In Farther Away, which gathers together essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, Franzen returns with renewed vigour 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 in which technology has changed how people express their love, these pieces deliver on Franzen’s implicit promise to conceal nothing. Taken together, his essays trace the progress of a unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature and with some of the most important issues of our day.
JONATHAN FRANZEN is the author of four novels, The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections (winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction) and the #1 international bestseller Freedom; two collections of essays, How to Be Alone and Farther Away; and a personal history, The Discomfort Zone. In 2010, TIME magazine named him the “Great American Novelist.” Franzen lives in New York City, New York, and Santa Cruz, California.