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How to Be Alone

Essays

(27)

| Audio Cassette | 9780743528290

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Book Description

Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Now in How to be Alone, discover the personal narratives and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of The Corrections.

The audiobooContinue

Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Now in How to be Alone, discover the personal narratives and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of The Corrections.

The audiobook How to be Alone features Franzen's reading of a moving narrative of his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease (which won a National Magazine Award and has been reprinted around the world).

Although his essays range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each essay wrestles with essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity, and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America.

Here, in 14 essays, are 14 fresh answers to the question of how to be alone in a noisy and distracting mass culture. These essays show the wry distrust of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics.

Critics

  • But will Oprah love it?

    How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen Fourth Estate £16.99, pp278 The essays in this collection act as what Hollywood scriptwriters love to refer to as a 'back story'. They constitute the intellectual hinterland and personal archaeology behind the most ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

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  • The way this writer expreses himself is one of the greatest gifts one can have as a reader.

    Check out what I wrote in my blog: http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2352207245580…

    11-21-2011: I loved each one of these essays. The one I enjoyed the most was the one about Oprah and how everything she does is so money-oriented; no wonder why she is so ri ... (continue)

    Check out what I wrote in my blog: http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2352207245580…

    11-21-2011: I loved each one of these essays. The one I enjoyed the most was the one about Oprah and how everything she does is so money-oriented; no wonder why she is so rich. I would re-read many of these to get ideas for my arguents when I try to defend obvious causes that everyone try to deceive in lieu of fashion or political correctness.
    10-19-2011: These essays are fascinating. I read one about the corruption in the postal service; other about the habit of smoking and the hypocresy behind the anti-tobacco campaigns; another one about the tortuous destiny of writers and one more about how to live in the city is a blessing. All of them are worth reading, and I am loving this book and wishing it never ends!

    09-19-2011: Why bother? is the next essay of this book, and tries a reflection on being a good writer vs. being known and ultimately, being able to make a living out of writing. It is interesting to see all this arguments well presented by a more structured mind.

    07-22-2010: The second essay "Imperial bedroom" really makes the point that the thing called "privacy" that us americans tend to guard so jeallously, is no more than an illusion, and some people are getting super-rich helping us trying to keep that illusion alive.

    07-20-2011: So far, I am about to finish the first essay about the author's father's mental illness. He had Alzheimer's and he died of its consequences. The way the author explains how this horrible conditions works and how it robs a person's life is outstanding. Besides, there is a small "grain of salt" in the fact that the actual patient does not suffer as much as his/her family from this terrible disease.

    Is this helpful?

    ariadna73 said on Jul 20, 2011 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

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9780743528290 Audio Cassette $39.95 -- The Book Depository
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