Word: franzenã
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...been one of his toughest critics. Wood, who is also a staff writer for The New Yorker, is noted for his censure of the postmodern social novel, which he termed the “contemporary American novel in its big triumphalist form” in a 2001 review of Franzen??s novel “The Corrections.” But at the event yesterday, Wood had little but kindness for his longtime target. “A lot of us will remember the moment of its publication because it was 2001 just around the time of 9/11...
...mass market publishing industry, Dovey sees the cards as stacked against female novelists of a more literary inclination. “I suppose there are young female authors who are taken as seriously as, say, the Jonathans—you know, Jonathan Safran [Foer], Jonathan Lethem, or Jonathan Franzen??but not many of them. I can’t think of any right now,” she says, pausing for a moment. “Nicole Krauss, but she’s married to one of the Jonathans.”For Dovey, then, there?...
...that will make up for any and all of the imperfections that plague their lives. Before we get to Christmas, however, Franzen is busy sketching out the big picture details of American life through the Lamberts’ various misadventures. If a life is lived in the details, then Franzen??s grasp of the Lamberts’ inner and superficial lives is fabulous. He gives us striking and pitch-perfect accounts of the crises and triumphs and weird lines of internal reasoning exhibited by his characters, who are involved in episodes such as a biotech IPO, a fraudulent...
...greatest delights in The Corrections is the experience of coming to know Franzen??s characters, who are all trying, in one way or another, to make those necessary adjustments referred to by the title. His careful rendering of the constant struggle, forward motion and backward glances inherent in every life make the novel a full and rich experience. It is through the Lamberts, in the movements of their carefully portrayed lives, that the novel achieves its richness. Of course, it is more than a matter of who the Lamberts are; it is also in the way we perceive...
...compelling picture of America, requisite for any so-called American novel, does indeed emerge, but not so much through Franzen??s explorations of sexuality, economic motivations and rewards or mental instabilities as through the Lamberts’ perceptions and reactions to those things. For in the end, the novel is about exactly what its title suggests. A correction in the stock market is but one of many kinds of corrections, or attempts at them, in the book. We can try to fix situations in our own lives, but a correction can also be produced seemingly naturally. A system...