SOURCE: Davis, Alan. “Family Fictions.” Hudson Review 55, no. 1 (spring 2002): 161-62.

In the following review, Davis calls The Corrections “the must-read fiction” of 2001.

The Corrections, a doorstop of a book that Jonathan Franzen published last year, received a good deal of notoriety when he managed, maybe deliberately, to insult Oprah Winfrey, who had selected his new novel for her lucrative but (Franzen feared) middlebrow book club.¹ Franzen managed to have it both ways: after he expressed his mixed feelings about her book club, Oprah disinvited him from a dinner meant to celebrate her selection, Franzen apologized (sort of), the newspapers all spelled his name right, he won the National Book Award and laughed, ever the lucky rat, all the way to the bank.

In the gumbo of mass culture where literature tries to keep its head above water, I think Oprah's been good for books, but never mind: the...