books

I finished “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen the other night; it almost made me cry which puts it in the emotional vicinity of Atonement, Lolita and King Lear. Except that I can’t compare, in the way that every book is so uniquely itself. The contemporary humor and bluntness and surface pessimism of “The Corrections” are unlike what moves me about the other books. Some feelings it evoked were similar to past ones I’ve had, but this isn’t to say that my response was the same at all. My favorite books have a lot in common; they make me a little (or very) sad, contain clear moments of happiness to cling to, articulate feelings or thoughts I’ve had that I haven’t described, or haven’t described well, or haven’t recognized. I usually finish them quickly. These qualities being general, the books that embody them are pretty different and I have a different relationship with each of them. I thought maybe I should start writing more about them (and writing more in general), to avoid the consuming inwardness that having a “relationship” with your books fosters, to think more about what I want to do with what the books give.

I went into the book without really knowing too much about it, though it’s well-known. The title made me think of journalism and for whatever reason that stopped me from starting it for awhile. “Corrections” turns out to be about many kinds of corrections; there are physical, concrete ones but also of course the personal, emotional ones. It’s a dysfunctional family story about parents and children and siblings and significant others trying to prevent, deny, and compensate for each other’s mistakes and flaws. It’s long and about a lot of things, but really it’s about this one thing—how screwed up we become by trying so hard not to screw up, by trying to correct ourselves into better versions of the flawed people around us.

I liked:

“When the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight—isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before?”...In typing this quote, I find that it reminds me a little of how I might think/write about something like that. Things for me are all about how I internalize them. While concrete events or singular experiences have an immediate impact on me, it’s the way they linger, build up, flow back in mind and heart over time that really changes me. We’ll see how that pans out in the future, because I’m sure I’ve only seen a tiny bit of what can change you through a life.

“He'd lost track of what he wanted, and since who a person was what a person wanted, you could say that he'd lost track of himself.”...Maybe the character believes in this line, but I don’t think the writer does. I believe in intentions, even as I feel they only go so far and am often disappointed in lack of actions (largely in myself and a small number of others from whom I expect a lot). I think what you want is a huge part of who you are, even if it’s not something you can be or do. Honestly, it’s what I fall back on when I need encouragement. I remember Mr. Floyd, our high school history teacher, asking us what categories he should grade our projects by—and I suggested effort. I remember Anna B. scoffing at this notion, and then Mr. Floyd said, effort would show in the quality of the work, so it doesn’t need quantification. Personally I think the correlation between effort and quality differs among people, and god, it’s hard to always be your best, so whatever, I’m making effort its own category.

So it’s easy to see how everyone’s felt a lost sense of self because they don’t know what they want. But maybe the things that lead you to uncertainty are just as much who you are, and maybe they’re the same things that lead you back. The book made me feel anew these cliches, of a self that stays in tact in the midst of lives falling apart and so much mess.

It scared me a little, as each day I both recognize and avoid more the reality that life will be imperfect—and not just imperfect in the romanticized way I look at flaws, mistakes, mishaps, difficult love, second choices…but imperfect in that gut-wrenchingly painful, that-was-not-for-the-best, damn-this-is-hard way. Yet, it’s easier to look back on pain in retrospect and see what each one meant and how important it was, when so much passing of time and life happens in a book...instead of trudging through it in real life. I think we develop a lot of expectations of how we’re going to feel during certain phases of our lives and through certain events, through stories—books and movies. I worry about being overprepared, because I expect certain emotions and events that I see in these fictional lives and maybe this will keep me from experiencing things I hadn’t foreseen. I worry about being underprepared, because I might think that life can be as neat of a mess as fiction is, and life will prove me wrong and it will hurt. I’m getting so confused writing this, but I also realize now I don’t have to worry about these things.

I wonder how people foresaw their futures before there was such widespread, accessible stories of fictional people, created by real people. Maybe people just absorbed things as they came, without knowing too much beforehand, without too many expectations based on what’s supposed to happen in a life. I like this idea, and believe that it still applies to us, as awash in other people’s stories as we are. Things are new and yours when they happen to you; your story is going to be the one you feel most, and most genuinely, and there will be surprises still, and you’ll be hurt and you’ll be fine.

And okay, since I mentioned it and because I came across a We-Hate-Atonement facebook group today that made me hostile and impulsive—I need to passively-aggressively defend this book. Not against people who have judged the book in its entirety and still don’t like it, but against the people who haven’t given it enough consideration to justify what they say. Not that I know the book, or any book, in its entirety but I do think there are things Atonement-critics overlook. Maybe I’m not as irritated by Briony, the protagonist, because I see a lot of myself in her, but I do see why she would annoy people. What I don’t get is how people focus on the fact that she’s to blame for everything. Yes, the book is about her crime and guilt, but it’s also clear that it’s really about atonement—which is different from forgiveness, which she isn’t asking for, or repentance, which she already obviously feels.

What’s more—people who bash the ending: the twist is not everything, and it’s more complicated than you give it credit. If you consider the implications of her self-representation, the notion of her fiction, then you see that the Briony you dislike is one that she’s created for you, and for herself. It takes a lot of courage to be honest about yourself, more so to (possibly) distort things to make your own flaws all the more apparent. Besides that, the ending isn’t clearcut. Maybe the twist is fictional, too, maybe it’s more self-inflicted punishment. Who really knows? But you just can’t hate on the novel’s premise without first considering how the ending changes not just the final parts but the entire book, without thinking of how it opens up endless perspectives on her character and the plot and atonement. If you give it at least that, you can then hate all you want. I’m mostly accepting of differences of opinion, though I have a lot of natural defensiveness that I’m trying to decrease; I just hold things I love very, irrationally close.