) and postmodern satire (à la William Gaddis)--with just a hint of Thomas Pynchon's social paranoia.
This ambitious work portrays the Lambert family, presenting each family member's perspective in separate sections. Alfred and Enid Lambert live in the suburbs of St. Jude, a Midwestern city. Their three children have all moved east. Gary, the oldest, is a prosperous banker in Philadelphia. Denise, the youngest, is the workaholic chef of a trendy restaurant in the same city. Chip, the middle child, recently fired from a college teaching position for having an affair with a student, pretends to be a writer and lives in New York off money he's borrowed from his sister.
Whether Enid will succeed in getting her entire family together for Christmas in St. Jude "one last time" is the question around which the plot revolves. What could be more American? Franzen employs his gifts for humor and description as he skewers not only the kitsch of Enid's Americana possessions but Albert's oppressive, controlling silence, Gary's greed and inability to stand up to his neurotic wife, Denise's sexual confusion and Chip's academic pretensions. Franzen's characters seek desperately to escape their crises and "make corrections." What could be more American than the eternal optimism that we can always improve our lot?
