BLASt’s last meeting was devoted to Jonathan Franzen’s novel, The Corrections. We engaged in some
trivia concerning Franzen: his infamous quarrel with Oprah Winfrey, the cover of
Time Magazine featuring the author, and Franzen’s meeting with Barack Obama.
We discussed the concept of The Great American Novel and different genres to which The Corrections might belong: realism, the social novel and hysterical realism. We also tried to propose how to approach Franzen critically (with relatively little success, though). Despite our problems with establishing whether The Corrections belongs, as Franzen sees it, to high culture, it seems that all of us truly enjoyed reading it!
We discussed the concept of The Great American Novel and different genres to which The Corrections might belong: realism, the social novel and hysterical realism. We also tried to propose how to approach Franzen critically (with relatively little success, though). Despite our problems with establishing whether The Corrections belongs, as Franzen sees it, to high culture, it seems that all of us truly enjoyed reading it!
by Zuzanna Ludwa
