I suspect I was a little more interested in or a little bit more receptive to How to Be Alone because of the connections between Wallace and Jonathan Franzen. I feel a kind of connection with him that I rarely feel with authors.

To point this out is, inevitably, to sound like something of a crank, and the accomplishment of this book is to offer its cranky author and his like-minded readers a suitably contradictory and ambiguous consolation: we're not alone.I have in recent years become quite interested in the writer David Foster Wallace. 'At present, in Franzen's humane, pessimistic view, our individuality is under assault from all quarters, and the novel is part of a web of modern institutions-along with the daily mail, the industrial city and the idea of a democratic public sphere-undermined by the irresistible (that is, both unstoppable and undeniably attractive) forces of standardization and privatization. Scott discussed Franzen's, 'calm, passionate critical authority.' Scott closed, He's funny, too.' Maslin praised the essay 'My Father's Brain' as 'a tough, haunting account.' In The New York Times Book Review, critic A.O. Janet Maslin, in The New York Times, called the book 'captivating but uneven'-'this collection emphasizes elegance, acumen and daring as an essayist, with an intellectually engaging self-awareness as formidable as Joan Didion's. Difficult' was inserted after 'Control Units'. Note: In the trade paperback edition 'Mr.

'My Father's Brain' (an edited version appeared in The Guardian see External links).

To accommodate this additional essay, the essay “Scavenging” was substantially edited. Difficult', on the subject of 'difficult' fiction in general and the novels of William Gaddis in particular.

The 2003 trade paperback edition includes a fifteenth essay, ' Mr. These experiences informed Franzen’s writing of the character Alfred Lambert in his 2001 novel The Corrections. The latter essay details the elder Franzen's struggle with Alzheimer's. Included in the collection are 'Why Bother?'-a revised version of 'Perchance to Dream,' Franzen's infamous 1996 Harper's essay on the novelists' obligation to social realism-and 'My Father's Brain,' nominated for a 2002 National Magazine Award.

How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen