Farther Away

Essays

By: Jonathan Franzen

Narrated by: Jonathan Franzen, Scott Shepherd

Jonathan Franzen's Freedom was the runaway most-discussed novel of 2010, an ambitious and searching engagement with life in America in the twenty-first century. In The New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus proclaimed it "a masterpiece of American fiction" and lauded its illumination, "through the steady radiance of its author's profound moral intelligence, [of] the world we thought we knew."

In Farther Away, which gathers together essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, Franzen returns with renewed vigor to the themes, both human and literary, that have long preoccupied him. Whether recounting his violent encounter with bird poachers in Cyprus, examining his mixed 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. On a trip to China to see first-hand the environmental devastation there, he doesn't omit mention of his excitement and awe at the pace of China's economic development; the trip becomes a journey out of his own prejudice and moral condemnation. Taken together, these essays trace the progress of unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature, and with some of the most important issues of our day. Farther Away is remarkable, provocative, and necessary.

©2012 Jonathan Franzen (P)2012 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“[Franzen's] new collection takes the reader on a closely guided tour of his private concerns . . . the miscorrelation between merit and fame, the breakdown of a marriage, birds, the waning relevance of the novel in popular culture . . . Franzen rewards the reader with extended meditations on common phenomena we might otherwise consider unremarkable . . . the observations [he] makes regarding subjects like cell phone etiquette, the ever-evolving face of modern love and technology are trenchant . . . With Farther Away, Mr. Franzen demonstrates his ability to dissect the kinds of quotidian concerns that so often evade scrutiny . . . It may be eight years before he releases his next shimmering novel; in the meantime Mr. Franzen seems intent on keeping the conversation going. Farther Away at least achieves that.” —Alex Fankuchen, The New York Observer

“Franzen's position in literary debates is by now well staked--engrossing plots and characters are king--and here he maintains his ground with characteristic intelligence and earnestness . . . But what distinguishes Franzen's treatment of these matters in Farther Away is the frequency with which he appeals to love . . . Love now suffuses Franzen's writing as it hasn't before, in a manner intertwined with his newly tragicomic outlook. As the world outside of Franzen's window grows grimmer--as America's politics become more dysfunctional, digitization more irrevocable, humanity's adverse effects on the planet more profound--his writing has increasingly located salvation in turning to the worthiest thing you can find and loving the hell out of it . . . Farther Away is a reminder not only of Franzen's greatness as a sentence-by-sentence writer, but also of how much he cares about literature.” —James Santel, The Los Angeles Review of Books

“[Franzen's] essays are riddled with aphorisms (‘One half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love') and, surprisingly, humour (theory and sex prove incompatible bedfellows when his wife-to-be declares: ‘You can't deconstruct and undress at the same time'). A multifaceted and revealing collection, Farther Away actually brings the reader closer to the author.” —The Economist

Two different readers, two different experiences

I really liked the first two essays read by the author and felt the book was read poorly by the reader that followed. This was not the case with Franzen's other books of essays which included essays read both by the author and a reader but where the combination was not so mismatched.

The second reader of FARTHER AWAY does not have a voice suited for a literary text. His voice sounds like Rod Serling or some cowboy story narrator, not like an author of serious reflective essays about literature. He sounds like the Marlboro Man. He reads too fast and without knowledge, including how to pronounce the names of other authors correctly. His words can be understood but the pace is so 'off' one essay sometimes ends and a new one is begun without him even pausing for a breath. You just suddenly realize the topic has changed.

That said, I enjoyed the essays themselves enough to purchase a hard copy of the book so that I could read it at my own pace and reread things that needed my own reflection. But I would not have needed to do that if the second reader had been more appropriately chosen.

Not as good as his fiction

I am a fan of Franzen's fiction, but this book of essays wasn't really for me. I wish there was an abridged version that was full of the main ideas that were found in quotes and passages. But his nonfiction stories and reviews were not nearly as enjoyable as his fictional prose.