Opis

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. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father's struggle with 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.

Publisher and industry reviews:

Jacket review
'Compelling and invigorating.' The Times 'A passionate and compelling piece of work ! Each page is studded with irresistible writing which leaves you breathless for more. Franzen's strength is his ability to combine a rigorous intellectual appraoch with an upbeat energy, using language which touches the heart as surely as the head.' Time Out 'Oprah was right. Franzen is conflicted. That's what makes him a trustworthy, sceptical essayist.' FT

UK Kirkus review
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)