How to be Alone by Jonathan Frantzen

How to be Alone by Jonathan Frantzen

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.

Jonathan Franzen (Western Springs, Illinois, 1959) was named one of the best young novelists in the United States by the prestigious magazine Granta in 1996. Until then, he had written the novels Ciudad veintisiete (1988) and Movimiento fuerte (1992), but it was the publication of Las correcciones (Salamandra, 2012) in 2001 that sealed his immense narrativo talent: he won the National Book Award and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Libertad (Salamandra, 2011), a novel that received widespread acclaim from a wide range of critics and experts from a variety of countries, was the final nail in the coffin for him in 2010. In Spain, he was awarded the Premio a la Mejor Novela del Año by the readers of the magazine Qué Leer. Cinco años más después, en otoño de 2015, la publicación dePureza reconmocionó a los lectores de habla inglesa, y lo consagró como uno de los grandes escritores norteamericanos de nuestra epocha In addition, Franzen is the author of five nonfiction works: How to Be Alone (2002), Zona templada (2006), Más afuera (Salamandra, 2012), The Kraus Project (2013), and El end del fin de la Tierra (Salamandra, 2019).