How to be Alone - Essays
Language: English
Published by Fourth Estate, London, 2002
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: The Raven and the Writing Desk, Ruawai, Northland, New ZealandThe Raven and the Writing Desk
AbeBooks seller since March 11, 2026
Condition: Used
£ 4.61
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketSeller Inventory # 070438
- Title
- How to be Alone - Essays
- Author
- Franzen, Jonathan
- Publisher
- Fourth Estate, London
- Publication year
- 2002
- Condition
- Good - Some Marks
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0007152574
- ISBN 13
- 9780007152575
- Edition
- Not specified
- Dimensions
- 5 " x 7 3/4"
Jonathan Franzen's ‘Freedom’ was the literary sensation of 2010, whilst ‘The Corrections’ was the best-loved and most written-about novel the previous decade. ‘How to be Alone’, is a collection of the personal essays and painstaking, often humorous reportage that have earned Franzen a wide and loyal readership, including what has come to be known as 'The Harper's Essay', Franzen's controversial 1996 look at the fate of the novel. From the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, from his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease to a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author, each piece wrestles with Franzen's familiar themes: the erosion of civic life and private dignity, and the hidden persistence of loneliness, in postmodern imperial America.
These collected essays record what Franzen calls 'a movement away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance – even a celebration – of being a reader and a writer.' They voice a wry distrust of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of the sharpest, toughest-minded, and most entertaining social critics at work today.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Jonathan Franzen’s work includes four novels (The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom), two collections of essays (Farther Away, How To Be Alone), a memoir (The Discomfort Zone), and, most recently, The Kraus Project. He is recognised as one of the best American writers of our age and has won many awards. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
The Raven and the Writing Desk
Ruawai, Northland, New Zealand
AbeBooks seller since March 11, 2026
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