The Corrections
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season582 pages, about 12 hours: the length of 1.8 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbOne reader reports putting the book down after the first 100 pages before finishing it.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 11 reviews from critics and book blogs, 3 credit the plot and 7 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesThe Satirist hears DeLillo’s White Noise in Chip’s academic post and sees Franzen struggling with Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
The case for it
on the airport scene
“tragedy rewritten as a farce”
a book blog on the Lambert family
“the Lambert family is as real and compelling a character as any one Lambert”
Peter Ibbetson · Yale Review of Books, 2013 on Chip, the middle child
“the adorable failure of a middle child, Chip, who drew me in the most”
a Substack review on the length
“a book one would not have minded being even longer”
The Complete Review, 2001
The case against
on the length
“the novel is too long for the story it is telling”
a book blog on the plot
“Franzen invested nearly all of his efforts into his characters (at the expense of story)”
Dan Geddes · The Satirist, 2002 on the sentences
“His syntax is not so much florid as it is frenetic”
two stars · a book blog on Chip’s first chapters
“Chip, on the other hand, especially in the first chapters, was just one extended cringe.”
a book blog
