Rating: 
Summary: What was that all about?
Review:
This was my first reading of anything by Franzen.I picked this book up at the same time as I got "Corrections".I decided to read this book first to get a feel for his work,but must admit was very disappointed.
I found that trying to get anything out of these essays was like looking for a white dove in a snowstorm.Obviously,he believes he has what it takes to be a good novelist.Maybe he is well versed in the techniques of writing,but he doesnt seem to know what he wants to say to the reader.His essays seem to be an attempt at observation,but he can't seem to pull his thoughts together and present a conclusion to the reader.
His concern about the literary novel going the way of the vinyl disc or the rotary phone,reminds me that it is the message not the medium that is important.
Maybe he has found his calling as a teacher of literary mechanics and should just leave the writing of novels to the gifted who know what they want to say and have the fire in their belly to pursue that path.
In his last essay ,it appears he drifts somewhere between being liberal or socialist minded;and maybe that is the problem.He is not happy with the way things are,doesn't know what would satisfy him and can't suggest any solution.Maybe he should start searching out some people who are positive,satisfied and successful.
Oh well,I guess I'll still give "Corrections" a try.Let's hope I like it better than this one.
Rating: 
Summary: stick to fiction
Review: I read a good short story by Franzen in The New Yorker a couple years ago, but this book is lame. The essays contain little to no humor or insight- they are just lengthy, boring opinions on various subjects. Imagine if you can a duller, less-relavant Andy Rooney.
Rating: 
Summary: A Celebration of Reading, Writing, and LIfe
Review: A reviewer of one of Jonathan Franzen's earlier novels wrote that Franzen, through his work, reminds us of the importance of serious fiction. I could not agree more. Franzen writes fiction with meaning, with a purpose disturbingly rare among modern day writers. His work culminated with last years critically acclaimed work, "The Corrections." That book told us that he was without a doubt one of the countries best novelists. This compilation of Franzen's essays tells us that he can be an extremely insightful and honest cultural critic.Not every essay in this collective work is golden, but most are. They vary wildly in their concentrations, from Franzen's disturbingly honest recount of his father's battle with Alzheimer's disease to his life as a young writer in New York. Views on popular culture, tobacco companies, the post office, politics, the rise of cities and the sad death of intellectual life are all presented in Franzen's enjoyable and easily understood style. The title of the collection stems from the idea that readers and lovers of the written word should celebrate their uniqueness. Far too many people in Imperial America are unhappy and lonely, a sad situation. The reader is forced to cringe when presented with Franzen's collection of apocalyptic facts concerning the battle between books and the mass media (books are nearing their last stand, at least in this era). Franzen has some good tips for the lonely reader, such as throwing out the TV, which, as Franzen convincingly argues, is the root of nearly all evils in our world (too little humor to be comfortable). Other essays examine Franzen's disgust and love of consumerism and the ignorance it spawns. One slightly whimsical but sad entry concerns the everyday drudgery of a federal penitentiary. Also revealed is Franzen's famous dispute with Oprah, a cultural force so strong the casual Franzen stood no chance. A joy to read and a book to learn from.
Rating: 
Summary: Uneven
Review: After reading 'The Corrections' I was expecting to be enlightened by 'How to be alone'. Or at least delighted by it.
I did feel enlightened and delighted, only not as often as I hoped. Reading his essays it was impossible not to picture Franzen as a self-righteous, pedant and ultimately insecure character. This setback could easily be overlooked, but Franzen insisted in a conversational tone that really brought him to life in every essay. Unfortunately, his presence was one I would have chosen not to share.
This said, there is a fair amount of insight to be found throughout the book, even when surrounded by some equally fair amount of bs and self serving arguments.
To his merit, I must admit that even when he sounded wrong he made me think about what he was saying. All in all a good bathroom read!
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: 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 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: 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: 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: 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.
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