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Title: How to Be Alone: Essays by Jonathan Franzen ISBN: 0374173273 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4
Rating: 5
Summary: Alone, but at home in this talented writer's skin
Comment: Right now I'm reading for the second time How to Be Alone, a collection of essays that touch upon various aspects of the Self - notably the alienated Self - within modern American society. It's a topic of which I'll never tire. But here's the twist - Franzen's diverse treatments are not united so much by a historical or sociological sensibility as they are by an intimacy between writer and reader. The act of reading is the meditation Franzen wants us to make (regardless of subject) and he achieves that well. This is a book about the ability to be alone - really, truly alone, to the point where we are able to suffer and learn in our pain and loneliness rather than giving up the ghost and popping SSRIs along with the rest of the nation. One will have to actually sit down, shut up, and plunge into the unknown in order to read, sharing the ups and downs of the writer. As Franzen notes, the reader has to bring something TO a book, rather than unequivocally expecting, always, something FROM a book without offering anything. This book asks us to give a little bit, for which we get a lot.
"Why Bother" is an essay arguing that our current cultural milieu of speed, shallowness, hedonism, and information-without-wisdom doesn't even allow us to see that we are losing our relationship to solitude. The exploration of the concept of public versus private in which the essay engages basically turns conventional wisdom on its head: Franzen insists that our heavily interconnected, mediated society hardly threatens privacy at all, but is rather an extension of the private into every node of human interaction that threatens the public sphere. "Lost in the Mail" is a fascinating insider's view of the Chicago Post Office during all-too-turbulent times, showcasing the bureaucratic workings and inevitable corruption within this mysterious and quasi-religious institution. Despite inefficiencies and frustration, Franzen argues, there is an Andersonian national imaginary behind the idea of the Post Office, and it is this that makes the story interesting. The bottom line is this: whatever Franzen is writing about, he brings a clarity and realism that few others can deliver. William T. Vollmann comes to mind as a writer who, like Franzen, brings an unremitting and ethical devotion to his art.
Franzen expresses a strong disdain, or at least unfamiliarity, with history and the social sciences; in fact, he claims to have gone through school without taking even basic history courses. In spite of this, his voice deeply resonates with thinkers like Habermas, Bhaktin, Derrida, you name it. He has probably read all of them, but he mercifully spares us the name-dropping, making for a highly accessible book. Ultimately, How to Be Alone is an experience beyond its content - one that reminds us that literature is there for a purpose, and however diffuse our reading public has become, literature as a practice of exploration and communication is more important than ever. I thank Franzen for his attention to the details that matter.
Rating: 5
Summary: Franzen doesn't deserve this much criticism...
Comment: Well, I don't fully understand all of the criticism that is thrown Franzen's way. I really engaged with this book and found the essays interesting, well-written and thought-provoking. All-in-all, Franzen's insights into reading culture, writing, memory and American society were right on the money for me. I think those who don't like this book would be more at home with Newsweek and Time magazine and find USA Today sufficient for their daily news.
Criticism of Franzen as "elitist" is over-stated. If you, like I, are one of those "isolates" who starts reading early in life, you will likely find sympathy with Franzen's perspective as I did. I think "elitist" is a word thrown at those who read and think like Franzen by those who don't. I don't believe the book is elitist so much as representative of a different class of readers in American society who are a little more isolated from American consumer culture and generally find the consumer-driven, media-saturated, conformist version of America unsettling to say the least.
Rating: 3
Summary: Worth reading as an eye on Franzen's style
Comment: It's interesting how dated some of this reads. Franzen's strongest pieces are his self-portraits, in relation to his art. They reveal a lot about his view of successful fiction, as it translates into artistic expression and the ability to encapsulate time and place. But when I say "dated," I mean how early 90s most of the pieces read in their self-absorption, hand-wringing and whining sensibilities. Some of the thinking is positively Clintonian in its construction. At times, Franzen seems to mistake conventional wisdom with "wisdom," which dates these pieces. When he drags politics in, (though mercifully, in small doses) we get to see just how vaporous some of our concerns of the last decade as a nation have been. When he really soars, as he often does, he is offering a window into his own life through recording the slow deterioration of his father and his attempts to make sense of it. His ideas on systems are noteworthy, but I found myself wondering what he would have made of them from a fictional standpoint. Still, this book is worth reading for Franzen's wit, which is considerable, and his sense of hope, which is valuable.
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Title: The Corrections: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen ISBN: 0312421273 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 27 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen ISBN: 0312420145 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Strong Motion: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen ISBN: 031242051X Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides ISBN: 0374199698 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 04 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: The Little Friend by Donna Tartt ISBN: 0679439382 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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