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The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History

3.37 of 5 stars 3.37 · rating details · 2,906 ratings · 391 reviews

Jonathan Franzen arrived late, and last, in a family of boys in Webster Groves, Missouri. The Discomfort Zone is his intimate memoir of his growth from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions. It's also a portrait of a middle-class family weathering...more

Hardcover, 195 pages

Published September 5th 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 2006)

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Mar 09, 2011 Eva rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: on-my-shelf, biographical

It starts out very strong. He uses his remarkable vocabulary, storytelling ability, and his disregard for political-correctness. The book is divided in five chapters and in first Franzen describes in detail how he chose the wrong realtor to sell his mother's house.
I think he uses this start as an introduce, where he stops a continual disappointment to his strict, provincial parents and shows how his mother's opinions have deeply influence on his life.

He goes back to his childhood with the next...more

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Sep 18, 2008 Núria rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: niños solitarios que se identificaban con Charlie Brown

Shelves: 2007, no-ficcion, literatura-en-ingles, mios, 3-buenos, siglo-xxi

'Zona templada' es una mezcla entre un relato autobiográfico y un ensayo sobre las tiras cómicas de Charles Schulz. Lástima que estos dos aspectos no acaben de confluir en una unidad perfecta, porque no dejo de tener la sensación que están pegados un poco por los pelos, pero por separado funcionan perfectamente y son de lo más interesantes. Jonathan Franzen se presenta como un niño de once años que se empieza a dar cuenta de que la vida no es tan perfecta como le había parecido hasta entonces, s...more 'Zona templada' es una mezcla entre un relato autobiográfico y un ensayo sobre las tiras cómicas de Charles Schulz. Lástima que estos dos aspectos no acaben de confluir en una unidad perfecta, porque no dejo de tener la sensación que están pegados un poco por los pelos, pero por separado funcionan perfectamente y son de lo más interesantes. Jonathan Franzen se presenta como un niño de once años que se empieza a dar cuenta de que la vida no es tan perfecta como le había parecido hasta entonces, su felicidad se empieza a romper, porque empiezan a haber discusiones en casa, básicamente entre uno de sus hermanos mayores y su padre. Y él decide refugiarse en las tiras cómicas de los Peanuts. El pequeño Jonathan se identifica principalmente con Snoopy, porque él también es como un niño solitario rodeado de adultos, con unos padres y unos hermanos muy mayores para él. Pero también se identifica con Charlie Brown, porque él también tiene un agudizado sentido de culpa: se siente culpable por cosas como no ser lo suficiente cariñoso con su madre pero incluso por cosas tan absurdas como no jugar equitativamente con todos sus juguetes.

Pero Jonathan Franzen no sólo analiza su vida, sino también la de su padre y la de Charles Schulz. Su padre era un hombre hipersensible, socialmente torpe, marcado por una infancia dura y un padre demasiado estricto, que siempre quiso hacer más que ser lo que había querido su padre que fuera, pero sin atreverse nunca a dar ningún paso para conseguir lo que verdaderamente quería. Charles Schulz era un hombre inseguro, marcado hasta límites increíbles por los fracasos del pasado. Y todas estas cosas, además de otras, están en las tiras cómicas de los Peanuts: sentido de culpabilidad, inseguridad, fracaso, torpeza social, etc. Es por esto que es tan fácil identificarse con los Peanuts. Pero probablemente los que los leemos no sólo los leemos por esto, sino también porque en el mundo de los Peanuts una viñeta puede estar llena de dolor pero a la siguiente ya se ha olvidado. Para terminar, Franzen reflexiona como el hecho de identificar a su padre como un personaje de cómic, como un posible Peanut más, hace que se pueda reír de él, pero también que lo entienda mejor y lo llegue a querer más, porque su padre no dejaba de ser un hombre demasiado serio y demasiado exigente. Y éste es un ejemplo más de los muchos que hay de como la ficción nos ayuda a comprender mejor la realidad. 'Zona templada' es un libro melancólico y reconfortante como las tiras cómicas de los Peanuts. Interesante y lúcido. Una pequeña delicia.
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Feb 09, 2008 Michele rated it 4 of 5 stars

A Mixed Bag
I believe Jonathan Franzen fans will be both delighted and disappointed with this collection, The Discomfort Zone. It starts out very strong, showing off Franzen's remarkable vocabulary, storytelling ability, and his disregard for political-correctness. In a piece called, "House for Sale," Franzen tells what it feels like to take on the chore of emptying and selling what was his childhood home. Anyone who has faced the death of a parent and has undergone this emotional task will relat...more A Mixed Bag
I believe Jonathan Franzen fans will be both delighted and disappointed with this collection, The Discomfort Zone. It starts out very strong, showing off Franzen's remarkable vocabulary, storytelling ability, and his disregard for political-correctness. In a piece called, "House for Sale," Franzen tells what it feels like to take on the chore of emptying and selling what was his childhood home. Anyone who has faced the death of a parent and has undergone this emotional task will relate to his musings, admissions, and actions. We get to know his mother in this opening tale and soon learn she is a central figure throughout the collection. At first her controlling nature seems relatively benign, when we learn she's written the classified ad meant to showoff her home--her most successful investment--in the best light. Having done extensive research on her St. Louis-area neighborhood prior to her death, she even suggests an asking price. Franzen uses this story to kick-off a theme, where he comes off as a continual disappointment to his strict, provincial parents and shows how his mother's "strong opinions" have deeply affected his life.

The second entry, "Two Ponies," focuses on "Peanuts" cartoon creator Charles Schulz, and how Franzen related (or didn't relate) to the characters. He also relates to Schulz himself, particularly because of Schulz's feelings as an outsider while growing up. Additionally, I believe he admired Schulz for holding a grudge regarding his disdain for the label "Peanuts" placed upon his life's work. What I liked about "Two Ponies," is that I grew up reading this comic strip and could therefore relate to Franzen's story, and I liked the way the writing comes full circle.

Unfortunately, for me the collection goes downhill from there. Long passages about a Fellowship church camp and its youth minister, "Mutton" . . . a tale about his high school "gang" attempting acts of vandalism, and too much German (translations included) during a semester abroad, seem to be written more for himself and the characters he portrays than the general public.

Finally, with "My Bird Problem," Franzen is back on track. He offers political and personal takes on global warming, our country's energy policy, along with intimate revelations about his marriage and an ensuing relationship, and ultimately his passion for birding and what it has taught him about himself . . . and his mother.

Readable in one day. (less)

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Sep 09, 2007 Alicia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Jonathan Franzen has come home to St Louis to get his parent's house ready to sell after the death of his mother. While he is waiting for it to sell he reflects on the significant moments of his life with particular emphasis on his childhood. The language in the book is beautiful and it is well constructed but for me, the characters were flat and uninteresting. For someone who has had such a rich and varied life and writes so well I think he could have come up with more interesting things to tal...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Karl Groll rated it 2 of 5 stars

The following quotes are taken from The Discomfort Zone, by Jonathan Franzen. Page numbers are provided from the paperback published by Picador in 2006, ISBN: 978-0-312-42640-8.

---

"On the retreat. Six kids on the retreat - smuiked some duip."
"Did what?"
"'Duip'? What?"
"Smuiked marijuana," I said.
My mother frowned. 76

---

His paperbacks were at once low-priced, hich-acid crapola and the most precious of relics - moving testaments to how full of significance every line in them could be to a student o...more

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Mar 14, 2012 Claudia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: einaudi, biografia, narrativa-nordamericana, preferiti, realismo-isterico

Autobiografia in sei capitoli, di cui ognuno rappresenta una fase e alcuni episodi particolarmente significativi della vita di Franzen. Ironico, sagace, pungente, insicuro, intelletualoide: in pratica magnifico!
Inoltre, nel quinto capitolo, si trova un'interpretazione critica della Montagna incantata di Thomas Mann molto originale. Andrebbe letto solo per questo e per le frasi iniziali:
"Mi dissi che era importante spersonalizzare la casa prima che gli agenti immobiliari venissero a vederla. Ma s...more

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Dec 09, 2011 Roberta rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008

In questo "ritratto dell'artista da giovane" Franzen si presta ad indagare la sua zona disagio, ovvero quel groviglio di emozioni che si dipana dall'infanzia alla maturità passando attraverso un'adolescenza che non può non essere tormentata. Sei capitoli per sei momenti esemplari, che Franzen analizza con notevole acutezza inserendoli anche in un contesto più ampio riuscendo comunque a non spersonalizzare il testo. Franzen si mette completamente a nudo con una scrittura che non è catartica ma an...more

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Nov 09, 2011 Kat added it

All my books nowadays come from the English section of the library in Oslo, so a smaller selection than I've ever experienced. I chose this book only for it's title. And I knew I'd heard of Franzen, but couldn't remember what.
The book travels through time while the main character, who seems to be Franzen himself,remembers his childhood, his teenage years, young adulthood, adulthood when his mother died, his divorce, his subsequent relationship and eventual immersion in bird watching as a hobby....more

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Jul 29, 2011 Laurie added it · review of another edition

Having reluctantly hated "Freedom," which I am reading for a book club, I thought I might prefer Franzen's non-fiction. I enjoy birdwatching and my beloved father made me squirm by his enthusiasm for Snoopy, which he used as a teaching aid in his third grade classes. Skimming over the topics of Franzen's autobiographical essays, I saw many possible grounds for fellow feeling. And yet I read this book as I did Freedom, gulping it down like a bad-tasting medicine, in a hurry to be done with it. I...more

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Jul 13, 2011 Andra rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read the New York Times’ review of The Discomfort Zone earlier today. The Times’ conclusion after reading was that Jonathan Franzen is hopelessly self-absorbed. I don’t disagree, but I don’t think that’s such a terrible thing. We’re all self-absorbed and at least Franzen had the good sense to use it for comedy.

Anyways, onward with my review…

I enjoyed learning more about Franzen as a person. I liked seeing how his personal experiences (fascination with birds, environmentalism, strange relations...more I read the New York Times’ review of The Discomfort Zone earlier today. The Times’ conclusion after reading was that Jonathan Franzen is hopelessly self-absorbed. I don’t disagree, but I don’t think that’s such a terrible thing. We’re all self-absorbed and at least Franzen had the good sense to use it for comedy.

Anyways, onward with my review…

I enjoyed learning more about Franzen as a person. I liked seeing how his personal experiences (fascination with birds, environmentalism, strange relationship with his mother, etc.) are echoed through his characters in his novels. It seems to me that Franzen uses his characters as a vehicle to express his own feelings and the character development in his fiction is much deeper than that in The Discomfort Zone.

After reading stories about Franzen’s own interactions with his family, particularly his mother, I was reminded of his character Joey from the novel Freedom. I remember a particularly vivid scene where Joey, after a phone conversation with his mother Patty, begins to cry and looks for a nearby bush in which to hide himself. Joey’s conversation with his mother made him so upset that he was moved to tears, his stomach was unsettled and he felt he might have to vomit.

That sort of raw emotion isn’t found in The Discomfort Zone. Franzen discusses the unhappiness he felt with himself at certain points in his life, at one point referring to himself as a “small and fundamentally ridiculous person”, but it’s obvious that even though he’s written a memoir, he’s keeping the truly revealing moments to himself.

I really enjoyed Franzen’s reflections on his childhood and adolescence – there were moments that made me laugh out loud.

For me, the most memorable parts of the book came with Franzen’s reflections on his love for the “Peanuts” comic strip. He wrote:

“Like most of the nation’s ten-year-olds, I had a private, intense relationship with Snoopy, the cartoon beagle. He was a solitary not-animal animal who lived among larger creatures of a different species, which was more or less my feeling in my own house.”

Franzen continued later:

“’Everything I do makes me feel guilty,’ says Charlie Brown. He’s at the beach, and he has just thrown a pebble into the water and Linus has commented, ‘Nice going… it took that rock four thousand years to get to shore, and now you’ve thrown it back.’

“… I felt guilty about shunning my mother’s hugs when she seemed to need them most. I felt guilty about the washcloths at the bottom of the stack in the linen closet, the older, thinner, washcloths that were seldom used. I felt guilty for preferring my best shooter marbles, a solid red agate and a solid yellow agate, my king and my queen, to marble further down my rigid marble hierarchy. I felt guilty about the board games that I didn’t like to play – Uncle Wiggily, U.S. Presidential Elections, Game of the States – and sometimes, when my friends weren’t around, I opened the boxes and examined the pieces in the hope of making the games feel less forgotten. I felt guilty about neglecting the stiff-limbed, scratchy-pelted Mr. Bear, who had no voice and didn’t mix well with the other animals. To avoid feeling guilty about them, too, I slept with one of them per night, according to a strict weekly schedule."

That passage really reminded me of what it’s like to be a child and to feel ashamed for having the most innocent of preferences. Though The Discomfort Zone didn’t delve into adult emotions as well as his novels, I thought Franzen captured the feelings of a child perfectly.(less)

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May 16, 2011 Laala Alghata rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have been spectacularly awful about reviews recently. It’s mostly that my real life has gotten ridiculously busy as I started uni again, moved into a new apartment (and all the unpleasantries that accompany that, including fixing the broken appliances, buying random bits of furniture, getting internet, registering with local council, calling up G&E companies — oh man, being an adult is fun) and seeing people I haven’t seen in over seven months. Oh, and of course, going to lectures, studyin...more I have been spectacularly awful about reviews recently. It’s mostly that my real life has gotten ridiculously busy as I started uni again, moved into a new apartment (and all the unpleasantries that accompany that, including fixing the broken appliances, buying random bits of furniture, getting internet, registering with local council, calling up G&E companies — oh man, being an adult is fun) and seeing people I haven’t seen in over seven months. Oh, and of course, going to lectures, studying, and traveling.

Anyway, I’m going to try and churn out reviews, so I apologise if they’re less than stellar, it’s been a couple months since I’ve read most of these books and I want to be back up to date.

So, after reading Freedom, I was very much looking forward to reading more of Franzen’s work. I didn’t want to read The Corrections right away, because although I owned it, Franzen took his time coming up with a new book and I’d rather leave a bit of a gap between his two great novels. And I was curious about the man behind the words, especially after watching a couple of interviews with him and seeing his thinly-veiled contempt for having to go through all these interviews and his little twitch when he was asked banal questions.

The Discomfort Zone is an interesting read. Part of what struck me about it is what I felt about Freedom — that this man could be any other man, in any other job. He could be your neighbour or your best friend. He has similar memories and went through similar tribulations. Then the roads diverged and instead of being John Doe, he became Jonathan Franzen. One of the things that amused me was his real-life interest in birdwatching, since it became such a large part of Freedom.

The book is a quick read, and if you like Frazen, it’s a curiosity. But it could almost (almost, because you can still tell it’s a memoir) be seen as a novel that someone like Raymond Carver would write — not stylistically perhaps, but definitely as a notion.
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Jan 07, 2011 RE de Leon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bestsellers, biography, suburban-america, memoirs

There really wasn't any reason for me to read Franzen. His settings tend towards suburban America like the plague. And I normally I avoid suburban America. But a friend wanted me to read and review it. So I picked it up, read it, liked it, and predictably I'm uncomfortable about the fact that I did.

There is so much hear that resonates with my own life, and I suspect, the lives of many who were raised the Hollywood-driven global culture. Awkward-but-still-close family ties, the thousand faux pas-...more

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Sep 22, 2010 Dhitri rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs, jonathan-franzen

This book is a collection of self-baring memoirs that have been written well. Franzen hasn't disappointed his fans and delivers his witty yet honest take on American family life, this time his own, but he surely came short in telling the story in a gripping, teeth-gritting way as he did in his works of fiction. The stories tend to veer off in all sorts of directions, lose focus and end up sounding like incongruent journal entries. It's at the most a collection of random pieces of personal reflec...more

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Sep 18, 2010 Andrew rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In the Summer of Franzen I decided to play hard to get with 'Freedom,' going back to his memoir from 2006. I wasn't crazy about 'The Discomfort Zone'; however, it was interesting to read it alongside Antrim's 'The Afterlife,' getting to see two top fiction writers try out personal nonficiton. (I have read JF's earlier 'How to be Alone,' also nonfiction, and seem to remember enjoying that much more). Antrim takes First Prize here. While clearly being written as separate essays (like Antrim's), "D...more

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Sep 07, 2010 Jeremy added it

Franzen trying to dissect his own existence isn't quite as thrilling as Franzen dissecting the existence of the characters in his novels, but this definitely has its moments, and unlike so many memoir-ish books, this has no interest in romanticizing anything from out of the past, in fact when it works well, it does so because it reminds you that a mid-western, middle class upbringing (I'm telegraphing myself into this now) is usually just full of a lot of petty little triumphs and disappointment...more

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Aug 05, 2010 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

autobiographical essays focused mostly but not entirely on his childhood and adolescence. Engaging writer, able to make fairly typical scenarios (e.g., what does it feel like to be a part of a large group of kids who are in trouble, when you were not the perp? How about gaining concrete evidence of acceptance by a group when you feared no one really liked you, as when he's elected to the leadership council of a church youth group?) really come to life.

Ultimately, a drag on enjoyment of such a p...more

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Jun 11, 2010 Ted Burke rated it 3 of 5 stars

Franzen, author of the flawed (and overpraised) novel The Corrections, is a good prose stylist who none the less makes my hairline hurt when I encountered his essays in the collection How to Be Alone. Bright, ironic, discerning, Franzen took off on several topics, filtering his observations through his general air of feeling people, places and things are an imposition on his right to be in a bubble, brilliant and unsoiled by alien hands. Fine , I thought, his itchy irritation with things was wor...more

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May 07, 2010 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

I love Franzen's craft with sentences. It is clear he does not write casually and that sentences are worked and worked until he is satisfied. Of course, I can't KNOW that, but when a sentence makes me read it over and over again until I have truly thought about the meaning and the artfulness of its phrasing and its evocative qualities...well, I just sit (sometimes I'm standing, but very rarely) amazed. Franzen did this in the Corrections repeatedly and he does it to a lesser extent in this biogr...more

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Dec 16, 2009 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found a hardcover first edition of this on Clearance for $3, and as silly as it is, I can never resist that kind of deal if the book is by an author I've read and enjoyed. So, I bought this book back in Sept. and kept it on my bedside to be my non-required reading for the semester.

I love the essays at the beginning of the collection, when Franzen talks about his youth and his family. Even though Franzen and I really have nothing in common on a surface level, whenever he writes about his famil...more

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May 13, 2011 Nick H rated it 3 of 5 stars

First, the positives. It takes a lot of courage, I imagine, to put your personal life out there with any kind of details for, what has become a rabid fan base, to pick apart. Franzen does it, and goes into some of the uglier details. Awkward childhood and adolescents, failed marriage, and the perception of being an avid bird watcher? Man, what a bold thing to do. Also, the quality of writing does not suffer, surprisingly, from Franzen's novels to the autobiographical format. There are some real...more

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Oct 16, 2010 Dnicebear rated it 5 of 5 stars

Midwestern roots and boomer experiences are wordsmithed by Franzen into delicious sentences and paragraphs. I chafed when he wrote like an atheist, but I kept looking at his title to realize it was all so Christ-like, so true. He makes it look easy to write about being a teenager, sex, religion and bird watching. What really saves him turns out to be bird watching. Here's an experience of 'salvation'--one that I share, except I find it in my neighborhood, mostly on foot: "to be juggling a stick...more

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Jan 20, 2010 Melanie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Melanie by: mom

So this book is really someone's journey you are a bit of a voyeur while you are reading and seeing his life. There were moments where I though I get that I see that but in all his life was his own. I liked that that there were things that cross and are similar but the reality is our lives are lived by ourselves so no matter how many similarities to another's it is your own. I loved the pranks, I never did pranks but My dad did so it made me smile.

I also love the way you are left knowing the jo...more

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Nov 26, 2012 Ian Hrabe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Though Franzen's upbringing was about as normal as you could possibly get, he makes reading about it because he's just a fucking outstandingly good writer. I've been wanting to read "The Corrections" for years but for some reason I've always had a hard time getting around "literary fiction." And I feel like it's on the docket for next year because I really throughly enjoyed this book. He has this trick where he comes off as both incredibly smart but avoids being obnoxious and offputting by being...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Rob Kirkham rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobooks, autobiography-biography-memoir, non-fiction, read-2012

I feel like I can relate to Franzen as I read his books, especially his non-fiction. He, like myself, was a somewhat sheltered youth who happened upon a number of "adult" situations as an adolescent and subsequently allowed the unnecessary guilt from those experiences affect his social and family life, only to find out later what he had already known: he hadn't done anything wrong by inadvertently learning about other people's experiments with sex, drugs and rock and roll, and was needlessly wor...more

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Oct 31, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

Sometimes I wish that Franzen weren't such a compelling writer because, while his prose is both perfect and poignant, reading this collection revealed to me that his structure isn't always what it could be. Don't get me wrong, it was delightful to read about the origins of his bird fetish, his infatuation with The Peanuts, and his early romantic foibles. Nonetheless, he doesn't move from anecdote to generality or from past to present quite as skillfully as I wish he might. It's hard to discern t...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Sasha Martinez added it

Shelves: books-read-in-2013

In which I tell Jonathan Franzen to stop trying to distract me with goddamned ducks, dammit:

(Why not call it essays? Or a memoir? Because Franzen is at pains to show you what a cool cat he is, that’s why.) Franzen’s a different animal here, is all I can say—or, perhaps more aptly: I come to strange realizations about the big grump I’ve always loved. I was drawn to The Discomfort Zone because he can be so incisive about his family [see his other essays in How to Be Alone and in Farther Away, whic...more In which I tell Jonathan Franzen to stop trying to distract me with goddamned ducks, dammit:

(Why not call it essays? Or a memoir? Because Franzen is at pains to show you what a cool cat he is, that’s why.) Franzen’s a different animal here, is all I can say—or, perhaps more aptly: I come to strange realizations about the big grump I’ve always loved. I was drawn to The Discomfort Zone because he can be so incisive about his family [see his other essays in How to Be Alone and in Farther Away, which I read and enjoyed in last year’s blog-coma] and, consequently, himself; that is, I saw The Discomfort Zone as a back door into The Corrections and partly into Freedom. This is Franzen, I told myself, unadorned—no excuse of fiction to cover it up. This is, perhaps, the curmudgeon explained, if obliquely. (Why do you read memoirs, Sasha?)

Reading The Discomfort Zone, however, I’m reminded of how much I have always hated the man’s digressions. In The Corrections, it was Lithuanian shenanigans; in Freedom, it was the goddamned environment and the frakking birds everywhere. I understand now, however, that this is how Franzen’s mind works: Franzen, I’ve found, shies away from an indulgent narrative about families—about his family, here in particular. Snidely, I think: His essays need to have reach—they shouldn’t only be about the Franzens. And so: Family dynamics should naturally draw on Snoopy and its creator. An awkward adolescence—too enlightening, really: who knew Franzen was such a big dorkus?—dignified by an examination of the youth group he belonged to. Selling the house his mother had spent nearly a lifetime to build—a house full, no doubt, of his mother’s disappoints—should lead to a dissection of real estate in America. And, goddammit, troubles with his wife should veer into bird-watching in them good ol’ United States.

Perhaps he’s living up to that irritating moniker, “a personal history”—that this wasn’t indulgent and navel-gazing, that this wasn’t a book of essays that focused merely on one’s self. This was broad; this tackled Big Issues. But come on, Jon: Your family is the story, your patent uncoolness is the story, your heartaches and your disappointments are the story. Stop trying to distract me with ducks, dammit. I loved him best when he let go, when he so baldly talked about what made him tick. I loved it when he was earnest, if clumsy: I’ve always maintained that Franzen possesses such heart, all the better because it is so unexpected—and it’s no different here. More of that, please.

A tiny voice in my head sneers that this is just about what interests me. I tell that tiny voice that it is mostly right: I wanted a more personal Franzen—I found that in How to Be Alone, and I found that in about one and a half essays in The Discomfort Zone. What these have in common, aside from the family as touchstone: Language and literature, the wielding and the imbibing of. I will argue, though, that those remain personal. That is: I found a more personal Franzen than what we normally see and read. In much the same way I can’t seem to sever my private life from my reading life when I blab here, Franzen assures me that the books one devours and the life one tries so very hard to lead are intricately, if irrevocably, connected. So, you know: More of that, please.

____

[ cross-posted ](less)

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Feb 28, 2011 Diane rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't think most people would enjoy this book. It seemed to be written as catharsis for Franzen but had a surprising interest for me. It is quite disjointed and since I was listening to it on disk, I wondered several times if it had been mis-edited and put together incorrectly. It begins with Franzen coming to his childhood home to prepare it and its contents for sale. His mother has a terminal illness and has moved to a care facility. I recalled Franzen's book Corrections which dealt at lengt...more

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Jun 11, 2010 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I started reading Jonathan Franzen, it seemed, because I could no longer resist the world's infatuation with "The Corrections." I was a fruit-loop for Oprah's book club and had resisted the book for years merely because Franzen had resisted Oprah when she attempted to make it part of her Club.

"What an arrogant fool," I'm sure I defensively muttered. For though I never watch Oprah, her books are amazing. So I took up a pretentious opinion of all things Franzen-esque.

But I read "The Corrections"

...more I started reading Jonathan Franzen, it seemed, because I could no longer resist the world's infatuation with "The Corrections." I was a fruit-loop for Oprah's book club and had resisted the book for years merely because Franzen had resisted Oprah when she attempted to make it part of her Club.

"What an arrogant fool," I'm sure I defensively muttered. For though I never watch Oprah, her books are amazing. So I took up a pretentious opinion of all things Franzen-esque.

But I read "The Corrections" and it was superb. No. It was sensationally superb. So I discarded my ridiculous facade.

I listened to "How to Be Alone" on a roadtrip between Kansas and New York. Looking at the case's cover, I answered that question in my brain: "just drive through the Midwest, dummy." The backroads (even the tollroads) of the Midwest are the American epitome of emptiness.

That trip was phenomenal, though. I encountered some of the most beautiful terrain throughout the upper Midwest, lower Ontario and upstate New York. Hearing him speak "to me" about his family life made me feel like I had a wonderful friend along for the ride--despite the fact that I was taking complete pleasure in my own isolation.

* * *

Now when I read Franzen, I'm always shocked to remember that he's not in his late-20s, gay, a little OCD and...well...me. I get so caught up in how much I embody his stories: feel them as if they were my own. His writing captures the idiosyncratic (forgive me, I'm calling myself idiosyncratic), anxious, ranting, bookish life I simultaneously try to avoid and espouse. But of course he's different. He's experienced some serious ups and downs that I hope never to encounter. Yet, I can't always resist the self-involvement of reading some of his passages in my own voice.

Perhaps this passage from page 189--where he's speaking of birds--best summarizes my own embattled connection to Franzen: "I've been told that it was bad to anthropomorphize, but I could no longer remember why. It was, in any case, anthropomorphic only to see yourself in other species, not to see them in yourself."

How often do we see ourselves in songs about love, plays laced with tragedy, books examining neuroses? Everyday, surely. And how often do we allow ourselves to descend into those stories as if they were our own; as if entering a scene as a bystander, watching the drama unfold: mute friends witnessing the scene? We cry at movies though they're fictional and have little real consequence to our actual lives.

Self-awareness is crucial to Franzen's journey. And via his probes for understanding, I become aware of how much I'm clinging to other species (whether writers or penguins) for advice and equanimity. Though I can't help but wonder: maybe Franzen's crucial to my journey, too.

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1 like · like · see review

Dec 11, 2012 Gizem rated it 1 of 5 stars

The book has a very promising first chapter, it is well-written, thoughtful, and it raises a number of good points and contradictions about middle class values in the American Midwest in the 1960s. Yet, the rest is pointless, boring, self-absorbed stories of writer's childhood and early adolescence. I know the title must have been self-informative, yet there is always something not-so-"personal" in every story and the writer seems to have missed this (very badly in fact). The stories do not tie...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Jonathan Franzen, the National Book Award?winning author of The Corrections (and, infamously, the only writer to refuse initiation into Oprah Winfrey's book club), leaves few readers ambivalent about his work, be it through his seriocomic attitude toward life's uncomfortable moments or the difficult issues that he tackles with exuberant irreverence. Even the critics who admire Franzen's writing warn readers that they are in for much of the same incessant, almost obsessive, examination that chara

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About Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen is the author of The Corrections, winner of the 2001 National Book Award for fiction; the novels The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion; and two works of nonfiction, How to Be Alone and The Discomfort Zone, all published by FSG. His fourth novel, Freedom, was published in the fall of 2010.

Franzen's other honors include a 1988 Whiting Writers' Award, Granta's Best Of Young Ameri...more

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“I wanted all of her and resented other boys for wanting any part of her.” — 22 people liked it

“At forty-five, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen. I work on my arm strength at the gym; I've become pretty good with tools. At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who's still inside me. I eat half a box of Oreos for lunch, I binge on TV, I make sweeping moral judgments. I run around in torn jeans, I drink martinis on a Tuesday night, I stare at beer-commercial cleavage. I define as uncool any group to which I can't belong. I feel the urge to key Range Rovers and slash their tires; I pretend I'm never going to die.

You never stop waiting for the real story to start, because the only real story, in the end, is that you die.” — 16 people liked it

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