Farther Away

Essays

2013

In this incisive collection of speeches and essays, Jonathan Franzen returns with renewed vigor to the themes, both human and literary, that have long preoccupied him. Whether recalling his violent encounter with bird poachers in Cyprus, examining his feelings about the suicide of his friend and rival David Foster Wallace, or offering a moving and witty take on the ways that technology has changed how people express their love, these pieces deliver on Franzen’s implicit promise to conceal nothing. A remarkable and revelatory work from one of our greatest living novelists, Farther Away traces the progress of a unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature, and with some of the most important issues of our day.

“This is an essential point, the heart of everything, made all the more so because Franzen’s fiction is not autobiographical in any overt way. And yet, what else could it be when literature is, must be, the result of ‘a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author’s story of his or her own life’? Such an intention runs throughout these essays, whether critical (takes on Paula Fox, Christina Snead, Donald Antrim, Dostoevsky) or experiential (an account of bird preservation efforts in the Mediterranean, a tirade about the effect of cellphones on urban life) . . . On the surface, these pieces have nothing to do with each other, yet what is either one about if not authenticity? Again and again, that’s the question Franzen raises in this collection . . . What Franzen is getting at is the concept of being ‘islanded,’ the notion that—no matter what—we are on our own, all the time . . . In that sense, all of it—from the kid in that car to the teenager wandering New York to the birder on Robinson Crusoe’s island—is of a piece with David Foster Wallace and even Neil Armstrong: isolated dots of consciousness in a capricious universe, trying to find a point of real connection before time runs out.” 

—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“Smart, incisive prose that finds deeper societal meaning in almost anything.”

—USA Today

“Throughout the book, Franzen suggests that storytelling is a way to interpret and relieve our collective suffering–a vehicle for social connection–and that apathy can be challenged with Molotov cocktails of ‘bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are’…Combining personal history with cultural events and the minutiae of daily life, Franzen evokes Joan Didion’s tone of rigorous self-examination, and [David Foster] Wallace’s wit and philosophical prowess. Whether he is writing about technologies’ assault on sincerity or analyzing Alice Munro’s short stories, what emerges are works of literary theory and cultural critique that are ambitious, brooding and charmingly funny… The essays in Farther Away are rigorous, artful devotions navigating morally complex topics. At the heart of this collection are the ways ‘engagement with something you love compels you to face up to who you really are.’ Collectively, they are a source of authenticity and refuge–a way out of loneliness.” —Kathryn Savage, Minneapolis Star Tribune

—Kathryn Savage, Minneapolis Star Tribune