SOURCE: Watman, Max. “On the Hysterical Playground.” New Criterion 20, no. 3 (November 2001): 67-9.

In the following review of The Corrections, Watman contends the novel is a masterful work of literature despite its small failings such as a tendency toward loquaciousness.

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 Corrections¹ a dislike for his subjects that is sharp and unflinching. He humiliates these awful people in public and in private...