Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

For Gary a key element of not being a striver, a perspirer, was to dress as if he didn’t have to work at all: as if he were a gentleman who just happened to enjoy coming to the office and helping other people. As if noblesse oblige.

Today he was wearing a caper-green half-silk sport coat, an ecru linen button-down, and pleatless black dress pants; his own cell phone was turned off, deaf to all incoming calls. He tipped his chair back and scanned the ballroom to confirm that, indeed, he was the only male guest without a necktie, but the contrast between self and crowd today left much to be desired. Just a few years ago the room would have been a jungle of blue pinstripe, ventless Mafiawear, two-tone power shirts, and tasseled loafers. But now, in the late maturing years of the long, long boom, even young suburban galoots from New Jersey were buying hand-tailored Italian suits and high-end eyewear. So much money had flooded the system that twenty-six-year-olds who thought Andrew Wyeth was a furniture company and Winslow Homer a cartoon character were able to dress like Hollywood aristocracy …

Oh, misanthropy and sourness. Gary wanted to enjoy being a man of wealth and leisure, but the country was making it none too easy. All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary — of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn’t have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively un cool?

Well, there was still the citizenry of America’s heartland: St. Judean minivan drivers thirty and forty pounds overweight and sporting pastel sweats, pro-life bumper stickers, Prussian hair. But Gary in recent years had observed, with plate-tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts. (He was part of this exodus himself, of course, but he’d made his escape early, and, frankly, priority had its privileges.) At the same time, all the restaurants in St. Jude were suddenly coming up to European speed (suddenly cleaning ladies knew from sun-dried tomatoes, suddenly hog farmers knew from crème brûlée), and shoppers at the mall near his parents’ house had an air of entitlement offputtingly similar to his own, and the electronic consumer goods for sale in St. Jude were every bit as powerful and cool as those in Chestnut Hill. Gary wished that all further migration to the coasts could be banned and all midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategic national reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to feel extremely civilized in perpetuity—

But enough , he told himself. A too-annihilating will to specialness, a wish to reign supreme in his superiority, was yet another Warning Sign of clinical D.

And Mr. Twelve Thousand Shares of Exxon wasn’t looking at him anyway. He was looking at Denise’s naked legs.

“The polymer strands,” Eberle explained, “chemotact-ically associate with active neural pathways and so facilitate the discharge of electrical potential. We don’t yet fully understand the mechanism, but the effect is to make any action the patient is performing easier and more enjoyable to repeat and to sustain. Producing this effect even transiently would be an exciting clinical achievement. Here at Axon, however, we have found a way to render that effect permanent .”

“Just watch,” the pitchman purred. 5. NOW ITS YOUR TURN TO WORK A LITTLE!

As a cartoon human figure shakily raised a teacup to its mouth, certain shaky neural pathways lit up inside its cartoon head. Then the figure drank Corecktall electrolytes, donned an Eberle helmet, and raised the cup again. Little glowing micro tubules hued to the active pathways, which began to blaze with light and strength. Steady as a rock the cartoon hand that lowered the teacup to its saucer.

“We’ve got to get Dad signed up for testing,” Denise whispered.

“What do you mean?” Gary said.

“Well, this is for Parkinson’s. It could help him.”

Gary sighed like a tire losing air. How could it be that such an incredibly obvious idea had never occurred to him? He felt ashamed of himself and, at the same time, obscurely resentful of Denise. He aimed a bland smile at the video screen as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Once the pathways have been identified and stimulated,” Eberle said, “we are only a short step away from actual morphologic correction. And here, as everywhere in medicine today, the secret is in the genes .” 6. REMEMBER THOSE PILLS YOU TOOK LAST MONTH?

Three days ago, on Friday afternoon, Gary had finally got through to Pudge Portleigh at Hevy & Hodapp. Portleigh had sounded harried in the extreme.

“Gare, sorry, it’s a rave scene here,” Portleigh said, “but listen, my friend, I did talk to Daffy Anderson per your request. Daffy says, sure, no problem, we will definitely allocate five hundred shares for a good customer at Cen Trust. So, are we OK, my friend? Are we good?”

“No,” Gary said. “We said five thousand, not five hundred.”

Portleigh was silent for a moment. “Shit, Gare. Big mix-up. I thought you said five hundred.”

“You repeated it back to me. You said five thousand. You said you were writing it down.”

“Remind me — this is on your own account or CenTrust’s?”

“My account.”

“Look, Gare, here’s what you do. Call Daffy yourself, explain the situation, explain the mix-up, and see if he can rustle up another five hundred. I can back you up that far. I mean, it was my mistake, I had no idea how hot this thing would be. But you gotta realize, Daffy’s taking food from somebody else’s mouth to feed you. It’s the Nature Channel, Gare. All the little birdies with their beaks open wide. Me! Me! Me! I can back you up for another five hundred, but you gotta do your own squawking. All right, my friend? Are we good?”

“No, Pudge, we aren’t good,” Gary said. “Do you remember I took twenty thousand shares of refinanced Adelson Lee off your hands? We also took—”

“Gare, Gare, don’t do this to me,” Pudge said. “I’m aware. Have I forgotten Adelson Lee? Christ, please, it haunts my every waking hour. All I’m trying to say to you is that five hundred shares of Axon, it may sound like a dis, but it’s not a dis. It’s the best Daffy’s going to do for you.”

“A refreshing breath of honesty,” Gary said. “Now tell me again if you forgot I said five thousand.”

“OK, I’m an asshole. Thank you for letting me know. But I can’t get you more than a thousand total without going all the way upstairs. If you want five thousand, Daffy needs a direct order from Dick Hevy. And since you mention Adelson Lee, Dick’s going to point out to me that CoreStates took forty thousand, First Delaware took thirty thousand, TIAA-CREF took fifty, and so on down the line. The calculus is that crude, Gare. You helped us to the tune of twenty, we help you to the tune of five hundred. I mean, I’ll try Dick if you want. I can also probably get another five hundred out of Daffy just by telling him you’d never guess he used to be shiny on top, to see him now. Whuff, the miracle of Rogaine. But basically this is the kind of deal where Daffy gets to play Santa Claus. He knows if you’ve been bad or good. In particular, he knows for whom you work. To be honest, for the kind of consideration you’re looking for, what you really need to do is triple the size of your institution.”