Katie's review
The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen
Somehow, I never read THE CORRECTIONS (I know.) So I'm a little lost and a little late to the party. Maybe it's better to approach this personal history outside the context of That Book, though.
Franzen is brave in revealing some general, painful unlikeability, particularly as a teenager. And there are moments of beauty, here, precise moments captured as if he's the first person to ever write about them. The collection opens with this:
"There'd been a storm that evening in St. Louis. Water was standing in steaming black pools on the pavement outside the airport, and from the back seat of my taxi I could see oak limbs shifting against low-hanging urban clouds. The Saturday-night roads were saturated with a feeling of afterness, of lateness—the rain wasn't falling, it had already fallen." I was surprised by such loveliness.
"Peanuts" and DER PROZESS share equal time in Franzen's development. I know he has a reputation as a whiny and abrasive intelle...more
Franzen is brave in revealing some general, painful unlikeability, particularly as a teenager. And there are moments of beauty, here, precise moments captured as if he's the first person to ever write about them. The collection opens with this:
"There'd been a storm that evening in St. Louis. Water was standing in steaming black pools on the pavement outside the airport, and from the back seat of my taxi I could see oak limbs shifting against low-hanging urban clouds. The Saturday-night roads were saturated with a feeling of afterness, of lateness—the rain wasn't falling, it had already fallen." I was surprised by such loveliness.
"Peanuts" and DER PROZESS share equal time in Franzen's development. I know he has a reputation as a whiny and abrasive intelle...more
