The first essay on David Foster Wallace and his suicide is the strongest in the book. It's poignant, engaging, and honest. It hooked me instantly.The problem is that the rest of the collection don't surpass, or even meet, this high bar. The interview with New York State comes closest and was genu...
whenever I fell I need to make sense of my life, just for today, or whenever I feel life is a bit to harsh I read Franzen. The sky is clear again, I feel somebody cares, I feel I can be at ease with my inadequacy, I realize the world is a vast place and that writers get out of their way to descri...
Quite a few of these essays are Franzen at his brilliant best; highly recommended. One excellent essay ("Farther Away" - well-crafted, moving); the others, disappointing.
An Opportunity to Make A Few CorrectionsI read “The Corrections” pre-Good Reads and originally rated it four stars.I wanted to re-read (and review) it, before starting “Freedom”.I originally dropped it a star because I thought there was something unsatisfying about the whole Lithuanian adventure....
Unless you are an employee of the New York Times, it has become uncool to admit to liking Jonathan Franzen.I don't know when Franzen's innate un-hipness became official. Was it when he announced his mixed feelings about his work being included in Oprah's book club? Was it when he wrote his essay ...
Mein Lieblingsroman des Jahres 2012 war Franzens "Die Korrekturen". Mein Lieblingsroman des Jahres 2013 war Franzens "Freiheit".Wird Franzen auch im Jahr 2014 seinem Spitzenplatz auf meiner Bestenliste behaupten können?Leider lautet meine Antwort dieses Mal: Nein! Auch wenn das Genie immer wieder...
How To Be Alone – a.k.a., How To Make Some Quick Cash Between NovelsFull disclosure: I love Jonathan Franzen, novelist. The Corrections and Freedom are two of my favourite novels written in the past couple of decades. And I can’t wait to read his new book, out this fall.But that’s Novelist Franz...
Franzen's freshman effort is striking. First, just one long gaze at the picture of Franzen on the back and it makes me think this kid must have been gnawing on ideas for this book in his mother's womb. Seriously, he looks like he might be wearing the same deodorant his dad gave him at puberty.Any...
Ambientada en la década de los cincuenta, cuando no se hablaba de las frustraciones sino que se ahogaban en martinis, “El hombre del traje gris” de Sloan Wilson se centra en Tom Rath, un hombre que lleva una vida idéntica a la de miles de hombres de aquella época. Tom Rath vive en Connecticut per...
After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable ...
Enid said while the rain came down in New York City. “He was carrying a big box of pecans to the basement and he didn’t hold the railing and he fell. Well, you can imagine how many pecans are in a twelve-pound box. Those nuts rolled everywhere. Denise, I spent half a day on my hands and knees. An...
I never sensed the shots. I should have felt them in my gut, having been born of the same blood, the same inheritance, the same home. It should have been like that feeling one twin gets when the other is in trouble, a hand burned on the stove matched with the other’s intuitive pain. But the six p...
I waited until nightfall to buy lunch food and fill the car with gas, to avoid wasting even a minute of birdable daylight. The only way not to question what I was doing, and why I was doing it, was to do absolutely nothing else. At the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, on a hot weekday afternoo...
She was never more of a professional, never more defensibly excused from her caretaking duties in Denver, than when she was locked in a hotel room with her green-tea bags, her anonymized Wi-Fi connection, her two colors of ballpoint, her Ambien stash. But from the moment she arrived in Amarillo, ...
Louis took twelve hours and was mostly on two-lane roads. My parents woke me up for it at dawn. We had just spent an outstandingly fun week with my Minnesota cousins, but as soon as we pulled out of my uncle’s driveway these cousins evaporated from my mind like the morning dew from the hood of ou...