"I'll change your name of course," Luke, the narrator of "A Few Corrections," promises his Uncle Conrad, one of the family members he's been interviewing to write a novel based on the life of his recently deceased father, Wesley Sultan, a dull-seeming Midwestern businessman. The novel, he further assures his uncle, will contain only composite characters.
"If you change my name," snarls Conrad, "I'll come at you with a crew oar and break your silly-looking nose. . . . Jesus, don't you see anything? Luke, you've got to get me down exactly! Otherwise, what's the point? . . . Luke, I demand you do me justice!"
It's practically become a truism in some quarters that there's no such thing as truth. Even the most scrupulous historian, we're assured, cannot help distorting his or her subject. Thus, it is refreshing to come across a novel dedicated to the proposition that it is not only feasible but right for a writer (even a writer of fiction) to engage in a continual process of correcting errors, lies and omissions in the pursuit of accuracy.
As seems to have become his wont, poet and novelist Brad Leithauser begins this, his fifth, novel with an epigraph drawn from his previous one. He quotes an observation made by a character in his 1997 book, "The Friends of Freeland": "It occurred to me that a whole novel might be devoted to the rewriting of an obituary."
The obituary that is the subject of "A Few Corrections" records the passing of one Wesley Sultan: a 63-, no, make that 62-year-old Michigan businessman, depicted as a respectable sort of Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club member who sang in the church choir. Twice married, the father of three children, Wesley, it seems, was just beginning to enjoy his retirement when he was struck down by heart failure. But, as his adult son Luke discovers in the course of his research, not only does this dry summation not do justice to Wesley's life; it's not even factually correct. And in the process of getting the facts right, some larger truths also emerge. A high school dropout, Wesley lied about his age to land a job with Great Bay Shipping Co. He did not retire voluntarily but was fired from his job by a foundering company anxious to deny him his health benefits. His first wife, Sally, was not his first wife; he had married before but kept it a secret. His last wife, a pretty, young thing named Tiffany, had thrown him out shortly before his death on account of his incessant womanizing. Indeed, Wesley's salient feature, his raison d'e^tre, has been left out of his obituary: his need to charm every woman he's ever met.
