Review: How to Be Alone

How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book from my late father-in-law's collection. It came recommended by my cousin, Beverly.

I had read The Corrections a while back. Looking at my Good Reads entry, apparently I read it over four years ago, and I don't really remember a whole lot about it. But I tend to like collections of short essays, so I decided to give this a shot.

This collection is a little bit of a hodgepodge. Some essays are deeply personal, some are Luddite rants, and others are reports about things that the author has little or no personal connection to. I found the personal essays the most interesting, and he hits with that first. The very first essay is about Franzen's family's experience as his father degenerates through Alzheimer's. This was a very emotional read and well worth picking up the book.

The essays about things like the USPS or the prison system were also interesting, but I didn't feel as connected to Franzen through them and they weren't what I wanted after I read the first essay.

Then there were the essays about the novel. These were very uneven. Some of them just felt whiny, like "I'm becoming obsolete like my favorite, the rotary telephone," but I really enjoyed others, like the essay that talks about Status vs. Contract model of fiction. It reminded me of when Umberto Eco wrote that those who like The Name of the Rose are all readers who didn't understand it. This of course miffed me because I loved The Name of the Rose and didn't enjoy Foucault's Pendulum at all. Franzen's essay gave me a little bit more perspective on this.

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