How To Be Alone

Jonathan Franzen

Harper Collins, Oct 22, 2013 - Fiction - 324 pages

From Jonathan Franzen, the National Book Award–winning author of The Corrections, come fourteen provocative and entertaining answers to the question of how to be alone in a noisy and distracting mass culture. Although Franzen’s subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each piece wrestles with essential themes of his writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity, the dubious claims of technology and psychology, the tragic shape of the individual life. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and a rueful account of Franzen’s brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author.

This is a book that will further cement Franzen’s reputation as one of the sharpest, toughest, and liveliest writers at work today.

Contents

• Dedication: 1981

About the author

JONATHAN FRANZEN is the author of four novels, The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections (winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction) and the #1 international bestseller Freedom; two collections of essays, How to Be Alone and Farther Away; and a personal history, The Discomfort Zone. In 2010, TIME magazine named him the “Great American Novelist.” Franzen lives in New York City, New York, and Santa Cruz, California.

Bibliographic information

• Title: How To Be Alone
• Author: Jonathan Franzen
• Publisher: Harper Collins, 2013
• ISBN: 1443432598, 9781443432597
• Length: 324 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General