How to Be Alone: Essays
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
Flip to back
Flip to front
How to Be Alone: Essays Paperback – October 1, 2003
See all 19 formats and editions
Hide other formats and editions
| Amazon Price | New from | Used from |
|
Audio CD, Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
—
|
$24.86 | $3.00 |
$11.45
FREE Shipping on orders over $35.
Only 12 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Gift-wrap available.
Frequently Bought Together
NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE
Start reading How to Be Alone: Essays on your Kindle in under a minute.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Want to know our Editors' picks for the best books of the month? Browse Best Books of the Month, featuring our favorite new books in more than a dozen categories.
Product Details
|
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Jonathan Franzen is smart and brash, the kind of person you want as your social critic but not as a brother-in-law. Many of the 14 essays in How to Be Alone, by the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Corrections, first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and elsewhere. A long, much-discussed rumination on the American novel, (newly) titled "Why Bother?," is included, as well as essays on privacy obsession, the U.S. post office, New York City, big tobacco, and new prisons. At his best, as in "My Father's Brain," a piece on his father's struggle with Alzheimer's, Franzen can make the ordinary world utterly riveting. But at times, it can be difficult to discern where Franzen stands on any particular subject, as he often takes both sides of an argument. Valid attempts to reflect ambiguity s! ometimes lead to obfuscation, especially in his essays on privacy and tobacco, although his belief that small-town America of years gone by offered the individual little privacy certainly rings true. Franzen can write with panache, as in this comment after he watched, without headphones, a TV show during a flight: "(It) became an exposé of the hydraulics of insincere smiles." A few of the shorter pieces appear to be filler. Franzen shines brightest when he gets edgy and a little angry, as in "The Reader in Exile": "Instead of Manassas battlefield, a historical theme park. Instead of organizing narratives, a map of the world as complex as the world itself. Instead of a soul, membership in a crowd. Instead of wisdom, data." --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
"In publishing circles, confessions of self doubt are widely referred to as `whining'-the idea being that cultural complaint is pathetic and self-serving in writers who don't sell, ungracious in writers who do." This quote, taken from his Harper's essay "Perchance to Dream," and later reworked for this collection as "Why Bother," was written before Franzen tasted huge success with his bestselling novel The Corrections. Fans of that work will be intrigued by the elements from Franzen's personal life that run parallel to those of the characters in The Corrections. However, Franzen's adroit cultural criticism, albeit a personal one, is the root of this collection of essays. Hearing such subjective work read by the author himself adds an air of authenticity. It also satisfies a curiosity as to what that voice actually sounds like. This audiobook's editors satisfy that curiosity, but also make the wise choice of not letting Franzen read the entire collection. While his reading is sincere, his delivery, unlike his text, is passionless and dry. Fortunately, the lion's share of the essays is read with much more moxie by James. He gives these intelligent, thoughtful and provocative pieces more dramatic punch than Franzen can.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
203 of 224 people found the following review helpful
By
J. Smith
on November 14, 2002
Format: Hardcover
Comment
Sending feedback...
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.
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.
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
118 of 132 people found the following review helpful
By
Barron Laycock
HALL OF FAME on October 2, 2002
Format: Hardcover
Comment
Sending feedback...
It is amusing and instructional when someone so far removed from the social sciences as this author obviously is makes the intriguing connection between the deadening aspects of the social surround and its effect on individual consciousness. What Franzen bemoans here is really the entire intellectual sweep of the materialistic culture we are embedded in, yet the individual characteristics he uses in the several essays included here in order to illustrate each of his well-taken points are better described as symptoms of the hollowness and lack of intellectual depth and meaning of most of our social artifacts and habits than as simply being problems in and of themselves. He hits the problem dead on when discussing the pandemic use of technology in the form of television, pop culture, and endless games and gadgetry in an attempt to stave off boredom and "entertain' ourselves. What we really are doing is what Aldous Huxley warned of so presciently in "Brave New World"; submerging ourselves in petty diversions and banal preoccupations, deadening ourselves to our environments and to the social world that would other act to engage us in some fashion.
Likewise, his discussion of how widespread use of "serotonin reuptake inhibitors" such as Prozac feeds into a general lack of awareness is quite thought-provoking. If pain, even mental anguish such as depression, can be thought of as a warning from the body that something is wrong, then the whole cultural approach now in vogue to anesthetize the pain is the functional equivalent of a denial of the pain, a quite deliberate attempt to paper it over and therefore disregard the important message it is sending to the individual that something is very wrong.Read more ›
Likewise, his discussion of how widespread use of "serotonin reuptake inhibitors" such as Prozac feeds into a general lack of awareness is quite thought-provoking. If pain, even mental anguish such as depression, can be thought of as a warning from the body that something is wrong, then the whole cultural approach now in vogue to anesthetize the pain is the functional equivalent of a denial of the pain, a quite deliberate attempt to paper it over and therefore disregard the important message it is sending to the individual that something is very wrong.Read more ›
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
By
Laura Adams
on December 26, 2002
Format: Hardcover
Comment
Sending feedback...
I found this book thought provoking on many social dimensions, but I still wrestled with why it was published. (Cynical hypotheses, not particularly my own: milk the Corrections-cow a bit longer by publishing fast? Allow an obsessive author to edit past works?) Who knows. But one assertion can be made about this book with a fair measure of certainty: Franzen wants to be understood, both as a writer and as a human being. And these roles, it is important to note, are virtually isomorphic for Franzen. In writing about Alzheimer's or the prison system or cultural degradation, Franzen doesn't offer clear-eyed, journalistic observations that strive for balance and objectivity. Rather, he fuses social critique with personal perspective, infusing his own musings, grievances, and experiences. As he mourns the decline of serious reading, he might point to a real social phenomenon, but he clearly illustrates his individual (and probably deeper) fear of professional irrelevance. His derision of fussy female lingerie and how-to sex manuals intends to skewer the hokum threatening to infiltrate our sex lives, but it also whiffs a bit of sour grapes swallowed long ago by some smart, geeky, awkward youth who was probably a bit afraid of women. And other examples abound, as Franzen reveals liberally of his inner terrain, whether he intends to or not (I think he mostly intends to). Among other things in "How to Be Alone," we are witnessing creative writing as a powerful Rorschachian projective device: Tell me, author, what do you see when formless ink meets blank white page?
But, for me, this is the level at which the book works best. Franzen's (self) portrait of the impoverished, angst-ridden artist is a beguiling one. He salvages broken furniture from a trash heap...Read more ›
But, for me, this is the level at which the book works best. Franzen's (self) portrait of the impoverished, angst-ridden artist is a beguiling one. He salvages broken furniture from a trash heap...Read more ›
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
61 of 71 people found the following review helpful
By
William DeGenaro
on August 11, 2003
Format: Hardcover
3 Comments
Sending feedback...
I admire Franzen's fiction. "The Corrections" in particular offered a scathing critique of the myths of family and meritocracy that govern contemporary life. As the Lambert family imploded, I winced and laughed and nodded as Franzen described a landscape both pitiful and familiar. Since his novels are so critical and affecting, I thought the essays in "How to Be Alone" would also be worthwhile. I was disappointed.
Franzen's critique lacks nuance. He puts "serious fiction" on a pedestal and uncritically glorifies the "reading life." Meanwhile, he adopts an effete stance in relation to all things mass/pop culture, essentially showing off about getting rid of his tv and situating himself in the context of Quentin Compson, not Seinfeld. Without irony, he bemoans the moment when movies became "films."
While arguing the distinction between high and low culture, Franzen reveals a loathing for anyone lacking his sense of taste and refinement: those unwashed masses who (gasp!) watch tv and listen to pop music.
He concludes that he's learned that being a writer, reader, and thinker means being alone. Not only *working* alone, but also living apart from the culture and adjusting an "oppositional" (a term Franzen seems to define in a particular way--more on that in a moment) stance.
I find this problematic. Yes, of course intellectuals must devote themselves to their work, spending long hours at the keyboard or in their reading chairs. And yes, writers ought to engage in "oppositional" thought--critiquing contemporary life (which Franzen does brilliantly in "The Corrections"), taking stances opposed to dominant thought with all its banality and oppressiveness.Read more ›
Franzen's critique lacks nuance. He puts "serious fiction" on a pedestal and uncritically glorifies the "reading life." Meanwhile, he adopts an effete stance in relation to all things mass/pop culture, essentially showing off about getting rid of his tv and situating himself in the context of Quentin Compson, not Seinfeld. Without irony, he bemoans the moment when movies became "films."
While arguing the distinction between high and low culture, Franzen reveals a loathing for anyone lacking his sense of taste and refinement: those unwashed masses who (gasp!) watch tv and listen to pop music.
He concludes that he's learned that being a writer, reader, and thinker means being alone. Not only *working* alone, but also living apart from the culture and adjusting an "oppositional" (a term Franzen seems to define in a particular way--more on that in a moment) stance.
I find this problematic. Yes, of course intellectuals must devote themselves to their work, spending long hours at the keyboard or in their reading chairs. And yes, writers ought to engage in "oppositional" thought--critiquing contemporary life (which Franzen does brilliantly in "The Corrections"), taking stances opposed to dominant thought with all its banality and oppressiveness.Read more ›
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Most Recent Customer Reviews
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
