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Saturday, November 29, 2014

Corrections, The / J. Franzen

The structure of this thing, through the first hundred or so pages, is as old-fashioned as a house with a dirt floor, but the central character's (surely doomed) pursuit of screenplay success kept me reading, for a while, and may I say, has a wildly successful novel ever had a weaker title?  A high order of craftsmanship prevails, but there's a difference between art and craft.  I felt as if I were gently being choked to death.


Bernhard's Correction refers, with typical forbidden humor, to a character's suicide and the artwork of the cover was so ugly I had to create a brown-paper-bag cover for the thing.  Book as a whole seemed to limp, unlike the hilarious Old Masters.


May or may not finish the Franzen, my hunch is not.

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