Rating: 
Summary: I am a sucker for melancholy
Review: If nothing else the title is enough to make this book engaging. In our popularity oriented, herd minded society there is an almost compulsive urge to at least pick up this book.
But this book goes far beyond its title; comprising an incredibly engaging set of essays touching on many different aspects of self, especially in relation to our ever more complex and noisy society, as well as delving into the state of literature today. Often seemingly gilded with melancholy, Franzen's heartfelt seeking of truth and understanding resonates within those who read it. From the story of his father's slow death through Alzheimer's in "My Father's Brain" to the self-discovery brought on by his love of literary culture, and the rediscovering the source of that love in "The Reader in Exile" the reader is reminded of hard lessons learned.
Aloneness has a stigma in our society as something to be feared and avoided. While this book does not seek to celebrate isolationism it does show it as something not to be feared. Reading itself is the very act of indulgent alones and Franzen exposes the beauty there, as well as our own desire for the individuality that comes with aloneness.
Rating: 
Summary: DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE
Review: In this, his latest work Mr. Franzen reminds us that he is too good, too smart and too deep for the American reading public. Convinced of his own righteousness Franzen holds forth on the failings of American culture in a style that consistently had me proclaiming, "What a condescending prude!" This book is great if #1 you work for The New Yorker, #2 You secretly desire to live in the Victorian Era, #3 You are in desperate need of provocative things to say at your next Upper West Side dinner party. Again and again he points to himself, saying "Look at me! Aren't I clever? Aren't I perceptive?" In point of fact, Franzen is a panzy, an insufferable snob and worst yet, a bore. Comparisons of him to Joan Didion ring as hollow as a roll of pennies dropped into a public restroom toilet. He lacks the power, the grace and the visceral connection to the whole mad swirl of American life to warrant such an analogy. Franzen should be deported to the south of France and/or forced to ingest one-thousand reruns of the Hawaii season of MTV's The Real World while being tickled by a platoon of Christina Aguilera impersonators.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing Look At Contemporary Society!
Review: 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!
Rating: 
Summary: Franzen's essays will certainly stimulate your mind!
Review: It's been said that a genius is one who can hold two opposing viewpoints at the same time. Certainly this ability is characteristic of the best essayists and, in HOW TO BE ALONE, Jonathan Franzen proves himself a skilled practitioner of the form. Whether he's working with an idea like privacy, or a fact as concrete as a federal prison, Franzen considers his subjects from every angle, holding them up to the light of his wit and erudition until they sparkle. Most of the essays are a sublime mix of the personal and the political. "Sifting the Ashes" examines America's guilty affair with smoking, not sparing his own nicotine habit. Franzen condemns the actions of the cigarette companies and the inaction of government without letting individual smokers off the hook of ultimate responsibility. On the marketing of cigarettes to teens: "The truth is that without firm parental guidance teenagers make all sorts of irrevocable decisions before they're old enough to appreciate the consequences --- they drop out of school, they get pregnant, they major in sociology. "Scavenging" is part an ode to 'making do' with an old black rotary telephone, but it also pays homage to obsolescence as fodder for art. "Fiction meant taking up whatever the world had abandoned by the road and making something beautiful out of it." He proves the point with his moving essay "My Father's Brain," a narrative of his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, as well as a synopsis of current scientific research into how we remember and why we forget. Franzen, author of THE CORRECTIONS, may be best known to the general public for being that "ego-blinded snob" who dithered a little too publicly about the desirability of having that novel picked for the Oprah Winfrey book club. The theme of elitism runs strongly through many of the pieces in HOW TO BE ALONE, both as refuge from and rage against the crassness of modern life. Franzen has wrestled this angle in all its guises. He recognizes from his own experience the kinship between the estrangement of depression and the "aristocracy of alienation" that comprises the elitism of modern literature. In his own view, Franzen has mellowed since many of these essays were written in the mid-'90s. In the foreword, he speaks of re-reading an essay he wrote in 1996 originally titled "Perchance to Dream." He was surprised by its stridency. "I used to be the kind of religious nut who convinces himself that, because the world doesn't share his particular faith (for me, a faith in literature), we must be living in the End Times." He did cut the essay by a quarter but included it in this collection, re-titled "Why Bother." He may have given up some of his stridency but not the faith. Is it better to be "right" and alone, or subsumed in the comforting but shallow embrace of our insatiable mass culture? Judging by these essays, I think Mr. Franzen is still slightly conflicted and, as readers, we can rejoice. "With so much fresh outrageousness being manufactured daily" Franzen's pen will be busy and literature will be the beneficiary. --- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman-Nicol
Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading as an eye on Franzen's style
Review: It's interesting how dated some of this reads. Franzen's strongest pieces are his self-portraits, in relation to his art. They reveal a lot about his view of successful fiction, as it translates into artistic expression and the ability to encapsulate time and place. But when I say "dated," I mean how early 90s most of the pieces read in their self-absorption, hand-wringing and whining sensibilities. Some of the thinking is positively Clintonian in its construction. At times, Franzen seems to mistake conventional wisdom with "wisdom," which dates these pieces. When he drags politics in, (though mercifully, in small doses) we get to see just how vaporous some of our concerns of the last decade as a nation have been. When he really soars, as he often does, he is offering a window into his own life through recording the slow deterioration of his father and his attempts to make sense of it. His ideas on systems are noteworthy, but I found myself wondering what he would have made of them from a fictional standpoint. Still, this book is worth reading for Franzen's wit, which is considerable, and his sense of hope, which is valuable.
Rating:
Summary: The Cynical Perch
Review: Jonathan Franzen is an incredibly gifted writer. More than that, he has perceptive skills that go beyond simple norms. His ability to view a situation and record the minutiae is somewhat astounding, which is one of the reasons he is seen as an emerging literary star. And, to be totally fair and honest, I'm a fan; I like Franzen's style and passion for his art. OK, that said, I'm not exactly sure what Franzen was thinking with HOW TO BE ALONE. Lets just say that one expects something a bit different from the man who penned THE CORRECTIONS. HOW TO BE ALONE is ostensibly a cathartic work from Franzen. He has taken 14 essays, written and published over the last 8 years, and presented them to the reader as a collection of his....thoughts. Each essay is precise, cogent and eloquent. Each essay is presumably a subject passionate to Franzen. Herein, lies the rub. It becomes painfully obvious, quite quickly, that each, in some way, explain and extol the World According to Jonathan Franzen or, Franzen's Gospel Postulations. He reports in fine detail his trials and tribulations relative to his father's struggle with Alzheimer's, on the America's seeming disdain for the written word, on the obsession with privacy, the sex advice industry, and a trist through the smoking debate but, in the end, he always ends up talking about one thing....himself. The "revelations" revealed to the reader through Franzen's eyes are, well, blaise. They are as we know them. There is nothing new here. Its almost like the autobiography you see in the book store...of a person you've never heard of. It makes one ponder, "Why am I reading this? Oh yeah, because Jonathan Franzen wrote it." Again, these are very well written pieces but, that's about it. It almost seems as though Franzen appears as the guy who has come to the party a bit late. You know, been there, done that. So, these essays appear to lack originality and vigor, this, from a man who gave us an arguable masterpiece (THE CORRECTIONS)? The resulting questions is obvious: Why would Jonathan Franzen publish these essays in a single book? Why not let them remain as standalone pieces which, when published, were most likely looked upon as something that makes you go "Hmmm?" One could posit that Franzen is thumbing his nose at his dissenters thus maintaining his "bad boy" image. (For those that don't know, this image was crafted from Franzen's self-described "personal struggle" with having Oprah's Book Club seal emblazoned on the cover of THE CORRECTIONS and his requisite appearance on her show. His reluctance swiftly earned him a retraction from Oprah and the disdain of her legion of fans.) A stroke of arrogance or genius? Perhaps a bit of both. So, after reading these essays, I find myself struggling with the theoretical conventions of assessing these works because...he's very convincing and typically right. This still doesn't bring one to an eye-to-eye level with Franzen as the stratosphere is difficult to achieve for mere humans. OK, a bit facetious albeit hinting of truth. Franzen even infers that he has put his elitist ways and past behind him and has professed his acceptance of the resposibility of being a "real" writer. We'll see. One can easily see then, why I would title my review, "The Cynical Perch." This moniker applies to my view as well as that of Franzen. This almost becomes an intellectual game of chess--one that has no clear winner, just participants. Who can be more cynical? Franzen's writing and thought patterns easily rate 5 stars but that's not the question posed to a reviewer. The question posed to the reviewer is: How do I rate this BOOK? The book is questionable rhetoric taken as a whole. Franzen almost seems to be engaging in a process he publicly professes to loathe, unwitting commercialism. Thus, the book rates a 3. Still and all, I can recommend this book if one is a fan of Franzen because it IS vintage Franzen. Love him or hate him, he is good, which is exactly why this book should never have been published.
Rating:
Summary: Alone, but at home in this talented writer's skin
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Reasons for being alone
Review: So here is a collection of essays by Jonathan Franzen, the wizard who brought us the highly intelligent and acutely mesmerizing novel of 2001, The Corrections. Many of these essays originally appeared in literati mags such as Harper's and The New Yorker--so, readers should know what they're getting into. I read this book mainly as an attempt to try to get a sense of Franzen as a corporeal human being, and not just some exalted author of an award-winning novel. Overall, I liked most of the essays appearing in this collection. From the promising opener, in which Franzen poignantly recounts his father's slow descension into quietus from Alzheimer's, we progress to a quasi-portentous pronouncement of the dangerous state of privacy in America, before Ashcroft and the Patriot Act invaded the American lexicon. Why Bother (which was previously referred to as The Harper's Essay) is an interesting rumination on the inevitable failure of the novel in the 21st Century as a tool of social reform; the novel should not be used as a way to engender social reform, but, should rather be written--ultimately-- for plain old entertainment value, Franzen seems to argue.
Some of these essays seem to be a little discursive; Franzen evidentally has a lot to say, and seems to forget what the initial point of his arguments are, going off on long tangents; such as in Mr. Difficult, where as some other reviewer stated, he begins with an interesting exploration of his artistic need to be "pretentious," but then slowly veers off into a history and ode to author William Gaddis.
Franzen once again proves to be a smart and sophisticated reader and writer, and this book perfectly showcases his aptitude for social commentary, without pontificating or being too offensively forward. People may consider Franzen an "elitist," but I consider him to posses a well-read, inquisitive mind; there are far too few Jonathan Franzens around these days.
Rating:
Summary: why go on?
Review: there are few writers who can tryst so fearlessly with the raw goop of human relationships. franzen examines systems - from the technomediated "reality" of mass culture, to the U.S. postal service - with both eyes open and his heart intact. if you liked the corrections - and i did, immensely - you will love the franzen's ability to reflect on human shadow with blunt honesty and no convenient resolution - yet be flooded with hope by the end. it's the most poetic non-fiction i've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: A great book.
Review: This book is a great social critic with in-depth reasoning. Franzen analyze different aspects of the social and private life of the average citizen, including the way we respond to different factors created by the mass culture. The author's particular style makes the book pleasant to read. He includes personal narrative, quotations from different literary works, and a complete background of facts for his essays's topics. This book stimulates your thinking and reminds you why readers and writers are different from the rest.
|
