About the Author:
JONATHAN FRANZEN is the author of five novels (Purity, Freedom, The Corrections, Strong Motion and The Twenty-Seventh City), two collections of essays (Farther Away, How to Be Alone), a personal history (The Discomfort Zone), and translations of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening and Karl Kraus. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.
Review:
A Financial Times Book of the Year
"Franzen displays his signature precision and deadpan humor." —Vanity Fair
"Jonathan Franzen's essays offer a different escape from the madness . . . the idea that serious, humane thinking and writing, of the kind that teases out the truth of the world, can still generate enlightenment." —The Guardian (UK)
"Intelligent and insightful. . . . [These are] witty, reflective, opinionated essays from a writer with the ability to 'laugh in dark times.'" —Kirkus Reviews
"Whether observing the eerie beauty of Antarctica ('far from having melted,' he reports) or dispensing 'Ten Rules for the Novelist,' Franzen makes for an entertaining, sometimes prickly, but always quotable companion." —Publishers Weekly
"[Franzen is] as insightful both in his reflections on being a young person in New York as he is in his thoughts on the necessity of birds for our ecosystem's survival." —TIME
"This book is a good place to catch up with the acclaimed novelist . . . whose graceful, trenchant essays are a joy to read even when the subject is terrifying." —Associated Press
"Franzen's essays are witty, shrewd and poetic, full of subtly orchestrated digressions, and eminently quotable." —The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Though the subject matter of these pieces varies widely, they're united by a belief that, in our fragmented, increasingly absurd world, paying close attention—to the planet, to books, to those we love—is perhaps the most meaningful thing any of us can do." —San Francisco Chronicle
"His avoidance of easy answers has always made Franzen worth reading. . . . Franzen, unlike many, listens. It's what makes him one of the best living writers of fictional dialogue, and it's what makes his arguments productively provocative. Read his latest for the avian rhapsodies and nuanced climate politics, but also because there's more to any good argument than can easily be summarized on social media." —The Washington Post
"The fact remains that Franzen is a hell of a writer." —New York Journal of Books
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