First published 2010
Jonathan Franzen examines American loneliness across two decades of essays and reportage. He investigates the sex advice industry and tours supermax prisons. He writes about his father's battle with Alzheimer's disease and recounts his uncomfortable experience as an Oprah book club selection. Franzen traces the decline of civic engagement and personal dignity in modern America. He questions technology's promises and psychology's claims while wrestling with consumer culture's contradictions. The collection spans his career from angry isolation toward accepting his role as both reader and writer. These pieces reveal Franzen's evolution as a social critic who believes individual lives follow tragic patterns despite America's imperial ambitions.
Genres: essays, american-fiction, american, social-issues, non-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-journey, social-commentary
Setting: America
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
322 pages · Kindle Edition · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: mental-illness