{"product_id":"how-to-be-alone-essays-cd-9780743528306","title":"How to Be Alone","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePassionate, strong-minded nonfiction from the National Book Award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Correction\u003c\/i\u003es\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eJonathan Franzen's \u003ci\u003eThe Corrections\u003c\/i\u003e was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Nearly every in-depth review of it discussed what became known as The \u003ci\u003eHarper's\u003c\/i\u003e Essay, Franzen's controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of the American novel. This essay is reprinted for the first time in \u003ci\u003eHow to be Alone\u003c\/i\u003e, along with the personal essays and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of\u003ci\u003e The Corrections\u003c\/i\u003e. Although his subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each piece wrestles with familiar themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father's stuggle with Alzheimer's disease (which has already been reprinted around the world) and a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs a collection, these essays record what Franzen calls a movement away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance--even a celebration--of being a reader and a writer. At the same time they show the wry distrust of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50095196995857,"sku":"CIN0743528301G","price":4.62,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50361841156369,"sku":"CIN0743528301VG","price":4.03,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0743528301.jpg?v=1751169146","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/how-to-be-alone-essays-cd-9780743528306","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}