CapitalistImperialistPig

I have now finished Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, and I have to say that it wound up being pretty satisfying. He's a good writer, even if the tribulations of his family of characters are sometimes a bit much. If implausible coincidences aren't your thing, you might disagree, but he does have wit and style. I sometimes thought of the book as a sort of anti-pornography, in that there are rather explicit descriptions of sex, but never done with any enthusiasm. Another topic close to the heart of the book is food, and while it also rates a lot of semi-technical description, I rarely felt any stirrings of appetite inspired thereby.

Jonathan Franzen has a certain penchant for the odd sentence or two, but I suspect he puts them in there just to annoy B R Myers, since he is a wonderful writer. Here is one paragraph that I like - which might also shed some light on the cost of college question: D—— College, with an elite reputation and a middling endowment, depended for its survival on students whose parents could pay full tuition. To attract these students, the college had built a $ 30 million recreation center, three espresso bars, and a pair of hulking “residence halls” that were less like dorms than like vivid premonitions of the hotels in which the students would book rooms for themselves in their well-remunerated futures. There were herds of leather sofas and enough computers to ensure that no prospective matriculant or visiting parent could enter a room and not see at least one available keyboard, not even in the dining hall or field house. Franzen, Jonathan (2001-09-15). The Corrections: A Novel (Recent Pic...