The essays are actually outdated, but there is one truly amazing thing about reading the book anyway.

Jonathan Franzen is exposed as a hypocrite.

It's not because he reveals his own hypocrisy and points at himself. It's because he had the courage to write down his opinions. And these are the opinions of a yet-to-be-successful writer. He is angry that reading is in decline, that TV has made everyone dumber and more entertainment-hungry.

He writes in a slightly Marxist and academic style about the horrors of consumerism.

This stands in sharp contrast to his later essay collections, where Franzen has had the money to travel the world and go birdwatching. It's funny to read these essays and see how far Franzen has strayed from his own ideals. He has simply distanced himself from his youthful idealism and glorification of poverty.

It's highly entertaining to see the hypocrisy in real time.

And deeply terrifying. For it seems to be the path that we all take. It's good that Tobias at 20 didn't get his essays published, so that Tobias at 32 could read about the betrayals he had already committed against himself.

What a stick in the mud!

Jonathan Franzen should按理说appeal to吸引 a guy like me: hip, Gen X, a thorough essayist and reporter, and a beloved New Yorker writer to boot. We share a certain level of technophobia and affection for found objects. What's not to love?

First, he's one of these novelists who can't understand why nobody reads anymore, and his woe-is-me loathing厌恶 for TV and pop culture becomes very, very wearying. Franzen is either (a) not a happy person at all, or (b) pretends to be unhappier than he is, which is potentially worse. He loves his Midwestern crystallis but keeps claiming to be a hardened New Yorker; he doesn't have to pick one or the other, but the embellished inner-conflict is as irritating as an armpit rash.

There are essays I loved, such as Franzen's exploration of the Chicago Postal Service (chaos incarnate), a history of the U.S. cigarette industry (surprisingly empathetic, even if the tobacco companies are indisputably evil), and a study of New York's history and topography (always enjoyable). But they are overshadowed by lugubrious阴郁的 tirades长篇激烈的批评 against all things modern -- a yearning for the good ol' days with a dull liberal twist. This is 1990's territory, the whimpering of a depressive too cool for actual therapy. It's no wonder the book was optioned in mid-2001 and published after September 11; this is the last volume in a dying genre -- The World According to Self-Loathing Novelists brand of nonfiction.

I'm currently reading Eco's "Turning Back the Clock," a similar collection of essays and editorials by an author obese with knowledge, reason, and wit. Franzen may be beloved for writing "The Corrections," a novel so autobiographical it's barely masked as fiction, but I hope never to have to stomach him again.

Overall, while Franzen has some redeeming qualities in his writing, his constant negativity and aversion to modernity make it a struggle to fully appreciate his work. I much prefer the more balanced and engaging approach of Eco, who manages to convey his thoughts and ideas with both intelligence and charm. It seems that for me, Franzen is just a passing phase, while Eco's work will continue to be a source of inspiration and enjoyment for years to come.

Originally published over at my blog, The Grimoire Reliquary.

Jonathan Franzen is a writer who elicits a wide range of opinions. While some may be critical, one cannot deny his remarkable insight. This collection of republished essays serves as evidence of his fine writing skills. Despite originating in the 90s and early 2000s, many of the essays still hold relevance today, twenty or thirty years later.

However, like most essay collections, "How To Be Alone" is a mixed bag. Some essays, such as "Control Units," failed to engage me, even though I have an interest in the American prison-industrial complex. The tedium of it left me physically exhausted. Similarly, I read the last essay, "Inauguration Day, January 2001," just two days ago, and already I can't recall its contents.

On the other hand, the personal essays in this collection were touching. "My Father's Brain"讲述了 Franzen 与父亲患阿尔茨海默病的亲身经历，父亲在几年间逐渐被病魔摧毁。"Meet Me In St. Louis," the second to last essay, helps frame the collection as Franzen revisits his home neighbourhood after his mother's death. This essay also delves into his troubled time as an Oprah author, which was, in part, amusing.

Franzen's take on the commodification of sex in "Books In Bed" is on point, and "Lost in Mail," which ponders the fate of the Chicago Postal service, might have been good if I could remember it. However, "Why Bother," the famous "Harper's Essay" with an updated ending, I found to be thoroughly uninspiring. The essay comes across as more haughty than anything else.

In conclusion, did this collection of essays teach me how to be alone? Not really. If you're looking to learn more about loneliness from a collection of essays, I would recommend reading Rachel Cusk's brilliant "Canterbury." It offers better value for your time and, I would argue, better rhetoric as well. Nevertheless, it was a fine first taste of Franzen.

**"Perchance to Bother: A Deeper Look at Franzen's Essay"**

This piece isn't merely a review of the collection "How to Be Alone" but rather a detailed response to one of its essays, "Why Bother?" (also known as "The Harpers Essay" or "Perchance to Dream"). Since its first publication in 1996, I've read this essay in various forms about half a dozen times. Each reading, unfortunately, has left me less satisfied. The 42-page essay, with Franzen cutting about 25% of the original Harper's Essay and changing its name, still reveals a mind in flux rather than one that has reached a persuasive conclusion.

Franzen's essay starts with despair regarding the American novel, but it quickly becomes clear that his personal life, especially his troubled marriage, may be influencing his views. His initial response is to dream of escape, feeling the need to be alone and retreat to a monastery. However, he struggles to determine whether his distress comes from an internal sickness or the sickness of society.

As the essay progresses, Franzen continues to view society from a distance as a writer. He questions the compatibility of the slow work of writing and reading with modern life's hyperkinesis. He also recognizes the essence of fiction as solitary work and the paradoxes of authorship, such as the writer's isolation yet need to communicate.

The analysis of the audience leads to the term "social isolate," and Franzen quotes his friend Shirley Brice Heath, who describes him as such. While Franzen acknowledges the need to make money, the paradoxes of authorship remain. He differentiates between the writer and the reader, yet they both require each other and can form a community of differences.

In conclusion, Franzen quotes Don DeLillo, who emphasizes the personal freedom that writing provides. However, I believe Franzen's conclusion stops short of what is required for the reader to play a full role in society. Identity is social, and perhaps the role of writing and reading should be to enhance the dynamic of society rather than sustain isolation. Maybe readers also need guidance on "how to be social." I'll return to the 2002 essay, "Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-Read Books," in the future.

Desperate Authors

Franzen's journey from despair to an inadequately defined embrace of community is filled with questions and uncertainties. His dissatisfaction with the state of the novel may be a projection of his personal unhappiness. Was he just being ironic, or was he truly narcissistic?

Perchance to Dream of Escape

His dream of escape and the need for solitude are understandable, but his inability to determine the source of his distress makes it difficult to fully empathize with him. Does he blame himself or society?

From a Distance

Franzen's relationship with society as a writer looking on from a distance is both ironic and revealing. His response to society's diffidence shows his growing depression and the challenges he faces as a writer in a modern world.

A Solitary Man

The recognition that the essence of fiction is solitary work and the rest of society has sought refuge in atomized privacy highlights the isolation that many people feel today. However, Franzen's view of virtual communities as a symptom of infantilization may be too harsh.

Novelist and Audience

The irony of Franzen returning to the differential between novelist and audience at the moment when they might share an affliction shows his complex relationship with his readers. He needs to recognize that he is also a member of an audience when he reads.

The Social Isolation of the Author and the Reader

The term "social isolate" accurately describes many authors and readers, but the paradoxes of authorship and the need for communication add another layer of complexity. How can writers and readers connect in a meaningful way?

Unpredicabilty

Shirley Brice Heath's definition of "substantive works of fiction" in terms of unpredictability provides a valuable perspective on the role of literature. However, Franzen's continued differentiation between writer and reader makes it difficult to see how they can truly form a community.

The Role of Isolation

The paradoxes in Franzen's statement about solitude as a means or an end raise important questions about the nature of identity and the role of literature. Can reading truly help us escape loneliness and attain contentment?

The Identity of DeLillo

DeLillo's words offer encouragement to Franzen, but they also highlight the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between writing, reading, and identity. How can we ensure that reading has a positive impact on society?

The Politics of Identity

Franzen's failure to investigate the purposiveness of identity limits the scope of his argument. Identity is not just an individual construct but also a social one. How can we use literature to enhance our social identity and interact more effectively with others?

How to Be Social

Franzen's conclusion that readers should learn "how to be alone" rather than "how to be social" is disappointing. While being alone can be beneficial, it is not a substitute for social interaction. We need to find a balance between the two and use literature to enhance our social skills and relationships.

Post Script:

My edition's omission of the 2002 essay means I'll have to explore it further in the future. I'm curious to see how it might add to or change my understanding of Franzen's views on writing, reading, and identity.

The first Franzen I have read and I'm not impressed.

It's as if I was reminded of a not-funny George Castanza from Seinfeld. Oh, the kvetching in this collection of essays! His constant low level irritation at life was so wearying. He seems to be one of those people who confuses clinical depression with intelligence. You're not smarter than everyone else, you are just more unhappy.

The only essay I really liked was the one about living in a large city vs living in the suburbs. I found all the others to be varying levels of meh and so what.

Manhattan, in particular, offers the reassurance of high rents, which means that this is a city that people want to live in, not escape from.

Nor is there any mistaking our country's current mood of hostility toward cities. The groups that the Republicans have identified as flies in the ointment - poor people, gay people, liberal elites, rap musicians, NEA-sponsored performance artists, government bureaucrats - all happen to be concentrated in big cities.

One measure of New York's enduring primacy is that it continues to act as a lightning rod for national resentment. When Americans rail against "Washington," they mean the abstraction of federal government, not the District of Columbia. New York is resented as an actual place - for its rudeness, its arrogance, its crowds and dirt, its moral turpitude, and so forth.

Global resentment is the highest compliment a city can receive, and by nurturing the notion of the Apple as the national Forbidden Fruit such resentment guarantees not only that ambitious souls of the "If I can make it there, I'd make it anywhere" variety will gravitate toward New York but that the heartland's most culturally rebellious young people will follow.

There's no better way of rejecting where you came from, no plainer declaration of an intention to reinvent yourself, than moving to New York; I speak from personal experience.

It's far easier on the streets of New York to have experiences that have nothing to do with the spending of money than it is in the typical suburban mall.

For better or worse, the most reliable measure of a city's vitality is whether rich people are willing to live in the center of it.

However reliable the presence of the rich may be as an indicator, it's merely the final effect in a chain of causes which begins with a city's ability to attract young people. How long would the upper crust persevere on Park Avenue without the horde of young singles who fill Yorkville?

We hear a lot about the dependence of poor people on cities, but young people, especially creative young people, need cities just as much. The suburbs may be an ideal place to spend a childhood but people in the years between leaving the nest and building a nest of their own need a place to congregate.

I've noticed something odd when I've hit the sidewalks of suburban St. Louis and suburban Colorado: a not negligible percentage of the men speeding by me in their cars or sport-utility vehicles (it's always men) feel moved to yell obscenities at me. It's hard to know why they do this. The only thing unusual about me is that I'm not driving. My guess is that they yell at me simply because I'm a stranger, and from the perspective of their glassed in vehicles I have no more human reality than the coach on their TV screens who has elected to punt on fourth and short.

I've been yelled at in New York, too, but only by deinstitutionalized psychotics, and then only in the midst of fellow subway riders who sympathized with me. Jane Jacobs identified as a hallmark of city life the existence of privacy in heavy crowds - a privacy whose maintenance depends not on isolated houses and controlled shopping environments but on modes of adult behavior best learned in public spaces like the sidewalk. The country's widely decried "breakdown of civility" begins at home, rather than in so-called urban jungles.

The rating of 4.2/5 might seem decent at first glance. However, upon further inspection, it comes with a rather interesting caveat. It's because the person in question has a tendency to be a little bit of a dick all the time. This behavior, although perhaps not overly extreme, seems to have had an impact on the overall perception and subsequent rating.

Maybe it's the way they speak, the actions they take, or the attitude they project. Whatever the case may be, it's enough to cause a slight dip in their otherwise relatively good score.

It makes one wonder how much of an effect our day-to-day behavior can have on how others view and rate us. Even the smallest of actions or attitudes that might be considered less than favorable can potentially make a difference.

In this instance, the 4.2/5 rating serves as a reminder that our behavior matters and can have consequences, even if they are not always immediately obvious.

My mortal laziness towards Franzen has already become a legend among my friends, who look at me with condescension, thinking - I imagine - things like "ah, but she doesn't know how to read/didn't read correctly/didn't understand/is slow".

Is Jonathan Franzen a good writer? He is.

Is Jonathan Franzen a good essayist/journalist/whatever? After reading this book, I feel forced to answer yes.

Is Jonathan Franzen the best writer of our time and deserve all this incense around his precious literary butt? But hell no.

I quite like "The Corrections". But I bled with embarrassment for others in a good part of "Freedom" and I think "Freedom" is one of the most overvalued books in history. I could also say here that it would be nice and in good taste if Franzen stopped writing a memorable scene about poop in each of his novels, but I won't do that.

There's this story that says that after the death of DFW, Franzen decided that he was going to take for himself the position of the great promise of American literature. I don't really know how true this is - and if it's true it's a silly story both because of the simple fact that it exists and because they keep writing about it (which makes me a perfect fool at this moment), but the point is that it's not even worth comparing JF and DFW. Not that one is better than the other, but because there's no way to start comparing. The two are completely different writers, with different themes, different amplitudes, everything different. Perhaps the only thing in which they are brothers is in the fact that when they are boring, both are really boring.

I have this project of reading everything Franzen has written just to be able to have total freedom to dislike him and I confess that "How to Be Alone" has hindered my intention. The book has everything that makes me think Franzen is a bore. Namely: the thing about "I'm here opening my heart and, lol, my heart is superior to all the others, so even my emotional garbage is excellent emotional garbage"; the air of scandal and "let's tell a lot of truths here!" generating long paragraphs of whining that sound like a particularly irritating light soprano hitting high notes page after page; the professorial aura and the flailing arms while he denounces in an apocalyptic tone the connected world, technology, and the end of everything and everyone; the mania of stuffing birds and birdwatching into every context you can imagine and a whole bunch of other crazy manias. The problem is that the book manages to have excellent moments that override all of this. "The Chinese Frad" (a report that was supposed to be about the Chinese industry and at some point becomes an essay on bird watching) and "What's the Point" (an analysis of the role of the writer in the contemporary world) are such good texts that even Franzen's annoying, stuffy, and neurotic voice can't spoil them. And if an author who is unbearable to me writes texts with his unbearable voice and the texts are not unbearable, well, I have to bow my head, respect, and recommend the book. And make it very clear that I don't remember there being poop in this one.

So Jonathan Franzen doesn't know I exist and couldn't possibly have written this just to show up as confirmation during a week when I needed exactly this sort of confirmation, right? So it just felt that way.

Also it could be the title attracted me because cultivating the sort of isolation required for reading and writing does mean being a little dangerously far from the herd and I am ambivalent about it. Just as I have an odd little relationship with Goodreads. It's a way of not being alone in something I do very much alone. I worry about letting it change my interaction with the books themselves. I could become like one of those obnoxious hikers who "bags peaks" crossing them off a life-list rather than enjoying the mountain she's on. Or I could get distracted from the reading itself thinking about what I was going to say about it. But neither of those has really happened, mostly. The reading is still done in solitude, even if it becomes a place to connect with other people later. And Goodreads has served more than anything to help guide me towards other books I need to read, so maybe Mr. Franzen wouldn't disapprove.

I am coming up on a year of tracking my reading here and do feel strange about the absence of review-y type comments on the things I've read. This one's anomalous and is only tangentially about Franzen, maybe partly out of fear of spoiling it somehow for someone who hasn't read this book. But I am pretty sure I am not a reviewer/critic type. It's enough, I think, that the ideas I suck out of books get regurgitated in my journals. I know my star ratings are completely arbitrary and once in a while I even revise them. I also wish I used shelves better so that at least my Hessean glass bead game of associations could be played out virtually. But I don't. So I have to trust that there is value in the lists themselves, and in noting what my friends are reading.

And it isn't the whole value of the lists, but this morning I sat and counted how many books I have read in this last year and it was strange. Because I think of myself as having finished an odd handful of books, that I read slowly and never have enough time. But the actual objective evidence actually surprised me, making me aware of how far apart one's self-image and reality can be. Which is one of the dangers of the alone thing.

Anyway, this book, and the fact that I can go on and on about everything else and then barely articulate except in breathless exclamations. I read every word of essays on prisons and post offices, which normally I'd be skimming, bored. And he had a better answer to the question of "Why write?" than I found in Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead. And I like how he handled the question of whose fault it is when a book is too hard. And the tobacco essay! And the essay "Meet Me in St. Louis" made me cry! And nothing being over-simplified, and nothing as depressing as the Birdwatching in America essay which I still think of as one of the most depressing things I have ever read, ever. (Four years ago? Five? I can call up the room I was in and the stunned inability to cope after I finished it). So I don't do it justice, which is a good reason NOT to do reviews, but I can say his was exactly the voice I needed to hear telling me that one can be alone without being estranged from humanity, telling me that where I am is where I need to be and how I am is okay to be.

I vividly remember Franzen making a big splash on the literary scene because of the controversy surrounding Oprah's book club. His novel, The Corrections, had been selected for inclusion, but Franzen defiantly refused to appear on the show. He did this in protest of what he believed was Oprah's undue influence on book sales. At that time, I thought his stance was rather pretentious, and as a result, I deliberately steered clear of his work.

However, several of my friends were full of praise for him, which made me decide to give one of his books of essays a try. Like all such collections, the quality of the pieces in this book varies. There is a story about his father's battle with Alzheimer's that is truly extraordinarily beautiful and deeply powerful. It touches the heart and makes one reflect on the fragility of life and the importance of family. Additionally, a reported piece on the hardships faced by a post office in Chicago is an outstanding example of excellent journalism. It provides a detailed and engaging look at a particular aspect of society.

On the other hand, some of the other stories in the collection seem more concerned with being precious than with offering real illumination. They come across as a bit too self-conscious and try too hard to be clever. Moreover, a few of the essays meander so much that I found it quite a struggle to read them all the way through. They lack a clear focus and seem to wander aimlessly from one thought to another. Nevertheless, it's impossible to ignore the fact that Franzen is an immensely talented writer and an original thinker. In hindsight, it seems that he was probably right about the Oprah dust-up after all. His concerns about the commercialization of literature and the impact of popular culture on the literary world were perhaps more valid than I initially gave him credit for.

I have read two books by Frantzen. At first glance, they are quite similar, both talking about American families in the suburbs and written in the same style. However, while "Freedom" amazed me, "Corrections" left me cold.

It is similar with this collection of essays. The best ones are "My Father's Brain" and "First City". The former is a combination of family history and facts about Parkinson's disease. Certainly, it is well worth spending 10 dollars on the Kindle edition for just one essay of a few dozen pages - but if those few dozen pages are worth that much, then these are too. The latter is a look at cities - especially American cities, and most of all at NYC. Why are American cities less interesting than European ones and why is it only worth living in New York? It coincides with my understanding of the attractiveness of living in the centers of vibrant cities, and it also reminds me of the arguments because of which I already claim that Belgrade is a "small New York" :)

The other texts have an undeniable quality. For example, "Sifting the Ashes" is a good essay in defense of smoking and about the history of the tobacco industry, but the problem is that they were written in the period 1994 - 2001. If the author is talking about the impact of technology on literature and the text was written during the time of the first emails, then it is no longer so relevant. There are also other examples of social essays and discussions on current topics - but it's a pity that they were written before the great changes in society. What do you think about a text about the prediction of technological changes in the next decade - which was written twenty years ago?

This was a rather strange read for me. Franzen appears to be a proponent of a form of cultural pessimism that still, in a sense, persists. He laments the decline of highbrow literature, blames TV and the internet for making us accept capitalism, and even has an essay on his rotary phone (yes, seriously!). However, I still found some of the essays enjoyable to read, despite strongly disagreeing with his conclusions.

Looking more closely at the different topics of the essays:

The essays on his father's death, the US prison system, and the US postal service were engaging and interesting (and, if I recall correctly, without the cult/tech pessimism), and are the main reasons for my rating.

His essay on privacy is remarkable for its general analysis. Franzen argues that privacy, a value that not many people truly care about in their daily lives, has become increasingly important and is now a threat to the public sphere. It's important to note that this essay was written in 1998, long before the Facebook-Google-NSA era! He even mentions public genetic data and why it might be less of a problem in itself than genetic discrimination. From my perspective, this is all quite accurate. But his conclusions are simply crazy: If I understand him correctly, he argues for people to be less open and to protect their privacy more in order to defend the public sphere (dress up, go out, and play their part in public), which just feels wrong and doesn't make much sense to me.

His rants about the death of highbrow/difficult literature lack coherence. In one essay, he can't stop complaining about how bad it is that the "stupid masses" are turning away from difficult literature to bestsellers or even TV. And in a later essay, he claims that he can't stand difficult novels himself and thinks authors should strive to be understood. So, which is it?

There may have been other topics, but they显然 weren't very memorable or interesting to me. I would say: Read the prison/postal/death/privacy essays and skip the rest.

Franzen is a truly remarkable writer.

His work is not only fun but also highly diverting. It is evident that he has a profound love for words and sentences, which gives his writing a unique charm.

His approach to language is almost nouvelle, setting him apart from many other writers.

When one reads Franzen's works, it is like embarking on an exciting journey filled with vivid descriptions, engaging characters, and thought-provoking ideas.

His writing has the power to captivate the reader's attention from the very first sentence and keep them hooked until the last page.

I, for one, am a huge fan of Franzen and would eagerly read anything that he pens.

His works are a source of entertainment, inspiration, and intellectual stimulation, and I cannot wait to see what he comes up with next.