David, you have to watch Downton Abbey. In a way, watching the entire first series (only 7 eppies) was kind of like reading a highly entertaining/melodramatic tale of manners/British society at the turn of the century. It was created/written by the same guy who wrote Gosford Park. AND IT KINDA IS GOSFORD PARK with like the servants drama weaving into the rich people drama. (minus ryan phillipe, may his career r.i.p.)
Words of wisdom!
Nancy Drew
BECAUSE GOD KNOWS I STILL WANT TO GROW UP AND BECOME NANCY DREW. SHE WAS MY OPRAH BEFORE I KNEW OF THE MIGHT O.
Hi D,
Sorry I’ve been busy being sick/napping/watching the best British period drama series since Brideshead Revisited a.k.a. DOWNTON ABBEY (it’s basically DAME MAGGIE SMITH, as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, being an awesome bitch and schooling lesser bitches left and right; and the never-ending conspiring by the evil duo that is Mrs. O’Brien, the Countess of Grantham’s maid and Thomas, the evil gay first footman).
ANYHOOZLES, before I do a proper response, I’d like to share my FAVORITE CHIP MOMENTS (part 1):
- When he has sex with manly Melissa
- When a lesbian Filipina gets tenure over him because he had sex with manly Melissa
- When he sniffs the chaise longue—to find traces left of “vagina tang,” sweat, urine, etc—and gets off on the faint scent of body fluids
- When he stabs his palm with a cigarette butt, then grips an ice-cube to numb the pain—all while talking to his mom/dad over the phone
- When he tries to edit the super-dry opening of his monologue, but like, he fails at it, because he replaces simple verbs with synonyms that have fewer letters so he can keep hyphens and unnecessary parentheses
- When the Strand pays him $63 for a bunch of great/rare books by structuralists, post-structuralists and Marxists, etc—all of which cost him $3,800 to buy/collect
- WHEN HE STUFFS A FILET OF SALMON DOWN HIS PANTS
What are your favorites so far?
I’m going to discuss Denise/Enid later. MUCH TO TALK ABOUT THOSE TWO.
Best,
CG
via www.cbc.ca
Oh, also… David Mitchell is a total hottie. What say you of this matter? It’s very important, very important indeed.
So looking forward to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet!
Carnivorous,
I think it’s incredibly interesting that you brought up the question of his impotence, which is an idea that I fully support, especially in relation to some suppressed homosexuality. But, he really, really likes boobs. That’s pretty much the only thing that still confuses me. That’s where my Oprah face comes in.
I just want to note that Oprah’s face has so far had an enormous presence in our conversation. I am enjoying this. It’s like Oprah is some literary goddess to whom we refer in times of confusion. She is all that we need through the inevitable stretches of Franzen-induced haziness and frustration. I’d also like to note that Our All-Powerful Lady of the Nation-wide Book Club recently selected some Dickens for us all to read, and I am appreciative of this.
Anyway, back to The Corrections. Things have gotten crazy over here and I am only now getting back on the Franzen train, so I am probably further behind than you at this point, but I wanted to say – I am enjoying getting to know Alfred better. The way The Corrections is constructed is kind of ingenious. Franzen completely disregards linearity, and so the story turns sharp corners at will, heading down corridors whose existence we hardly noticed at the outset. For instance, I love Chip now that I’ve become privy to his inner-workings and back-story, but this man of questionable values/fashion sense didn’t exactly intrigue me until Franzen surprised me with a sudden foray into what it is that makes Chip, well, Chip. And there was Alfred, who also seems to lack… something (I agree with your assessment of Potency and its symbolic position in the story, what with Enid always referring passive aggressively to men who represent all that Chip and Alfred lack), and his presence sort of hangs eerily over this tale until suddenly Franzen drops Chip and enters into the mind of Father Lambert, who begins to make so much sense within the space of a couple pages about snacks and a living room. Now, if a character seems off-putting or uninteresting, I can be rest assured that Franzen will press the “suddenly three-dimensional” button and turn the Maddening and Slightly Depressing into the Relatable.
I think Chip has already resigned himself over to becoming his father. He gave up on himself the moment he decided to bang Melissa.
Oh, and what are your thoughts on Denise?
Gurl: I am looking forward to your response.
With all of my love,
DShizzle
My Bay Area Babydaddy,
Chip is precious. Not Precious, the character in that annoyingly-titled movie that was based on that book or whatever (BUT who knows. I’m not even halfway through Les Corrections and maybe we’ll find out that this FAILURE of a son/associate professor/screenwriter was totes abused by his parents I MEAN IT’S NOT TOO FAR-FETCHED coz he did THINK about raping crazy theatrical student Melissa—see pg. 61—where he also expressed some fucked up jealousy about wanting to BE crazy theatrical Melissa in some way).
ANYWAY. GOD Chip is sooooooo messed up and IMPOTENT, which is pretty much everyone we’ve encountered in this novel so far. IMPOTENCE, I’ve gathered, is a salient theme. You’re right, Chip is mad horny but he doesn’t or can’t ever satiate his sexual appetite because, you know, he’s so self-defeated (there’s some underlying HOMESEXUALITY [maybe that’s too strong of a description?] in him that I’m reading, like his wanting to be Melissa, for one, and like he’s the only male professor to have ever taught Theory of Feminism, and HE WORE LEATHER PANTS, etc. MAYBE YOU CAN REREAD PASSAGES WITH ME TO PICK OUT MORE OF THESE THINGS? Sure El Franzen explicitly says Chip is straight. But that’s kind of like when a cute “straight” boy at a party says, “Man, I love Kate Bush and Tori Amos” and I’m like GOD we’d be great together but WHY DOESN’T HE ASK ME OUT? And then I make the OPRAH-FACE because I realize then that UH, HE’S A HOMO.).
And of course demented Alfred and crazy Enid (who’s always comparing her husband who has PARKINSONS and repressed son to other more successful—or potent men)! A & E are like STUCK/TRAPPED in like a hole that is straight up out of that HOARDERS show on TLC (even when they visit NYC they’re still STUCK in some ways, because, shit, they’re staying at THE FAILURE’s “pre-war building” with the slow-ass elevator (and like ENID would not stop talking about Dean Driblett’s HUGE 6-bedroom house. In some ways, material possessions/brand name luxury items/MAJOR REAL ESTATE PROPERTIES define MANHOOD/POTENCY).
And DISEASE is also a major theme. But it also works on a metaphorical level. I mean, these are utterly DEPRESSED/REPRESSED/MENTAL characters DESPITE the fact that seem to eat well. A great scene, on page 32:
Chip shook his head. “There’s a poached salmon in the fridge. A crème fraîche with sorrel. A salad with green beans and hazelnuts. You’ll see the wine and the baguette and the butter. It’s good fresh butter from Vermont.”
“Has it occurred to you that Dad is sick?”
“An hour is all it’s going to take. Hour and a half at most.”
“I said has it occurred to you that Dad is sick?”
Chip had a vision of his father trembling and pleading in the doorway. To block it out, he tried to summon up an image of sex with Julia, with the azure-haired stranger; with Ruthie, with anyone, but all he could picture was a vengeful, Fury-like horde of disembodied breasts.
A couple of things:
1. The foods sound BOMB ASS GOOD. But legit a friend and I went to The Breslin and ordered a terrine plate and the bartender was describing each one to us and I thought of this scene. Well, ‘cause she said “sorrels” and I was like WHOA CRAZYBALLS.
2. Chip is utterly freaking out—so of course he’s in denial—about his dad’s DISEASE and IMPOTENCE. Does he think he’s doomed to become his Dad, sometime soon? Probably. Which is why he’s in a mad rush to get his script to edit it much better so he can like not be THE FAILURE anymore.
3. He can’t even have PROPER SEX in his imagination. Not with that college girl with the lip-ring/Ruthie/ANYONE.
4. I’m not as well versed on Mythology (and I never really got into it like some people in high school who declared that they were pagan and were total dicks about it especially right before the Holiday/Winter break). So I had to Wiki the reference:
When the mighty Titan Cronus castrated his father Uranus and threw his genitalia into the sea, the Erinyes [edit: AKA THE FURIES] emerged from the drops of blood, while Aphroditewas born from the crests of seafoam…in Canto IX of the Inferno they confront the poets at the gates of the city of Dis. The heads of the Erinyes were wreathed with serpents (compare Gorgon) and their eyes dripped with blood, rendering their appearance rather horrific. Other depictions show them with the wings of a bat or bird and the body of a dog.
So yeah, I like Les Corrections. Sometimes I’m like, OK maybe it’s overrated and #franzenfreude is Truth but then he sometimes sounds like that dude in college who went out with a string of aggressively feminist chicks (you know what I’m talking about) and all of them may have inspired Tori Timmelman, Chip’s ex-girlfriend, “who was so enraged with the patriarchal system of accreditation and its phallometric yardsticks of achievement that she refused (or was unable) to finish her dissertation.” And I was like, OK, he WAS that dude. He clearly needs to recover from the 1990s/numerous Lillitth Fair concerts he was forced to attend. GOD, I’m a feminist and I wouldn’t even dare.
Jewel, YODEL away. Far, far away.
Tori Amos, you can keep sprinkling them fairy dusts.
Yours,
CarGar
P.S.
How hilaaarious was it when Chip sees Melissa naked or something and he’s like UM SHE KINDA LOOKS LIKE A DUDE?! (see: my theory on his weird repressed homosexuality). Also BAM! El Franzen kills it when he’s like WHITE BOYS WITH DREADLOCKS=retarded. YESSSSSS.
Yo yo, original NY Times review of Corretionzzz.
Dear Carnelia also known as Carnivorous also known as CarGar,
I am finally here to talk to you about one Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, which is certainly proving itself to be a much faster read than anticipated. It’s difficult to resist the slightly sardonic prose and detailed characterizations. I’m nearing page 80 or so and I am particularly enjoying the character of Chip, who is outrageously horny but hugely anti-consumerism. This seems to make up for said horniness (at least in my book). Despite his libido, I sympathize. And I hope his screenplay works out. I mean.. it sounded good, yes? The boob thing was a little much. I’m just saying, I think I would see that movie.
So this won the National Book Award, eh? Franzen’s writing: sometimes reaching, but always dexterous and overflowing with precise descriptions. There is a humor that runs deep, although I think the drabness of the situation thus far prevents a lot of the funny from emerging. But what do I know? Page 75-ish of 500-something is not impressive. I suppose I will just say that I am loving it. Chip, the oversexed Marxist from the Midwest, is an intriguing characterization, perfectly positioned at the novel’s opening.
CarGar, you are tearing through this tumblr. I need your spice. And wit. And some of Franzen’s wit. And some of whatever is in that face Oprah’s making. God bless Oprah..
You know I am a shameless member of her Book Club? Did I ever tell you that? Sue me.
With literary love,
David
