How to Be Alone: Essays [Paperback]

Jonathan Franzen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections, a collection of essays that reveal him to be one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics

While the essays in this collection range in subject matter from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each one wrestles with the essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civil life and private dignity; and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Reprinted here for the first time is Franzen’s controversial l996 investigation of the fate of the American novel in what became known as "the Harper's essay," as well as his award-winning narrative of his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, and a rueful account of his brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author.

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Picador; Rev Exp edition (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312422164
• ISBN-13: 978-0312422165
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,002 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jonathan Franzen is the author of three novels--The Corrections, The Twenty-Seventh City, and Strong Motion--and two works of nonfiction, How to Be Alone and The Discomfort Zone, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

185 of 206 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Franzen doesn't deserve this much criticism... November 14, 2002

By J. Smith

Format:Hardcover

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.

113 of 126 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing Look At Contemporary Society! October 2, 2002

By Barron Laycock HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

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. By treating depression as a simple medical problem that can be medicated away as easily as athlete's foot, any hope of using the pain as a starting point for the very necessary discovery process through which one might learn what was wrong and what needed to be done to correct it is gone. In essence, doctors now simply `treat' depression by medicating the symptoms out of existence, without any regard for the very serious questions such physical and emotional manifestations of pain and discomfort may mean for the overall health and well being of the patient. Under such circumstances, the doctors are no different from a guy selling shiny new sports cars to middle aged guys like me, who want a boost out of life and are willing to pay to get it. Oops! Time to take my Zoloft and feel better.

Each of the essays make the reader think, and that is the single highest compliment anyone can make about anyone's writing. I may not agree with what Franzen has to say in each case, but I enjoyed his open attitude and his keen sense that something is amiss in a nation so addicted to Oprah and easy answers that he has to stand back and say "Enough!" His criticisms of the current academic fashion of political correctness are especially interesting, as they show the absurd ways in which even the academics have "dumbed themselves down" to accept such superficial tripe as being the gospel. His notice of the fat that more and more Americans seem to becoming frightened, lonely, and isolated recalls similar observations made by social critics like Philip Slater long ago in a tome called "Pursuit Of Loneliness; American Culture At The Breaking Point" (see my review). This is an absorbing, bright, and intriguing attempt to ask some honest and penetrating questions, and while I may not agree with what he argues or with his conclusions, it is a wonderful book that raises one's intellectual curiosity and one's self-awareness in terms of how easily it is for each of us to slip into the burgeoning cultural habits he so cleverly exposes. Enjoy!

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Alone, but at home in this talented writer's skin December 5, 2002

By Henri Edward Dongieux

Format:Hardcover

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.