The Corrections

Well, after more than a month, I am here again. I've decided to write about what I am reading right now. I am reading The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. The hardcover edition has 568 pages. I am currently on page 365. It was a selection of Oprah's Book Club (I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but it was the reason why I bought this novel in the first place).

My opinion so far: I don't like it. I could no relate to the characters; all seem so flawed and so unsympathetic. And the intertwined stories are not that interesting. For example, there is this character, Alfred, who has Parkinson’s disease, and in a scene he had some hallucinations about a "turd man". I kid you not. There are pages (more than I would have liked) describing the hallucination and the interaction with the turd. What was the purpose of that?

Furthermore, I believe that some of the descriptions are downright silly. For example, there is this passage, at page 358: "And the great theater of a good dinnertime blowout, storms crowded into the fifty-mile radius of the radar's sweep like big spiders in a little jar, clouds booming at each other from the sky's four corners, and wave upon wave of dime-sized raindrops arriving like plagues, the picture in your window going black-and-white and fuzzy, trees and houses lurching in the flashes of lightning, small kids with swimsuits and drenched towels running home headlong, like refugees." Could someone explain this to me? How does one run like a refugee?

Maybe I am missing something, like, is this novel a farce? I don't know.

As I write this, Starz is showing the movie Kung Fu Hustle. I do enjoy this movie very much, specially the part when the two killers attempt to kill the three masters. The use of the instrument as a weapon, and specifically of the music as knives, swords or even warriors, is really incredible. Such a fertile mind that of Stephen Chow.

Well, see you later.