Rating: 
Summary: my first exposure to Franzen
Review: Franzen writes in such an evenhanded tone that it is hard to imagine anyone being mad at him. He is by turns incisive, thoughtful, and intellectual, but his terrain is a personal one, in which he reflects on himself and his reaction to the modern world. Hardly the stuff of polemics.
As the cliche goes, though, beauty is only skin deep and where I see at worst banal observations about Franzen's attempts to make sense of his disconnectedness from the world, he finds people who react to him negatively; those who call him an 'elitist' or an intellectual do not like the fact that he has used the word 'diurnality' in his prose.
Now, here's a curious phenomenon: Franzen, an author who seems quite at odds with the modern world, achieves success in the form of an endorsement from Oprah Winfrey. Ophah Winfrey, who could hardly be less controversial and more banal than Franzen, endorsed his novel "The Corrections". Suddenly, Franzen had more publicity than he had ever had before; a film crew wanted him to go back to his childhood house in St. Louis, and he started receiving hate mail, from those self-satisfied mensches in the midwest who do not like the "diurnality" in his prose.
What do we have here? Well, I'm not an earnest person, and my admittedly cynical take on this whole scenario (which at once seems to befuddle and concern Franzen) is that many people who could charitably be called casual readers have their choices distilled for them by Oprah. In general, this is an admirable goal; anything that increases the amount people read has to be a good thing if we accept that reading itself is intrinsically good. But a unexpected problem arises when you are dealing with a person like Winfrey. Winfrey is successful because of her safe banality; she does not, to use a cliche, push boundaries, nor does she demand much of her viewers. Her "I'm Ok, you're OK" rhetoric has earned her millions, in both fans and dollars.
Thus, we have the endorsement of a novel like "The Corrections," which, as I understand it, explores the existential angst of three smug, self-absorbed urbanites who, in certain ways, pine for the quotidian pleasures that their suburban parents take for granted. All well and good. But, ahh, that writing. The demands, the heavy use of abstruse words. Why "diurnality"? Why not just "daily" or some such other simple, immediately accessible word? We want our reading like we want our Oprah! Spoonfed to us so we know what to think, what to feel, and how to react.
Therein lies Franzen's troubles: he wants to be alone in the world, to think, to cogitate, to enjoy language and the written word, and, well, everyone else seems to want the artifice of American pop culture.
Rating:
Summary: Food for Thought!
Review: Franzen's rejection of talk-show queen Oprah this past year received about as much attention as his critically acclaimed book, "The Corrections". By rejecting Oprah he became a literary hero overnight. In this new collection, Franzen presents fourteen of his previously published essays. They range in subject matter from the mishandling of the U.S. Postal Office in Chicago, the way a supermax prison works, his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, privacy issues, the tobacco industry, etc. Franzen certainly covers a broad range of subjects. They are well-written, reveal a great deal of wisdom, and exhibit well placed anger and frustration. Franzen's revised essay of the 1996 Harper's outburst against the terrible state of the American novel shows his intention to move away from his angry isolation.
Franzen poses many questions, making you really think, even though there aren't any definite answers. I know, long after finishing this book, I have continued to think about what he said in these essays. I think Franzen has a clear perspective of American society, and some of the criticism thrown his way is over exaggerated. He gives us food for thought in these essays, and a chance to truly understand how to be alone. Joe Hanssen
Rating: 
Summary: Portrait of the Artist Disengaged
Review: 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. But, if they are to truly affect positive social change, shouldn't writers/readers/thinkers position themselves WITHIN the culture? Franzen cries for the loss of the "social novel," and then turns around and declares himself, essentially, antisocial. I think brilliant writers like Franzen should engage and even embrace popular and mass culture. Don't stop reading "serious books," but understand that the landscape is dotted with various kinds of texts. Franzen seems comfortable taking a conservative position vis a vis the culture wars, ironic given his investment in the critique of cultural mythology. I think it's possible to devote oneself to intellectual life, and engage with a wider cross section of cultural life. Such an open-ended approach to "culture" gives the writer/reader/thinker a wider range of reference points.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice to see I'm not alone in disliking this book
Review: I bought "How to be Alone" in Paris, at Shakespeare & Co., but I won't try to be more pretentious than that. If only Mr. Franzen could similarly reign himself in. However, at the end of long days of sightseeing, when I picked the book up and tried to get my Euros worth, I found an unexpected pleasure in slogging through the essays. In nearly every one (that I read, see below), there was an unintended (I'm sure) howler of illogic, non sequitur or just plain ignorance. Looking for such a nugget became the joy of the exercise. For example, in the essay "Why Bother?" (which became a good question as the piece dragged on), Mr. Franzen states (by not stating) that he's a better writer than Michael Crichton, although his good Midwestern manners would not allow him to say what he had just said. It would be the (hortatory?) reply he would give his brother, who likes Michael Crichton. In the same essay, he noted that his undergraduate education did not include any courses in American Literature or History, which is why he hadn't realized until late in life that "commerce" had played an essential role in American history. You know, like "the business of America is business." This educational ellipsis (or his consciousness of it)did not stop him from the startling observation that America's insulated past had spared it from all tragedies except "slavery." This, then, is the reason that most American literary geniuses have been Southern, including, I guess, the geniuses from the slave-owning class. And helped explain why the "sunny, peaceful and fertile" West Coast was the way it was (he doesn't say what way that is, but it can't be good). Someone like John Steinbeck would probably be surprised to hear that the Joads, blown off their land by drought and the Great Depression, had not endured a "tragedy," and that he should not be compared to all the Southern geniuses, no matter what the buzz is in Stockholm. Mortality, of course, is also a kind of existential tragedy, and many writers have managed to find serious themes independent of slavery, war or other social condition. Where I agree with Mr. Franzen's brother is that Michael Crichton probably wouldn't make this kind of mistake. Nor would Mr. Crichton, as a Harvard-trained M.D., be likely to think that a tendency to become addicted to smoking results from having "too much unstructured time," as Mr. Franzen apparently does in offering a "reason" for his own relapses.
I confess I didn't finish all of these things. The trip came to an end and the book didn't seem to travel well. I decided to re-read "The Andromeda Strain," a great piece of writing.
Rating:
Summary: very stimulating, stirring, challenging reading
Review: I enjoyed this collection of essays very much. Some of the essasy were quite dense, and made me feel a bit inadequate, but I will read them over and take them as a challenge to me, not elititism. Even if a bit of what Franzen writes is self-congratulatory, that seems human and understandable to me--but I don't think he is writing to pat himself on the back. I really enjoyed his essay on Prisons--reading it felt to me like watching a Michael Moore Documentary--because you see the issue from many different perspectives and from a very human (vs abstract) stand point--and you are not given answers, but left to "work with" the ambiguity. I also was very much stirred by his essays on his father and on the Oprah taping. I definitely feel this collection is worth reading...I think most people can take something from it, even if, like me, they are nowhere near as well-read as Franzen.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I found the book extremely disappointing. The essays are neither personal enough to be engaging, nor deep enough to be intellectually stimulating. He talks about his personal life in such a detached and cold voice that even the pieces that had a potential of being extremely moving (like the one about his father) end up lifeless and just plain boring. I kept looking for something clever in the book, but instead the word "pseudo-intellectual" kept coming to my mind, as I could not find any depth to this writing.
Overall, I found the tone of the book to be too whiny and lacking in wit. A waste of my money.
Rating:
Summary: Portrait of the Artist
Review: 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... he hunches over a clattering, archaic keyboard, pounding out his under-appreciated prose... he fires up fresh waves of neurosis with each new cigarette... he develops a psychosomatic rash for violating his principles. And he finally gets recognized for the enormous talent that he is. Whatever the reasons for this book, I'm glad it was published, or else I might not have had access to this set of writings. Franzen loses one star (4/5), however, for having insufficient rapport or acquaintance with his readers. He's fixated on his notion of an erstwhile readership that has devolved into MTV-watching technophiles and couch potatoes, while giving little nod of recognition to the diverse lot of people who do read. This strikes me as dismissive and myopic in a man with a gift for nuance in so many other ways. Nevertheless, Franzen's worldview, and his writing, will probably evolve, along with his growing accolades and financial security. Now that he has the recognition he craves, will he cut his readership some slack? (Will he bother to get to know them, or view it as relevant?) Will he invest in some of that reviled technology? Will he lose some of his alienated, self-absorbed edge and develop a more centered soulfulness? (Will his characters, as well?) I look forward to finding out because, beguiled, I'm likely to follow this author wherever he decides to go next.
Rating: 
Summary: The guy don't miss a thing
Review: I may be one of the only reviewers here who read this book of essays, and has not yet read The Corrections. The novel's on my stack now though, and it's due to a love of the way this guy writes. The essays in How to Be Alone really made me think - and Franzen writes in such a way that you can't imagine any side of the issue that he has left out. My favorite essay is an existential self-commentary about the life of the writer in a world that uses the written word to communicate less and less. He suggests that in the days of the classic novel, writers had a chance to share news and commentary about the richer fibers of life. For much of the population, that need is met through TV now, scary thought as it may be. The essays caused the "Well, I never thought of it *that* way before" reaction for me, and you just can't beat that. The post office essay was also engrossing, and quite the picture of the way people will react when working within a flawed system. Some of the other reviewers here seemed offended by Franzen and commented that he didn't give enough credit to those of us who are the readers out there. I didn't find that to be the case at all, and got the sense that Franzen, in fact, wrote for the lifelong readers out there, certainly not for the Danielle Steel breed of folks. Geez, he dedicates his life work to us. Kinda ironic that he was one of the writers chosen to join the book club that reintroduced serious reading for so many people. He had the chance to affect change in the problem, and then felt invaded by the opportunity. Oprah said that he was "conflicted" and I suppose this was true. To be conflicted is often the case if you dare to dig deep enough and explore an issue. At the end of How to Be Alone, I really wanted more of Franzen's unique way of looking at the world. Glad to see that I have a big, ole, honkin' novel waiting to provide just that.
Rating:
Summary: I like Franzen.
Review: I picked this up not knowing much about Jonathan Franzen. Rather, with a 74-mile commute to work, I resonated with the title. However, after listening to the essays, I resonated with the author. Now I'm a Franzen fan! Yes, he's cranky, pretentious, egotistical, and probably a good candidate for counseling. However, a honest look at social systems could tilt us all a little towards the negative. I found his essay on his father's struggle with Alzheimer's to be intensely powerful, the essay detailing the Chicago postal system less so. Franzen is a true wordsmith, crafting clever and evocative sentences that delight the reader (and, presumably, the author as well). So, while he may be a little judgmental and boorish at times, I wouldn't let it preclude you from enjoying his writing. You may, however, want to rethink inviting him to Christmas dinner.
Rating:
Summary: Smartly Written and Thought Provoking
Review: I picked this up not knowing much about Jonathan Franzen. Rather, with a 74-mile commute to work, I resonated with the title. However, after listening to the essays, I resonated with the author. Now I'm a Franzen fan! Yes, he's cranky, pretentious, egotistical, and probably a good candidate for counseling. However, a honest look at social systems could tilt us all a little towards the negative. I found his essay on his father's struggle with Alzheimer's to be intensely powerful, the essay detailing the Chicago postal system less so. Franzen is a true wordsmith, crafting clever and evocative sentences that delight the reader (and, presumably, the author as well). So, while he may be a little judgmental and boorish at times, I wouldn't let it preclude you from enjoying his writing. You may, however, want to rethink inviting him to Christmas dinner.
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