How to be alone : essays / Jonathan Franzen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Franzen, Jonathan.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Essays.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

306 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Picador edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Picador, 2003.

Summary:

From the National Book Award-winning author of "The Corrections, a collection of essays that reveal him to be one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics While the essays in this collection range in subject matter from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each one wrestles with the essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civil life and private dignity; and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Reprinted here for the first time is Franzen's controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of the American novel in what became known as "the Harper's essay, " as well as his award-winning narrative of his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, and a rueful account of his brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author.

Contents:

My father's brain

Imperial bedroom

Why bother?

Lost in the mail

Erika imports

Sifting the ashes

Reader in exile

First city

Scavenging

Control units

Mr. Difficult

Books in bed

Meet me in St. Louis

Inauguration day, January, 2001.

Notes:

Rev. and expanded.

ISBN:

0312422164

9780312422165

OCLC:

53318389

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description