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Originally posted by robustpuppy
I'm a bit more than 4% of the way through Jonathan Franzen's collection of essays, entitled How to Be Alone, and I'm enjoying it very much. (Although I must add that I don't recommend it to depressives or others contemplating their mortality. The first essay is about his father's descent into Alzheimer's.)
I haven't read the Corrections or anything else by Franzen. But I like his writing style and his rejection of that uber narcicisst Oh-Oh-Oh just shut the hell up already Winfrey.
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When The Corrections came out, there was a profile of Franzen in the New York Times Magazine (believe this was a week or two before 9/11, so his publicity kinda fizzled) that revealed him to be a pretentious striver. I didn't hate The Corrections, but it certainly left me with a sense that Franzen is too impressed with himself, at least by half. It would be wonderful if he had really meant to reject Oprah, but almost certainly he just made the mistake of sharing what he was really thinking -- a dangerous move, judging from the NYTM profile. Not that I'm crying for Oprah or anything.
That piece about his father's Alzheimer's was in The New Yorker right before 9/11, too, and I thought it was very good.
