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 Franzen. Do I really need to read Essayist Franzen? Especially when his prose is often fussy, whiny and awkward?Here are two random passages from his uneven 2002 collection, How To Be Alone (take a deeeeep breath, folks): That a distrust or an outright hatred of what we now call “literature” has always been a mark of social visionaries, whether Plato or Stalin or today’s freemarket technocrats, can lead us to think that literature has a function, beyond entertainment, as a form of social opposition.and: These lines are redolent with depression and the sense of estrangement from humanity that depression fosters. Nothing aggravates this estrangement more than a juggernaut of hipness such as television has created and the digital revolution’s marketers are exploiting.Ouch. Reading prose like this, I go into editor/teaching assistant mode and want to write “Simpler language?” or "What are you trying to say?" in the margins.So, yeah, not a total fan of Essayist Franzen. What about Franzen The Man? I partly hoped these essays might give me a glimpse or two at the guy behind the fiction. And they did, up to a point.The first essay, “My Father’s Brain,” explores Alzheimer’s disease, and draws on Franzen’s memories his late father, who had the disease. For most of this piece he remains coldly clinical, until a simple moving passage near the end that displays the grace and humanity of his best fiction.I also enjoyed reading his curmudgeonly essay about being an owner of near-obsolete technology: a rotary phone, an old stereo that plays vinyl. (In another article he talks about throwing out his old Sony Trinitron.) The guy's old school, and not for any hipster reasons. I admired his long essay about the author William Gaddis (JR, The Recognitions), in which he brings up valid points about how we approach “difficult” fiction. This gives you some insight into his own approach to writing.And then there’s the infamous “Harper’s essay” chronicling the author’s growing despair with the American novel, his disillusionment with the publishing industry and the media covering it and a reading public that has a dwindling attention span. The situation seems even more dire today, what with Twitter and Facebook, the explosion of cable and streaming services and binge-watching TV. It’s a fascinating, if occasionally baggy (one of those awkward quotes above was taken from it) essay, which uses Paula Fox’s 1970 novel Desperate Characters as a springboard to make its points. And there are some intriguing theories about reading and social isolation. The essay’s companion piece is another famous essay, one he wrote after being dis-invited from the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, which had chosen The Corrections as one of their selections before he publicly criticized it. This vivid and immediate piece is a dark satire about the book – and author – as manipulated product. It cleverly uses a couple of images (a memorial tree, a dish of peas in the refrigerator) to comment on memory, privacy and the soul-sucking nature of consumerist TV.And then, well…. then there’s the rest.A long article about Chicago’s terribly inefficient postal system is interesting, but Franzen didn’t have to write it; it’s a disposable piece of journalism, neither especially good nor bad. Ditto about a piece on Big Tobacco, which the author personalizes a little by talking about his attempts to quit smoking. Or an article on the prison-industrial complex. Other essays – about the changing idea of the city, or an already dated piece about living in the digital age – feel like extended book reviews, of the kind published in The New York Review Of Books. Occasionally an essay’s subject will be make you think of a theme from one of his novels. But the ideas feel more organic when they're integrated into plot and character.Most of these pieces lack any sense of urgency or passion; they feel more like assignments dashed off between his more serious, and lasting, works. They're brief jobs, not part of any a calling.
Franzen, we know you've been busy writing the Great American Novel and all, but you are overdue for a new collection of essays that embraces (or at least nods towards) the 21st century. Several of these essays claim a date somewhere in the 90's, but I swear his ode to rotary phones could be decades older. Has he not been introduced to the cell phone? He speaks of Touch-Tones as cutting edge communication devices. In 1995 he gave away a television that appears to have doubled as side table; how long did this antique crowd up his closet? Decades. Is it really forsaking something when that thing has been obsolete for ages anyway? More kudos for giving up that HD flatscreen that is actually tempting. Anyway, I'm crazy to hear Franzen's thoughts on the collision of technology and "high art" in the form of an ereader, a manifestation of Franzen's multiple contradictory notions of art and social/cultural relevance. Franzen is full of contradictions, and what makes him so likable to me is his full willingness to admit them. "At the heart of my despair about the novel had been a conflict between a feeling that I should Address the Culture and Bring News to the Mainstream, and my desire to write about the things closest to me, to lose myself in the characters and locales I loved." He's drawn to write both a Contract novel and the Status novel, a relationship of an author with his reader versus a relationship between the work and the genius works of our literary canon. He's both sympathetic to Oprah's ability to bring literature to television viewers, and he's an "ego-blinded snob" and a complete asshole. He's a smoker who hates it when other people smoke. He resents sentimental portrayals of himself as the Midwestern author, and yet voluntarily submitted his own personal space as a set-piece for a phony coming-home. I jumped in to this book looking for answers to the questions I put to him during my reading of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, namely, can a person truly elevate their cultural understanding and artistic appreciation despite the gun at their head pushing their nose in a book? What if it's not a gun; what if it's pizza? (No reference here to Guernsey -- it's Pizza Hut's social charity of the late 90's, I believe...)The gods of commerce want you to read, and you'll be rewarded -- with pizza. Why do the gods of commerce want you to read? Well, it looks good in the ad space. Eh! says it worked for her, so I'm not going to knock it. Franzen tells us there are two kinds of serial readers -- those who have or had at least one serial-reading parent, and thus learned the habit through mimicry, or those who are just naturally "socially isolated." Not "anti-social," those are the techie nerds who find sanctuary in an inanimate world. Social isolates look for community in a fictional world of personalities, either because they have no realworld community of their own, or it doesn't fit their expectations. OK. So what's happening on Guernsey? No one here has demonstrated a serial-reading parent. Is this a group of social isolates? Well, this is a "society," (A group of social isolates doesn't even make sense), they are not feeling cut off from their own community, yet their community has been substantially "cut off," with all these Nazis around. Is the society fleeing the real world for the consolations of the imaginary? If so, I didn't see the authors writing it that way; most of the characters just seemed to have had a dormant identification with the works of Seneca or Wordsworth, and it wasn't until this experiment that the identifications were discovered. Really? Sentimental fairy dust, if you ask me, or, probably, if you were to ask Franzen. So I'm glad I came to this collection looking for answers; I got more answers than I knew I was looking for. I enjoyed everything Franzen has to say about reading, however contradictory he poses it. His treatises on post offices, prisons, cigarettes, all interesting, if not already a bit too dated. His defense of reading difficult fiction, such as Gaddis, is both inspiring and equally off-putting, perhaps the same pleasantly contradictory experience I'll have in reading Freedom.
What do You think about How To Be Alone (2003)?
I cannot think of a more perfect book for my 100th review.Reading is a solitary activity, as anyone reading this is likely to understand. Never am I more aware of this than when I try to talk to friends and family about what I'm reading. I think that is why so many of us have joined this site- we're seeking some connection with others through our isolation. By knowing that we're not alone by ourselves offers some semblance of comfort.I like Franzen very much in this collection. He comes across far better than he did in The Corrections. Well, maybe. The truth is, I was probably too hard on The Corrections. There was so much hype surrounding it that it was one of those books I refused to love before I started it. I can only imagine how much I would have appreciated it if I had read this collection of essays first. If I had, I'd know how Franzen was abandoned by Oprah for exhibiting some very human flaws. I'd know how seriously he took his fiction before writing that book and what writing it actually meant to him. In Franzen, I've found a fellow traveler who was quite unfairly tossed into the limelight.In one essay, Franzen talks about literary fiction. This essay was quite close to my heart. I work in a library and I am surrounded by people who love to read. However, I still feel quite alone around them for the simple reason that I don't consider what they read to be worth reading. This was the very thing that got Franzen labeled as an elitist and pretentious little bastard, but I really get it. I don't see the point in reading things that entertain without any other value. I could be wrong, but I genuinely feel that reading a James Patterson/Nora Roberts/Janet Evanovich/Stephen King/John Grisham novel is really no better than sitting on your couch watching Family Guy at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday. Franzen understands this and explores the idea much more eloquently than I have. And for this I am grateful. Just to know that someone else feels the same distaste that I experience makes me feel like there's at least someone out there, that this universe isn't completely devoid of those I might want to consider my own kind.What I think really put this book above others of the same variety is the astounding organization. In my experience, books of essays are rather haphazardly constructed. They may be a collection of great pieces, but they really have no business being put side-by-side like thugs in a line up. But the title of Franzen's book serves as the central theme of every single piece. He explores this idea from many different angles and, in the end, succeeds in showing us how isolated we really are. It's kind of refreshing and devastating at the same time.
—Caris
This book of essays was quite entertaining. I found the essays about subjects other than the state of literature to be the most entertaining. Some of the essays are from the 90s and reflect the sensibilities and uncertainty of how technology and the internet will develop and affect our lives. I did get bored with the essays on the state of literature. The first one was decent but the other two felt sort of rehashed. Perhaps this is the case because of their age of the essays and the fact I have read other more recent and similar essays.When Franzen is "on" he is definitely "on". The essay on Alzheimer's and his fathers decline was endearing and heartbreaking, the essays on the colorado prisons and the mail problems in chicago were both enlightening and highly entertaining.This was enjoyable to read straight through but I also feel that it would be a good book to read off and on depending on your mood.
—Dan
Despite the title, this is not a how-to book, nor is it really about being alone (maybe about being statistically alone in your opinions or values). It is a collection of essays by the author of one of my favorite novels 'The Corrections.' First off, I was surprised by the slightly pedantic, lecture-y tone of the writing. I guess I was expecting more humor. Franzen is very 'vocal' about preferring an impersonal, intellectual world over a personal, introspective one. That's okay...I enjoy reading anyone's heartfelt, well-written observations on life ( and specifically here: Alzheimer's, Public v. Private life, the sex advice industry, and the US Postal Service). These essays are, unfortunately, over a decade old and I would definitely be interested in what he thinks of The USPS or Public v. Private in 2014. After being reminded time after time that the author preferred not to know anything personal about anyone (including himself), I was tempted to dislike him. But, in the one essay about his experience being chosen as an Oprah Book Club author, he opened up & acknowledged his difficulty with processing/accessing his emotions, and doing this through his fiction instead. So...I forgave him and smiled and gave this book 4 stars.
—Vin
