Dysfunctional Fan Clubs

She wouldn't give it up--the criticisms of The Corrections kept coming. And I now knew too much about neuroscience to trust my memory--we condense, we conclude, and then we package up our opinion for posterity. "It was great!" wasn't enough to win an argument with my persistent literary pal, so, damn it, I had to buy it again and read it again, unlike certain neo-cons who picket outside movie theaters showing secular humanist lesbian thrillers!

The heavy hardback was $7.98 used, perhaps unread, with Franzen's name bigger after 10 years and the Oprah circle obscuring some of the artwork (Oprah's name being the stain that incited the pre-hate, I believe). I had read The Corrections before the whole ladies' book club debacle, when Oprah, in my mind, still resided in The Color Purple. My friend, however, had read it after... and I wondered if that made the difference. By 2004, Oprah had a net worth of $1.3 billion, and yet somehow (incongruously) represented the hardscrabble. How this media-savvy billionaire came to be pitted against a former starving-writer type, and came out the victim, I don't know! Better marketing? (It's a meta-motif, the author scrambling to make corrections after his verbal blunder.) It's true that the introverted cave-dweller came off as a dolt, but the pudding's in the pages.

And it was butterscotch! -- with fresh funny phrases like "lickspittle hellhounds." Smart, painful, insightful ... I was laughing and cringing and page-turning all the way to 500. The characters were distinct, authentic, and deeply felt, with gut-wrenching life-crises. Although I do have to say that the "Denise" section was the least compelling. Franzen really does do guys best, although his observations of the mother are so groaningly, recognizably, spot-on. But he's got a male mind, after all, and can't quite get inside a gal his own age. After reading Freedom I see that he has two types of women: the pretty blond jock (Caroline, Patty) and the dark stylish ice-queen (Denise, Lalitha).

Lest Franzen protest too much, I should point out that with Chip's script titled The Academy Purple, it seemed obvious to me that he was making a play for Oprah's attentions. (The Color Purple? But in an academic setting? get it?) And another Oprah's Book Club connection: did James Frey get his title from page 309? "I do feel crazy sometimes. All my work is in my head. I'm moving around a million little pieces of nothing..."

Oh, and to all you critical studies professors, how do you pronounce "Foucaultian" if you can't pronounce the "t"? Just wondering.

Anyway, on to my friend's last gripe...that Franzen's family wasn't "dysfunctional" enough, in that it "functioned" better than hers. But "dys" doesn't mean "un" -- it means abnormal or impaired. It's a family that functions with pain, shame, and secrecy. And all of the Lamberts were hiding their individual shame--about their drinking, their sexual orientation, their mental health, their financial means, their failures, their coming undone. We knew, of course, that they would all come together at the end for Christmas, but imperfectly.

It's been 10 years, and memoirists are writing about crazier and crazier families, but I have a renewed faith in my own memory--The Corrections still holds up as the contemporary tome of dysfunction.