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How to Be Alone
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
Passionate, strong-minded nonfiction from the National Book Award-winning author of The CorrectionsJonathan Franzen's The Corrections was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Nearly every in-depth review of it discussed what became known as "The Harper's Essay," Franzen's controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of the American novel. This essay is reprinted for the first time in How to be Alone, along with the personal essays and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of The Corrections. Although his subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each piece wrestles with familiar themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father's stuggle with Alzheimer's disease (which has already been reprinted around the world) and a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author.As a collection, these essays record what Franzen calls "a movement away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance--even a celebration--of being a reader and a writer." At the same time they 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.
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DebbieGrillo
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Your reading habits are a form of self-care - a vehicle for unwinding and taking time for you. You tend to gravitate towards books that make you feel optimistic and relaxed, and you are energized knowing you can escape from reality to visit worlds and characters you love by simply settling in with a good book. Thrillers, mysteries, fiction or romance… if it lets you switch off the world, you‘ll read them as fast as you can get them...

Quiz link⬇️

Karkar I read for new experiences. Which is pretty spot on. Not do much the historical fiction part. But the rest was me. 2y
Jess861 Kind of scary how accurate this quiz was for me - I read for new experiences. 2y
RebelReader I read for new experiences too! 2y
61 likes1 stack add4 comments
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Jester59
Come stare soli | Jonathan Franzen
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Leggo in contemporanea anche questo. Molto acuto

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Gina
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Up North moments brought to you from a log cabin in Amberg, WI...

CaliforniaCay Ugh I envy you. I so badly want it to be cold, I keep putting on cardigans and wrapping myself in blankets, only to get too hot and have to take them off. Thats California for ya 😆 4y
Gina @CaliforniaCay hehehehehe 4y
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Gina
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Oh mannnn... I am curious as to what her boss did to inspire her to want a voodoo doll of him...

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Gina
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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So that says it all, doesn't it

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Gina
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Took myself out for a treat on a cold and rainy day

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Gina
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Receiving your father's brain autopsy in your Valentines package from your mom... that's not weird

AmyG 😳not all all 4y
13 likes1 comment
review
mepatterson42
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
Panpan

This book was not entirely without merit. There were quite a few pieces of essays that left me feeling thoughtful and pierced. But for the most part, it was just that: pieces. On the whole, the impression I walk away with of Franzen, whose fictional work I have loved, is of a somewhat pretentious man who wrongly thinks he is self-aware.

I don't regret reading this book. It had its redeeming moments. But I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

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KSNAP
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
Pickpick

“How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.”

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mrozzz
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Mehso-so

Although Franzen‘s flowery/pretentious writing style was a bit much, and the topics of a few of the essays seemed a bit strange, ultimately this is a competent collection. I do wish he'd pulled back in a few instances so the essays felt more human & less Literary, and I absolutely detested that Harper's essay & his attitude towards the "social novel" which seemed more like a pity fest than an intellectual stance on the country's reading habits.

ManyWordsLater Three lives books in Greenwich village!! Great spot! 7y
Leftcoastzen Love Three Lives ! Been a long time since I have visited. 7y
mrozzz This book is older so I didn‘t think twice about the image. Is it still open?! I should check it out 😄 @ManyWordsLater @Leftcoastzen 7y
Leftcoastzen 154 w 10th st . I always found something a little obscure and cool there 7y
CaitlinR I‘ve said it before, and I‘ll say it again: “Life‘s to short to continue to read Frankenstein‘s” 🙂 7y
90 likes5 comments
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GoneFishing
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen

When a smoker says he wants to quit but can‘t, what he‘s really saying is, “I want to quit but I want even more not to suffer the agony of withdrawal.” To argue otherwise is to jettison any lingering notion of personal responsibility.

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GoneFishing
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen

Time magazine, for my father, was the ultimate cultural authority. In the last decade, the magazine whose red border twice enclosed the face of James Joyce has devoted covers to Scott Turow and Stephen King. These are honorable writers; but it was the size of their contracts that won them covers. The dollar is now the yardstick of cultural authority, and Time, which not long ago aspired to shape the national taste, now serves mainly to reflect it.

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GoneFishing
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen

How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.

19 likes1 stack add
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GoneFishing
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen

But the first lesson reading teaches us is how to be alone.

44 likes2 stack adds
review
CaitlinByTheBook
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Panpan

Finally finished this one and did not particularly like it. Franzen comes off pretentious and arrogant. There were few passages I liked, mostly when he was just describing something that happened to him minus all the big words and extra philosophical rambling. Disappointed in this one and would not recommend it. Especially disagreed with this statement, "...writers and other artists have assumed extra pain to ease the burden for the rest of us..."

19 likes1 stack add
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CaitlinByTheBook
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Still working on this one...some essays are better than others. #nonfiction #essays #librarybook

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CaitlinByTheBook
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Spotted this one at the library and had to check it out when I read part of the description inside: "...how to be alone in a noisy and distracting mass culture.". I've seen some mixed reviews, but I'm excited to start this one tonight! #librarybook #essays #nonfiction

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GoneFishing
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

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GoneFishing
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression's actual essence, which is an estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage..., the more happy-faced the rest of humanity seems...

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smccallum
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Pickpick

This comes out as an overall pick and there are some fantastic essays but I still hit on a few that really didn't do much for me. By the end I felt I'd warmed more to Franzen's style and I still one more of his essay collections kicking about somewhere so time will tell. I'd say there's definitely stuff worth reading in here but I still think he's a much better novelist than essayist

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smccallum
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Halfway through this. Mixed feelings; I like this a lot more than Farther Away but it feels a little unbalanced still.

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CarrieScott
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Pickpick

I read someone once say something like, "I really get into Franzen. Everything but the birds. I just can't match his interest in them." I concur.

mauveandrosysky Ha! That's fair. 8y
2 likes1 comment
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Radiant-Reader
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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A favorite literary quote--

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Lisacarlson
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
Mehso-so

2 ⭐️

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Lisacarlson
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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autumnprivett
How to Be Alone: Essays | Jonathan Franzen
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Pickpick

It's difficult to review a collection of essays. Some are five-star, others are two-star. So I averaged it out to three stars. "Why Bother?", "Imperial Bedroom", and "The Reader in Exile" are standouts. Agnes believes I need to learn better how to leave her alone....?
⭐️⭐️⭐️

mllemay I've read his other collection of essays, Farther Away, and really enjoyed them. I felt like all of them were of pretty equal strength. 9y
Kbanski I loved this collection. I read it at a time in my life when I really related to a number of the essays, but haven't revisited it since. 9y
48 likes10 stack adds2 comments