How to Be Alone: Essays (edit title)

Shelfari edited the description of How to Be Alone: Essays Sunday, August 2 2009.

• 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 l996 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.

Shelfari edited the contributors of How to Be Alone: Essays Thursday, July 23 2009.

• Added a contributor: Jonathan Franzen: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of How to Be Alone: Essays Thursday, July 16 2009.

• HERE'S A MEMORY. On an overcast morning in February 1996, I received in the mail from my mother, in St. Louis, a Valentine's package containing one pinkly romantic greeting card, two four-ounce Mr. Goodbars, one hollow red filigree heart on a loop of thread, and one copy of a neuropathologist's report on my father's brain autopsy.