The third section of the novel is narrated from the point of view of Chip's affluent elder brother, Gary, and comes to a crisis one evening after his disastrous attempt at a barbecue. And seeing an event from a certain character's point of view is usually what makes it funny. The novel has rightly been praised for the range and confidence of its sympathies. Nobody much laughs in The Corrections, except the reader. A would-be sophisticate, Chip acknowledges for a moment his utter ineptitude to laugh at him is a kind of sympathy. In this situation, reflects Chip, with all that lukewarm fish in his pants, 'a new brain looked like just the ticket'. This was not the ideal time to be providing Doug with the intellectual companionship he seemed to crave.' As Doug lectures him about the biotechnology of brain alteration, we are aware of the salmon 'spreading down into Chip's underpants like a wide, warm slug'. 'The salmon-paper was sweat-bonded to Chip's skin and tearing open at the bottom. But as they talk, we can feel that deliquescing fish. As Chip is forced into ingratiating conversation, he and we realise that the line-caught Norwegian salmon is soaking through its wrapping, 'his body heat melting the fats that had given the filet a degree of rigidity'.ĭoug wants to discuss the nature of personality. But before he can leave the store he meets Doug, the husband of the producer who has promised to read his script, wheeling a shopping cart with his child and 'a four-figure avalanche of shellfish, cheeses, meats, and caviars'.

Bending to tie his laces he slips the 'beautiful paper-wrapped filet' under his sweater, which he tucks into his trousers. Having sold his once-expensive books of literary theory for a derisory sum, he finds himself in a food store for 'the super-gentry of SoHo and Tribeca', where the midsize piece of wild salmon he has selected has just been priced at $78.40 (2001 rates). H ow bad can things get? Thirtysomething Chip Lambert has lost his academic job after a sexual misdemeanour (and because he helped the student he was sleeping with write her essay) and is living in New York on dwindling funds and his hopes for his dismal film script.

The corrections franzen