This book consists of 14 literary essays by the author of the
much-admired The Corrections, on subjects ranging from the US
postal service to its federal penitentiaries, his father's brain
biopsy to society's obsession with sex; all, according to the
author, inherently asking the same questions about how to preserve
'individuality and complexity within a noisy and distracting mass
culture'. This collection includes an edited version of 'The
Harper's Essay', Franzen's 1996 assessment of the fate of the novel
which he felt has been much misinterpreted - yet, as he makes clear
here, perhaps appropriately so. Franzen is clear-sighted about his
own failings and honest enough to admit them in print. So whilst
there is a slight whiff of pretentiousness, and at times the
definite odour of arrogant youth - on reading the Harper's essay it
somehow comes as no surprise to learn that he spent some time in an
artists' colony - Franzen's endearing candour (whether fibbing
about smoking or being, like everyone else, anxious about sex)
somehow deflects criticism, and his personal failings and
inconsistencies fall well short of those he exposes. The reader may
wince to read his admission of how, as a closet smoker, he
distrusts 'all narratives that pretend to unambiguous moral
significance'; or groan at his confession that he pretends, taking
the moral high ground, not to own any CDs, whilst secretly taping
CD-only releases. But it is worth it for the gems - the wonderful
descriptions, like that of the people who write to the New York
Times: the Refiners (suggesting alternatives), the Resonators
(finding parallels with other situations) and the Rebutters (who
simply deny that what is going on has the impact or meaning which
others perceive). And, perhaps especially, the analogies: first
wives are 'like the workers displaced from a Trabant factory';
manuals of sexual instruction rank 'near the bottom on the scale of
erotic pastimes - somewhere below peeling an orange, not far above
flossing'. The literary world needs a few more arrogant young men
like this. (Kirkus UK)
Passionate, independent-minded nonfiction from the international
bestselling author of THE CORRECTIONS. Jonathan Franzen's THE
CORRECTIONS was the best-loved and most written-about novel of
2001. Nearly every in-depth review of it discussed what became
known as 'The Harper's Essay, ' Franzen's controversial 1996 look
at the fate of the novel. This essay is reprinted for the first
time in HOW TO BE ALONE, alongside the personal essays and
painstaking, often funny reportage that earned Franzen a wide
readership before the success of THE CORRECTIONS. Although his
subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax
prison works, each piece wrestles with familiar themes of Franzen's
writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity, and the
hidden persistence of loneliness, in postmodern, imperial America.
Alzheimer's disease and a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure
as an Oprah Winfrey author. As a collection, these essays record
what Franzen calls 'a movement away from an angry and frightened
isolation toward an acceptance -- even a celebration -- of being a
reader and a writer. ' At the same time they show the wry distrust
of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate
relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the
tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of
the sharpest, toughest-minded, and most entertaining social critics
at work today
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