How to Be Alone is a 2002 book collecting fourteen essays by Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections , a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction...

. Most of the essays previously appeared in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, Harper's Magazine

Harper's Magazine

Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...

, Details

Details (magazine)

Details is an American monthly men's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications, founded in 1982. Though primarily a magazine devoted to fashion and lifestyle, Details also features reports on relevant social and political issues.-History:...

, and Graywolf Forum. In the introductory essay, "A Word About This Book", Franzen notes that the "underlying investigation in all these essays" is "the problem of preserving individuality and complexity in a noisy and distracting mass culture: the question of how to be alone."(6)

Included are "Why Bother?"—a revised version of "Perchance to Dream", Franzen's infamous 1996 Harper's essay on the novelist's obligation to social realism—and "My Father's Brain", nominated for a 2002 National Magazine Award

National Magazine Award

The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...

.

The 2003 trade paperback edition includes a fifteenth essay, "Mr. Difficult", on the subject of "difficult" fiction in general and the novels of William Gaddis

William Gaddis

William Thomas Gaddis, Jr. was an American novelist. He wrote five novels, two of which won National Book Awards and one of which, The Recognitions , was chosen as one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005...

 in particular.

Table of contents

• "A Word About This Book"
• "My Father's Brain"
• "Imperial Bedroom"
• "Why Bother?"
• "Lost in the Mail"
• "Erika Imports"
• "Sifting the Ashes"
• "The Reader in Exile"
• "First City"
• "Scavenging"
• "Control Units"
• "Books in Bed"
• "Meet Me in St. Louis"
• "Inauguration Day, January 2001"

Note: In the trade paperback edition "Mr. Difficult" was inserted after "Control Units".

External links

• An abstract of "Mr. Difficult" from the New Yorker
  The New Yorker
  The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
  
  website