Why can’t you ever write a plain sentence like “He finished his drink, left the pub and went home?”
—Kingsley Amis to Martin Amis

Some very good books have been written by misanthropes. One certainly can’t accuse Dawn Powell of being keen on people, or Evelyn Waugh of cutting anybody slack. But their books are satirical novels, their characters largely conceived to illustrate, or prove, just how awful everybody is. I am not sure if Jonathan Franzen is a misanthrope, but he demonstrates in his new novel The Corrections a dislike for his subjects that is sharp and unflinching. He humiliates these awful people in public and in private, shows us their social and intimate incapacities, and brings us internal monologues that reveal petty, selfish motivations. The Corrections is not, however, a satirical novel. Franzen was clearly after a broader stroke, and as a result the novel hovers somewhere between ...