Great Expectations

(2 of 2)

Franzen's literary heroes are the masters of the paranoid, postmodern novel--William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo--writers who spin huge plots full of manic undertakings and dense riffs on civilization and its discontents. The book he put aside to write The Corrections was cut from that cloth. "It had prisons, race relations, stock-market corrections," Franzen says. "The 'corrections' in the finished book are more personal." The social disorders of the 21st century are expressed mostly through the personal distempers of the three siblings and their flight to the false consolations of sex, careerism and consumerism. "They all lose something in leaving behind their parents' values," says Franzen. "You wouldn't want a marriage like Enid and Alfred's, but when you correct things you get new problems."

Maybe so, but when you correct certain problems in the postmodern novel--its cartoonish characters, its repetitive paranoia and absorption in Big Patterns--you get a better book. The Corrections does not "solve" the mystery of family life, but it renders its mysteries with the fine filament and moral nuance they require. There are already an impressive 90,000 copies in print. While that's not quite John Grisham territory, Franzen has so far made more than a million dollars. This could be another reason why he's feeling optimistic about the literary novel these days. He may be right that serious fiction has not gone the elitist route of chamber music. But what happens to The Corrections in the marketplace is going to tell us just how big a sound it can still make.