Farther Away (book)
Farther Away is a 2012 collection of essays by the American writer Jonathan Franzen.
 First edition cover | |
| Author | Jonathan Franzen |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Essays |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | April 24, 2012 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 356 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | 0-374-15357-4 (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC | 759175040 |
| 814/.54 dc23 | |
| LC Class | PS3556.R352 A6 2012 |
Essays
Most of the essays previously appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, and others.
Table of contents
- “Pain Won't Kill You” (2011)
- “Farther Away” (2011)
- “The Greatest Family Ever Storied” (2010)
- “Hornets” (2010)
- “The Ugly Mediterranean” (2010)
- “The Corn King” (2010)
- “On Autobiographical Fiction” (2009)
- “I Just Called To Say I Love You” (2008)
- “David Foster Wallace” (2008)
- “The Chinese Puffin” (2008)
- “On The Laughing Policeman” (2008)
- “Comma-Then” (2008)
- “Authentic But Horrible” (2007)
- “Interview With New York State” (2007)
- “Love Letters” (2005)
- “Our Little Planet” (2005)
- “The End Of The Binge” (2005)
- “What Makes You So Sure You're Not The Evil One Yourself?” (2004)
- “Our Relations : A Brief History” (2004)
- “The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit” (2002)
- “No End To It” (1998)
Reception
In The New York Times Book Review, the essayist Phillip Lopate wrote the pieces "demonstrate [Franzen's] generosity, humanity and love of fiction, as well as his own preference for the morally complex over the sentimental. The struggle to be a good human being, against the pulls of solipsism and narcissism, can be glimpsed in every page of these essays, which if nothing else offer a telling battle report from within the consciousness of one of our major novelists."[1]
In the English newspaper The Guardian, writer and critic Geoff Dyer found advances over Franzen's previous essay collection, How to Be Alone: "Franzen seems more gregarious than he was in How to be Alone...These essays are exemplary instances of reader-friendly criticism in that they can be studied profitably even by people unfamiliar with the works in question. They also display [a] related side-effect of becoming a great novelist. That the great novelist is, by default, a great reader...One way or another, the essays in Farther Away are attempts to enlarge the place where literature, and the responsiveness to it, can be preserved."[2]
References
- Phillip Lopate, "Manageable Discontent," The New York Times Book Review, May 20, 2012.
- Geoff Dyer, "Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen: Jonathan Franzen meditates on marriage and mobiles in these largely brilliant essays," The Guardian, 10 June 2012.