More Corrections this morning -- what a mesmerizing book it is! It blows me away how Franzen can slip effortlessly from sincere (if mildly ironic) characterizations into full-on satire, without my even noticing it has happened until I'm back out of the satire -- and of course he uses many shadings of voice in between these two poles. Alfred and Enid anchor the story and their characters are drawn very sympathetically -- but at the same time you can see their failings -- Alfred's character in particular seems to me to be a successful drawing of the character that About Schmidt failed so miserably to present. Fewer than 100 pages in and I have already met 5 fully human, fully sympathetic characters! This is about as good as a novel can be by my own standards. I think I am going to start over from the beginning today or tomorrow with pencil in hand -- I am catching a lot of stuff worth underlining and commenting on but don't have any implement to do it with.
posted morning of Friday, September 12th, 2003
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