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The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History
Jonathan Franzen arrived late, and last, in a family of boys in Webster Groves, Missouri. The Discomfort Zone is his intimate memoir of his growth from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions. It's also a portrait of a middle-class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s, and a vivid personal history of the decades in which America turned away from its midcentury idealism and became a more polarized society.
The story Franzen tells here draws on elements as varied as the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka's fiction on his protracted quest to lose his virginity, the elaborate pranks that he and his friends orchestrated from the roof of his high school, his self-inflicted travails in selling his mother's house after her death, and the web of connections between his all-consuming marriage, the problem of global warming, and the life lessons to be learned in watching birds.
These chapters of a Midwestern youth and a New York adulthood are warmed by the same combination of comic scrutiny and unqualified affection that characterize Franzen's fiction, but here the main character is the author himself. Sparkling, daring, arrestingly honest, The Discomfort Zone narrates the formation of a unique mind and heart in the crucible of an everyday American family.
The story Franzen tells here draws on elements as varied as the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka's fiction on his protracted quest to lose his virginity, the elaborate pranks that he and his friends orchestrated from the roof of his high school, his self-inflicted travails in selling his mother's house after her death, and the web of connections between his all-consuming marriage, the problem of global warming, and the life lessons to be learned in watching birds.
These chapters of a Midwestern youth and a New York adulthood are warmed by the same combination of comic scrutiny and unqualified affection that characterize Franzen's fiction, but here the main character is the author himself. Sparkling, daring, arrestingly honest, The Discomfort Zone narrates the formation of a unique mind and heart in the crucible of an everyday American family.
195 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Jonathan Franzen
82 books9,552 followersJonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel The Corrections drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His novel Freedom (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". Franzen's latest novel Crossroads was published in 2021, and is the first in a projected trilogy.
Franzen has contributed to The New Yorker magazine since 1994. His 1996 Harper's essay "Perchance to Dream" bemoaned the state of contemporary literature. Oprah Winfrey's book club selection in 2001 of The Corrections led to a much publicized feud with the talk show host.
Franzen has contributed to The New Yorker magazine since 1994. His 1996 Harper's essay "Perchance to Dream" bemoaned the state of contemporary literature. Oprah Winfrey's book club selection in 2001 of The Corrections led to a much publicized feud with the talk show host.
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October 29, 2021
I came to this memoir because the description hints at Franzen's experiences with a Christian youth group in the 70s, and I can report that, YES, you can find the source material for Crossroads right here! First published in 2006 (so between The Corrections and Freedom), there's a strong theme of religion going through the whole text. Starting with 40ish Franzen trying to sell his mother's house after her passing, we get a kaleidoscope of stories from the past that illuminate how the author became, well, Jonathan Franzen.
Often, Franzen (as the title suggests) grapples with memories of failure and uneasiness, thus addressing crucial, wait for it!, crossroads in his life, like his divorce. And: He talks about studying German, which I, as a German, applaud! :-) Franzen particularly talks about four wonderful classics: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge ("but this time, I will be written", Malte declares in the book), The Magic Mountain, The Trial, and Berlin Alexanderplatz. This whole chapter is a great example of how literature can help a person find themselves and their place in the world.
Above that, Franzen uses his own experiences in order to project a larger picture of growing up in the Midwest, also drawing from cultural phenomena like The Peanuts (Charles M. Schulz hails from Minnesota, you can find little statues of the comic characters he created throughout the capital of St. Paul). And in case you wondered: Wait a minute, non-fiction by Franzen, but no birdwatching?, please remain calm: There are birds and also thoughts on climate change in here.
All in all, a little too ruminative for my personal taste, but certainly a wonderful text for everyone interested in Franzen exegesis.
Often, Franzen (as the title suggests) grapples with memories of failure and uneasiness, thus addressing crucial, wait for it!, crossroads in his life, like his divorce. And: He talks about studying German, which I, as a German, applaud! :-) Franzen particularly talks about four wonderful classics: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge ("but this time, I will be written", Malte declares in the book), The Magic Mountain, The Trial, and Berlin Alexanderplatz. This whole chapter is a great example of how literature can help a person find themselves and their place in the world.
Above that, Franzen uses his own experiences in order to project a larger picture of growing up in the Midwest, also drawing from cultural phenomena like The Peanuts (Charles M. Schulz hails from Minnesota, you can find little statues of the comic characters he created throughout the capital of St. Paul). And in case you wondered: Wait a minute, non-fiction by Franzen, but no birdwatching?, please remain calm: There are birds and also thoughts on climate change in here.
All in all, a little too ruminative for my personal taste, but certainly a wonderful text for everyone interested in Franzen exegesis.
Read
December 9, 2013I spent the weekend at the beach, but I thought I might wind up enjoying something, so I brought along the gloomiest Gus in town, Jonathan Franzen.
Here's the thing. Franzen is the only mainstream American culture (he's been on Oprah and the cover of Time, and as far as I'm concerned that puts him at Miley Cyrus levels of mainstream for the middle-aged, -class, and-Western) who actually spits venom at the system. I appreciate this.
Here he unleashes his rage against himself and his various insecurities. And as someone who was likewise an oversensitive youth in Middle America, I should empathize. But instead I see all my least attractive traits on the page. And Franzen is enumerating those unattractive traits as his unattractive traits. I don't need to read that.
And then he mopes about girls he crushed over at a distance as a teenager. This is a bad habit I mostly, successfully purged. Yet somehow he felt the need to publish this, while at the same time, thankfully, thankfully-- and how afraid I was he was going to go there-- sparing us the story of losing his virginity. He might as well have though.
Harumph. There were some good parts in this, some parts that would have made outstanding essays in their own right. But as a whole, I just really didn't give much of a shit.
Here's the thing. Franzen is the only mainstream American culture (he's been on Oprah and the cover of Time, and as far as I'm concerned that puts him at Miley Cyrus levels of mainstream for the middle-aged, -class, and-Western) who actually spits venom at the system. I appreciate this.
Here he unleashes his rage against himself and his various insecurities. And as someone who was likewise an oversensitive youth in Middle America, I should empathize. But instead I see all my least attractive traits on the page. And Franzen is enumerating those unattractive traits as his unattractive traits. I don't need to read that.
And then he mopes about girls he crushed over at a distance as a teenager. This is a bad habit I mostly, successfully purged. Yet somehow he felt the need to publish this, while at the same time, thankfully, thankfully-- and how afraid I was he was going to go there-- sparing us the story of losing his virginity. He might as well have though.
Harumph. There were some good parts in this, some parts that would have made outstanding essays in their own right. But as a whole, I just really didn't give much of a shit.
March 19, 2022
There's an old philosophical joke that, in one of its many forms**, runs: "There are two kinds of people in the world—those who think there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don't". In that spirit, I'd like to propose a corollary, as regards the biographies of writers: there are two kinds of writers, (i) those who meticulously curate their biographies (so as to attempt to shepherd or police future interpretations of their life and work, as with the late Philip Roth, say, by appointing official biographers and/or donating their ephemera to university libraries under strict provisos), and (ii) those who would seek to remove their own persons from literary history, because the man or woman is nothing, the work is all (Thomas Pynchon and Milan Kundera, certainly, plus William Gaddis, who asks, in his novel The Recognitions, "What is an artist, but the dregs of his work?").
There is (at the very least) a third type of author, of course, whose own life intrudes noisily, even anarchically onto the scene and competes with the writing itself for attention, sometimes with deliberate intent (e.g. Norman Mailer), sometimes by accident (e.g. Franzen himself, over the Oprah's-Book-Club-Stickergate phenomenon in connection with his third novel, The Corrections). And sometimes, too in the confessional mode: though such memoirs usually or often come near the close of a writing career and as a preliminary salvo to the curational campaign of type (i), above, on occasion a mid-career writer with something on their chest or in their conscience or both chooses to "bare all" in public, their own reputation be damned—a daring raid against the besieged citadel of their own public persona, if you will, or kamikaze mission….
The Discomfort Zone is just such a book—not an autobiography or memoir in any conceivable "normal" sense of that word, but an examination of conscience, a exercise in self-harrowing, and above all an attempt to connect with a past which has shaped its author and his various obsessions and which is now of course retrievable only via memory. But it is also a stab at self-redemption, or at least the expiation of the poor choices which resulted from those obsessions and the early relationships within whose matrix those obsessions first developed.
In other words, peeps, Jonathan Franzen is a strange dude, and he wants us to know that for some strange reason, one perhaps known only to himself—or at least, I did not figure out the motivation for his having written such a strange account of his strange life whilst reading this strange, but not always estranging book.
His parents were even bigger weirdos. His father… well, I couldn't help but think of the father in George Saunders's flash fiction "Sticks" while reading this book—It's really short, but also poignantly affecting (and super-tragic) and I'll put the whole thing in a spoiler here...
...but the most relevant bit of it is when the narrator, one of the sons or daughters, sums up enduring life-with-dad, saying,
Much wonder, though, that he wants us readers to know…are we the disreputable friends he was never allowed to have? Or are we but Fathers and Mothers Confessional, granting some virtual or collective or something-something penance and absolution?
I have no idea.
But therein lies the heart of this book, which sometimes I thought I loved, and at other times made me cringe in embarrassment for its author—not because it is badly-written at all (no, the sense we get here is of a man middle-age but of still scorchingly bright intelligence, albeit one who won't stop hovering over himself and screaming "Not good enough, not good enough, not good enough!"), but because why would anyone want to air one's own most embarrassingly dirty linen in public like that?
I have no idea.
Briefly now, cos now I am hoevering over myself and telling myself that I am starting to try even a patient reader's patience, but elsewhere in this book we get quite a lot that is of interest, and of import to Mr. Franzen's psychomachia: a compelling argument in favour of Charles Schulz and the comic "Peanuts" (as well as JF's reasons for obsessing over same), if you can believe it, the early-70s sheer insanity of belonging to a hippy-Christian church youth fellowship called, you got it, "Fellowship"; high school pranks which not only do not go well, but which needs must convince you that teen JF was the geekiest nerd or nerdiest geek, like, evah; an absolutely wonderful, if-anything-too-short account of how German literature (specifically, Goethe and Mann most of all) saved JF from all that earlier (but not the later) stuff; and finally, a closing piece I dreaded after spying it in the Table of Contents, one aptly titled "My Bird Problem".
Now, I am a bit of a fan of the natural world. I like critters, and I like flowers. And I love trees. But Jonathan Franzen, Puritan obsessive-compulsive-son-of-Franzens-and-father-of-none simply loves loves LOVES (and loves to talk about and fly all over the continents after) birds. Loves'em to bits, perhaps even to distraction. But there's a method to his madness, it seems (though I had to wade through a whole lot of bird names to get to it: humans are destructive creatures, and it can be rational to be misanthropic about all that they get up to. Global warming is the ultimate fuckover of Mother Nature, but do most people even care? The misanthrope grins through his Weltschmerz. But he can't love Mother Nature, either ("Whoever imagined that LOVE YOUR MOTHER would make a good environmental bumper sticker obviously didn’t have a mom like mine"), he can only fret over her—until, that is, he discovers her particularities and learns how to love them, in spite himself. To love an endangered bird in spite of its foredoomedness, well—well let JF say it:
** You can read all about that joke and its variants, and its variant attributions here: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02...
There is (at the very least) a third type of author, of course, whose own life intrudes noisily, even anarchically onto the scene and competes with the writing itself for attention, sometimes with deliberate intent (e.g. Norman Mailer), sometimes by accident (e.g. Franzen himself, over the Oprah's-Book-Club-Stickergate phenomenon in connection with his third novel, The Corrections). And sometimes, too in the confessional mode: though such memoirs usually or often come near the close of a writing career and as a preliminary salvo to the curational campaign of type (i), above, on occasion a mid-career writer with something on their chest or in their conscience or both chooses to "bare all" in public, their own reputation be damned—a daring raid against the besieged citadel of their own public persona, if you will, or kamikaze mission….
The Discomfort Zone is just such a book—not an autobiography or memoir in any conceivable "normal" sense of that word, but an examination of conscience, a exercise in self-harrowing, and above all an attempt to connect with a past which has shaped its author and his various obsessions and which is now of course retrievable only via memory. But it is also a stab at self-redemption, or at least the expiation of the poor choices which resulted from those obsessions and the early relationships within whose matrix those obsessions first developed.
In other words, peeps, Jonathan Franzen is a strange dude, and he wants us to know that for some strange reason, one perhaps known only to himself—or at least, I did not figure out the motivation for his having written such a strange account of his strange life whilst reading this strange, but not always estranging book.
His parents were even bigger weirdos. His father… well, I couldn't help but think of the father in George Saunders's flash fiction "Sticks" while reading this book—It's really short, but also poignantly affecting (and super-tragic) and I'll put the whole thing in a spoiler here...
...but the most relevant bit of it is when the narrator, one of the sons or daughters, sums up enduring life-with-dad, saying,
We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us as we poured ketchup, saying, Good enough good enough good enough.A not-so-life-affirming utility-maximizing, gratification-delaying uber-Protestant, in other words. Thing is, though, both parents are on Team Puritan in The Discomfort Zone, and it is mom who seems to deserve, or at least receives, more of the son's scrutiny. The book opens with Franzen relating his returning home after her death to sell the house which was not only her pride and joy, but seemingly one of her chief reasons for living. Life in that house was about improving that house, and improving it was about its future sale—I won't spoil that saga for you. Living in it was to be
cocooned in cocoons that were themselves cocooned. I was the late-arriving son to whom my father, who read to me every weeknight, confided his love of the depressive donkey Eeyore in A. A. Milne, and to whom my mother, at bedtime, sang a private lullaby that she’d made up to celebrate my birth. My parents were adversaries and my brothers were rivals, and each of them complained to me about each of the others, but they were all united in finding me amusing, and there was nothing not to love in them.All that love though? It comes very late in the book, much later in life (by Franzen's own confession), when the father is gone and the mother is terminally ill. Only then does he at last learn to love her "properly" (I'll get to that). Earlier on, though? It was all about control, control over every single aspect of young Jonathan's life. Here's an example:
In our hotel room in Orlando, I begged my mother to let me wear my cutoff jeans and a T-shirt for the day, but my mother won the argument, and I arrived at Disney World in an ensemble of pleated shorts and a Bing Crosbyish sport shirt. Dressed like this, miserable with self-consciousness, I moved my feet only when I was directly ordered to. All I wanted to do was go sit in our car and read. In front of each themed ride, my mother asked me if it didn’t look like lots of fun, but I saw the other teenagers waiting in line, and I felt their eyes on my clothes and my parents, and my throat ached, and I said the line was too long. My mother tried to cajole me, but my father cut her off: “Irene, he doesn’t want to ride this one.” We trudged on through diffuse, burning Florida sunshine to the next crowded ride. Where, again, the same story.No wonder, then, that young JF becomes rather tightly-wound, and that budding writer JF has to fight them every inch of the way to study German at college (as, unlike English, it can at least be dressed up as possibly leading to a career international banking or something), or that still-older JF tries to control every aspect of his relationships with women.
“You have to ride something,” my father said finally, after we’d had lunch. We were standing in the lee of an eatery while tawny-legged tourist girls thronged toward the water rides. My eyes fell on a nearby merry-go-round that was empty except for a few toddlers.
“I’ll ride that,” I said in a dull voice.
Much wonder, though, that he wants us readers to know…are we the disreputable friends he was never allowed to have? Or are we but Fathers and Mothers Confessional, granting some virtual or collective or something-something penance and absolution?
I have no idea.
But therein lies the heart of this book, which sometimes I thought I loved, and at other times made me cringe in embarrassment for its author—not because it is badly-written at all (no, the sense we get here is of a man middle-age but of still scorchingly bright intelligence, albeit one who won't stop hovering over himself and screaming "Not good enough, not good enough, not good enough!"), but because why would anyone want to air one's own most embarrassingly dirty linen in public like that?
I have no idea.
Briefly now, cos now I am hoevering over myself and telling myself that I am starting to try even a patient reader's patience, but elsewhere in this book we get quite a lot that is of interest, and of import to Mr. Franzen's psychomachia: a compelling argument in favour of Charles Schulz and the comic "Peanuts" (as well as JF's reasons for obsessing over same), if you can believe it, the early-70s sheer insanity of belonging to a hippy-Christian church youth fellowship called, you got it, "Fellowship"; high school pranks which not only do not go well, but which needs must convince you that teen JF was the geekiest nerd or nerdiest geek, like, evah; an absolutely wonderful, if-anything-too-short account of how German literature (specifically, Goethe and Mann most of all) saved JF from all that earlier (but not the later) stuff; and finally, a closing piece I dreaded after spying it in the Table of Contents, one aptly titled "My Bird Problem".
Now, I am a bit of a fan of the natural world. I like critters, and I like flowers. And I love trees. But Jonathan Franzen, Puritan obsessive-compulsive-son-of-Franzens-and-father-of-none simply loves loves LOVES (and loves to talk about and fly all over the continents after) birds. Loves'em to bits, perhaps even to distraction. But there's a method to his madness, it seems (though I had to wade through a whole lot of bird names to get to it: humans are destructive creatures, and it can be rational to be misanthropic about all that they get up to. Global warming is the ultimate fuckover of Mother Nature, but do most people even care? The misanthrope grins through his Weltschmerz. But he can't love Mother Nature, either ("Whoever imagined that LOVE YOUR MOTHER would make a good environmental bumper sticker obviously didn’t have a mom like mine"), he can only fret over her—until, that is, he discovers her particularities and learns how to love them, in spite himself. To love an endangered bird in spite of its foredoomedness, well—well let JF say it:
To know that something is doomed and to cheerfully try to save it anyway: it was a characteristic of my mother. I had finally started to love her near the end of her life, when she was undergoing a year of chemotherapy and radiation and living by herself. I’d admired her bravery for that. I’d admired her will to recuperate and her extraordinary tolerance of pain. I’d felt proud when her sister remarked to me, “Your mother looks better two days after abdominal surgery than I do at a dinner party.” I’d admired her skill and ruthlessness at the bridge table, where she wore the same determined frown when she had everything under control as when she knew she was going down. The last decade of her life, which started with my father’s dementia and ended with her colon cancer, was a rotten hand that she played like a winner.Has JF, in learning to love his mother learned to love his fellow humans, much less himself??? Again, I have no idea. JF is still a weird, weird dude, in my estimation, an author I am not sure I would enjoy having a beer with (kind of a litmus test with me, that). But I'm still not sure that I wouldn't enjoy said beer, either. That's a testament to Franzen's skill, here, in making a crazy, uncomfortable (yet still at times compensatory, if not quite comforting) kind of art out of a strange and difficult, yet obviously at times rewarding life and life-in-art.
** You can read all about that joke and its variants, and its variant attributions here: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02...
February 12, 2019
Не очаквайте прекалено лични откровения от The Discomfort Zone, нищо че подзаглавието ѝ е A Personal History. Tова леко ме подразни, но същевременно увеличи още малко уважението ми към Франзен. Някакси прекаленото задълбаване в детайлите от личния живот би било крайно нефранзеновско, макар и да би допаднало на всеки себеуважаващ се литературен воайор.
The Discomfort Zone е бегло повдигане на завесата към бекстейджа на големите творби на Франзен – разбираме откъде се е родил образът на Анабел, която така ми лазеше по нервите в Purity, както и иконичната ѝ къщурка в гората, която би била гордост за всеки откриващ кадър на добър филм на ужасите. Виждаме защо опазването на околната среда и в частност птиците са толкова безкрайно важни за Франзен (жокер: намесен е Ал Гор) и това идеално обяснява тази тема, която пронизваше като червена (или може би е по-добре да кажа зелена) нишка така любимия ми негов роман „Свобода“. Има и още много такива намеци и препратки, които запаленият читател си навързва с евристично удоволствие докато пътешества из носталгичните лабиринти на The Discomfort Zone.
Лично аз харесах най-много началните есета, които са съсредоточени върху детството на Франзен и неговото участие в училищната банда с ултра готиното име DIOTI. Замисълът зад него е адски оригинален и е обяснен детайлно в книгата. Това, което определено не ми достигна е прекалената фрагментарност (преднамерена) на написаното. Франзен постоянно ни подхвърля любопитни примамки и после точно с едно изречение се отплесва в страници разсъждения, нямащи много общо с това, което е приковало интереса ни в началото на даденото есе. И все пак като цяло сборникът ми хареса. Ако обаче не сте запознати с творчеството на Франзен или не го харесвате особено като автор, тази книга не е за вас.
The Discomfort Zone е бегло повдигане на завесата към бекстейджа на големите творби на Франзен – разбираме откъде се е родил образът на Анабел, която така ми лазеше по нервите в Purity, както и иконичната ѝ къщурка в гората, която би била гордост за всеки откриващ кадър на добър филм на ужасите. Виждаме защо опазването на околната среда и в частност птиците са толкова безкрайно важни за Франзен (жокер: намесен е Ал Гор) и това идеално обяснява тази тема, която пронизваше като червена (или може би е по-добре да кажа зелена) нишка така любимия ми негов роман „Свобода“. Има и още много такива намеци и препратки, които запаленият читател си навързва с евристично удоволствие докато пътешества из носталгичните лабиринти на The Discomfort Zone.
Лично аз харесах най-много началните есета, които са съсредоточени върху детството на Франзен и неговото участие в училищната банда с ултра готиното име DIOTI. Замисълът зад него е адски оригинален и е обяснен детайлно в книгата. Това, което определено не ми достигна е прекалената фрагментарност (преднамерена) на написаното. Франзен постоянно ни подхвърля любопитни примамки и после точно с едно изречение се отплесва в страници разсъждения, нямащи много общо с това, което е приковало интереса ни в началото на даденото есе. И все пак като цяло сборникът ми хареса. Ако обаче не сте запознати с творчеството на Франзен или не го харесвате особено като автор, тази книга не е за вас.
July 8, 2008
I am perplexed by the New York Times reviewers’ antipathy to this book. I have always found Franzen to be a captivating essayist, and Discomfort Zone is no exception. Most distressing to his critics, it seems, is Discomfort Zone’s abundant narcissism--but I found the essays to be a reflection on youthful egotism from a mature and contrite remove. To the Times reviewers, Franzen’s description of his family is sterile and unloving. His “disarming, sometimes misguided candor,” seems instead, to me, a genuine struggle to reconcile the myopic interiority of childhood (a common enough crime) and the smothering expectations and self-abnegation of his parents (again, common enough). Hilariously, the author resents his own liberal beliefs: he is bitter at his own convictions that he should moderate his material consumption and sacrifice to promote the welfare of others--sentiments I often intuit from the liberal community but never hear articulated. I found none of these confessions outsized or repugnant. If anything, I found Franzen’s view of himself and his family refreshingly healthy and honest: No family is free of resentment, and all resentment is rooted in a sense of entitlement.
The essays are not contiguous. Each is an autonomous work; three of the five have appeared in the New Yorker. Each paints a picture of Franzen’s emotional development. The second, for example, describes a boy aware of his many sins but comically oblivious to the degrees by which they vary: “Just after summer vacation started, Toczko ran out into Grant Road and was killed by a car. What little I knew then about the world’s badness I knew mainly from a camping trip, some years earlier, when I’d dropped a frog into a campfire and watched it shrivel and roll down the flat side of a log... I felt guilty about Toczko. I felt guilty about the little frog. I felt guilty about shunning my mother’s hugs when she seemed to need them most. I felt guilty about the washcloths at the bottom of the stack in the linen closet, the older, thinner washcloths that we seldom used. I felt guilty for preferring my best shooter marbles, a solid red agate and a solid yellow agate, my king and my queen, to marbles father down my rigid marble hierarchy.”
The most enticing thing about Franzen’s essays is his use of the objective correlative. In his early childhood, the author’s identification with Snoopy of the Peanuts comics conveys all we need to know about his buoyant and wicked playfulness. In his early adulthood, the author’s fascination with dark, psychological German literature dovetails his sexual preoccupations, his frustrated literary ambitions, and the realization of his parents’ frailty. In each essay, the objective correlative weaves neatly into the personal history, sometimes as a reprieve from the traditional narrative and sometimes as a momentum-building digression from it. It’s an effective mechanism, mostly light-hearted, sometimes nerdy, and almost always charming.
The essays are not contiguous. Each is an autonomous work; three of the five have appeared in the New Yorker. Each paints a picture of Franzen’s emotional development. The second, for example, describes a boy aware of his many sins but comically oblivious to the degrees by which they vary: “Just after summer vacation started, Toczko ran out into Grant Road and was killed by a car. What little I knew then about the world’s badness I knew mainly from a camping trip, some years earlier, when I’d dropped a frog into a campfire and watched it shrivel and roll down the flat side of a log... I felt guilty about Toczko. I felt guilty about the little frog. I felt guilty about shunning my mother’s hugs when she seemed to need them most. I felt guilty about the washcloths at the bottom of the stack in the linen closet, the older, thinner washcloths that we seldom used. I felt guilty for preferring my best shooter marbles, a solid red agate and a solid yellow agate, my king and my queen, to marbles father down my rigid marble hierarchy.”
The most enticing thing about Franzen’s essays is his use of the objective correlative. In his early childhood, the author’s identification with Snoopy of the Peanuts comics conveys all we need to know about his buoyant and wicked playfulness. In his early adulthood, the author’s fascination with dark, psychological German literature dovetails his sexual preoccupations, his frustrated literary ambitions, and the realization of his parents’ frailty. In each essay, the objective correlative weaves neatly into the personal history, sometimes as a reprieve from the traditional narrative and sometimes as a momentum-building digression from it. It’s an effective mechanism, mostly light-hearted, sometimes nerdy, and almost always charming.
April 12, 2020
Dimenticabile
Raccolta disorganica di articoli giornalistici a sfondo autobiografico di Jonathan Franzen che, partendo dalla morte della madre, e dalla vendita della casa di famiglia, cerca di ripercorrere attraverso i suoi ricordi d'infanzia e dell'adolescanza quella che dovrebbe essere stata una vita costantemente vissuta fuori dalla zona di comfort* (da cui il titolo originale The Discomfort Zone).
Ne risulta, come dicevo all'inizio, una raccolta slegata, discontinua e a tratti noiosa, in mezzo alla quale si pescano rare perle di scrittura e poche pagine di interesse: su tutte il capitolo sulla lingua e la letteratura tedesca (molto interessanti alcune riflessioni su La Montagna incantata di Thomas Mann), quello sulla sua passione ornitologica sfociata in un lungo periodo di birdwatching, e alcune considerazioni interessanti sui Peanuts e Charles Schulz.
Tutto il resto è noia, soprattutto quando Franzen avvicina la lente e anziché limitarsi a raccontare gli Stati Uniti e i mutamenti sociali (del Midwest e di Webster Groves nel Missouri, nello specifico) attraverso la sua memoria, decide di avvicinarsi e raccontare anche personaggi e dialoghi (piuttosto inutili) dei quali non importa niente a nessuno, forse nemmeno più a lui.
Pensare che un suo amico carissimo (e un autore fra quelli che più amo), raccontando il Midwest in un memorabile reportage, è riuscito ad appassionarmi persino alla fiera del bestiame: segno che per essere uno scrittore dalla penna magica non è sufficiente saper scrivere o anche solo aver storie da raccontare, ma che bisogna anche saper parlare al lettore e portarlo con sé in luoghi dove mai avrebbe pensato di andare.
Tre stelle, molto generose, che prima dell'ultimo capitolo - Il mio problema ornitologico - erano due.
*«La Comfort Zone nella psicologia comportamentale è una condizione mentale di sicurezza, dove tutto è rassicurante, noto; dove ti muovi a tuo agio, senza grandi sorprese»
http://annaconforti.blogspot.it/2010/...
Raccolta disorganica di articoli giornalistici a sfondo autobiografico di Jonathan Franzen che, partendo dalla morte della madre, e dalla vendita della casa di famiglia, cerca di ripercorrere attraverso i suoi ricordi d'infanzia e dell'adolescanza quella che dovrebbe essere stata una vita costantemente vissuta fuori dalla zona di comfort* (da cui il titolo originale The Discomfort Zone).
Ne risulta, come dicevo all'inizio, una raccolta slegata, discontinua e a tratti noiosa, in mezzo alla quale si pescano rare perle di scrittura e poche pagine di interesse: su tutte il capitolo sulla lingua e la letteratura tedesca (molto interessanti alcune riflessioni su La Montagna incantata di Thomas Mann), quello sulla sua passione ornitologica sfociata in un lungo periodo di birdwatching, e alcune considerazioni interessanti sui Peanuts e Charles Schulz.
Tutto il resto è noia, soprattutto quando Franzen avvicina la lente e anziché limitarsi a raccontare gli Stati Uniti e i mutamenti sociali (del Midwest e di Webster Groves nel Missouri, nello specifico) attraverso la sua memoria, decide di avvicinarsi e raccontare anche personaggi e dialoghi (piuttosto inutili) dei quali non importa niente a nessuno, forse nemmeno più a lui.
Pensare che un suo amico carissimo (e un autore fra quelli che più amo), raccontando il Midwest in un memorabile reportage, è riuscito ad appassionarmi persino alla fiera del bestiame: segno che per essere uno scrittore dalla penna magica non è sufficiente saper scrivere o anche solo aver storie da raccontare, ma che bisogna anche saper parlare al lettore e portarlo con sé in luoghi dove mai avrebbe pensato di andare.
Tre stelle, molto generose, che prima dell'ultimo capitolo - Il mio problema ornitologico - erano due.
*«La Comfort Zone nella psicologia comportamentale è una condizione mentale di sicurezza, dove tutto è rassicurante, noto; dove ti muovi a tuo agio, senza grandi sorprese»
http://annaconforti.blogspot.it/2010/...
January 11, 2020
kroz šest priča, franzen reflektira o svojem djetinjstvu i mladosti, veliki naglasak bacajući na utjecaj obitelji i obiteljsku situaciju koja je, manje-više, utjecala na njegove izbore i odluke. za razliku od franzenove "čistoće" ili "korekcija", ovdje nije ni približno toliko raskošan, samouvjeren ni dominantan, makar je stilski prepoznatljiv pa će njegovim obožavateljima ovo biti sasvim zadovoljavajuće djelo.
smatram da je puno jači u formi velikog romana u kojoj njegovoj igri riječima, likovima i situacijama nema granica, ili pak u esejima gdje se vidi puna raskoš njegovog mišljenja. u usporedbi s takvim djelima, ovo je manje upečatljivo, ali svejedno vrijedno čitanja.
smatram da je puno jači u formi velikog romana u kojoj njegovoj igri riječima, likovima i situacijama nema granica, ili pak u esejima gdje se vidi puna raskoš njegovog mišljenja. u usporedbi s takvim djelima, ovo je manje upečatljivo, ali svejedno vrijedno čitanja.
Read
January 10, 2013In which I tell Jonathan Franzen to stop trying to distract me with goddamned ducks, dammit:
(Why not call it essays? Or a memoir? Because Franzen is at pains to show you what a cool cat he is, that’s why.) Franzen’s a different animal here, is all I can say—or, perhaps more aptly: I come to strange realizations about the big grump I’ve always loved. I was drawn to The Discomfort Zone because he can be so incisive about his family [see his other essays in How to Be Alone and in Farther Away, which I read and enjoyed in last year’s blog-coma] and, consequently, himself; that is, I saw The Discomfort Zone as a back door into The Corrections and partly into Freedom. This is Franzen, I told myself, unadorned—no excuse of fiction to cover it up. This is, perhaps, the curmudgeon explained, if obliquely. (Why do you read memoirs, Sasha?)
Reading The Discomfort Zone, however, I’m reminded of how much I have always hated the man’s digressions. In The Corrections, it was Lithuanian shenanigans; in Freedom, it was the goddamned environment and the frakking birds everywhere. I understand now, however, that this is how Franzen’s mind works: Franzen, I’ve found, shies away from an indulgent narrative about families—about his family, here in particular. Snidely, I think: His essays need to have reach—they shouldn’t only be about the Franzens. And so: Family dynamics should naturally draw on Snoopy and its creator. An awkward adolescence—too enlightening, really: who knew Franzen was such a big dorkus?—dignified by an examination of the youth group he belonged to. Selling the house his mother had spent nearly a lifetime to build—a house full, no doubt, of his mother’s disappoints—should lead to a dissection of real estate in America. And, goddammit, troubles with his wife should veer into bird-watching in them good ol’ United States.
Perhaps he’s living up to that irritating moniker, “a personal history”—that this wasn’t indulgent and navel-gazing, that this wasn’t a book of essays that focused merely on one’s self. This was broad; this tackled Big Issues. But come on, Jon: Your family is the story, your patent uncoolness is the story, your heartaches and your disappointments are the story. Stop trying to distract me with ducks, dammit. I loved him best when he let go, when he so baldly talked about what made him tick. I loved it when he was earnest, if clumsy: I’ve always maintained that Franzen possesses such heart, all the better because it is so unexpected—and it’s no different here. More of that, please.
A tiny voice in my head sneers that this is just about what interests me. I tell that tiny voice that it is mostly right: I wanted a more personal Franzen—I found that in How to Be Alone, and I found that in about one and a half essays in The Discomfort Zone. What these have in common, aside from the family as touchstone: Language and literature, the wielding and the imbibing of. I will argue, though, that those remain personal. That is: I found a more personal Franzen than what we normally see and read. In much the same way I can’t seem to sever my private life from my reading life when I blab here, Franzen assures me that the books one devours and the life one tries so very hard to lead are intricately, if irrevocably, connected. So, you know: More of that, please.
____
[ cross-posted ]
(Why not call it essays? Or a memoir? Because Franzen is at pains to show you what a cool cat he is, that’s why.) Franzen’s a different animal here, is all I can say—or, perhaps more aptly: I come to strange realizations about the big grump I’ve always loved. I was drawn to The Discomfort Zone because he can be so incisive about his family [see his other essays in How to Be Alone and in Farther Away, which I read and enjoyed in last year’s blog-coma] and, consequently, himself; that is, I saw The Discomfort Zone as a back door into The Corrections and partly into Freedom. This is Franzen, I told myself, unadorned—no excuse of fiction to cover it up. This is, perhaps, the curmudgeon explained, if obliquely. (Why do you read memoirs, Sasha?)
Reading The Discomfort Zone, however, I’m reminded of how much I have always hated the man’s digressions. In The Corrections, it was Lithuanian shenanigans; in Freedom, it was the goddamned environment and the frakking birds everywhere. I understand now, however, that this is how Franzen’s mind works: Franzen, I’ve found, shies away from an indulgent narrative about families—about his family, here in particular. Snidely, I think: His essays need to have reach—they shouldn’t only be about the Franzens. And so: Family dynamics should naturally draw on Snoopy and its creator. An awkward adolescence—too enlightening, really: who knew Franzen was such a big dorkus?—dignified by an examination of the youth group he belonged to. Selling the house his mother had spent nearly a lifetime to build—a house full, no doubt, of his mother’s disappoints—should lead to a dissection of real estate in America. And, goddammit, troubles with his wife should veer into bird-watching in them good ol’ United States.
Perhaps he’s living up to that irritating moniker, “a personal history”—that this wasn’t indulgent and navel-gazing, that this wasn’t a book of essays that focused merely on one’s self. This was broad; this tackled Big Issues. But come on, Jon: Your family is the story, your patent uncoolness is the story, your heartaches and your disappointments are the story. Stop trying to distract me with ducks, dammit. I loved him best when he let go, when he so baldly talked about what made him tick. I loved it when he was earnest, if clumsy: I’ve always maintained that Franzen possesses such heart, all the better because it is so unexpected—and it’s no different here. More of that, please.
A tiny voice in my head sneers that this is just about what interests me. I tell that tiny voice that it is mostly right: I wanted a more personal Franzen—I found that in How to Be Alone, and I found that in about one and a half essays in The Discomfort Zone. What these have in common, aside from the family as touchstone: Language and literature, the wielding and the imbibing of. I will argue, though, that those remain personal. That is: I found a more personal Franzen than what we normally see and read. In much the same way I can’t seem to sever my private life from my reading life when I blab here, Franzen assures me that the books one devours and the life one tries so very hard to lead are intricately, if irrevocably, connected. So, you know: More of that, please.
____
[ cross-posted ]
October 4, 2013
Unless you are an employee of the New York Times, it has become uncool to admit to liking Jonathan Franzen.
I don't know when Franzen's innate un-hipness became official. Was it when he announced his mixed feelings about his work being included in Oprah's book club? Was it when he wrote his essay on Edith Wharton--an article that would go on to become perhaps the most misunderstood piece of nonfiction in the last 10 years? Was it when he started bashing Kindles and Twitter? Was it, perhaps, when he wrote an essay included in this collection, in which he professes in detail his love of bird-watching? Maybe it was when his latest essay was published, on his admiration of Karl Kraus and his disdain for Amazon (and, let's face it, implying that Jeff Bezos is the anti-christ was just a tad harsh).
More likely, though, it was a culmination of all these things, as well as a few misguided editorial rants (written by people who have clearly not read Franzen's work) which heavily suggested Franzen is responsible for misogyny in the publishing industry.
If you're into word association, some of the most common adjectives that come up when I talk with friends about Franzen are, in no particular order: "asshole," "pretentious," "technophobe," and, in so many words, "that guys who knew David Foster Wallace."
In spite of all this, I have always had, and continue to have, a deep admiration of Franzen's work, and furthermore, I think the qualities I like most about what he does are displayed perfectly in this short collection of essays (which has, in my opinion, been mislabeled as a memoir, or, in Franzen's words, "A Personal History).
It is the brutal honesty Franzen possesses and the beautiful articulation of alienation, of self-consciousness (without, unlike most of his contemporaries, implementing self-consciousness into his prose), of ineptitude and anxiety and shame and, perhaps most of all, guilt.
The fearlessness required of anecdotes like the ones in this book, where, for instance, a pre-pubescent Franzen exposes himself to a pair of twin girls who just moved into the house next door, the bravery innate in a sentence like: "I'd finally started to love my mother near the end of her life, when she was undergoing a year of chemotherapy and radiation and living by herself." There is a sternness and a mad pursuit of what his old friend DFW would call "the capital-T Truth" which exists in all of Franzen's work, fiction and nonfiction, that I identify and sympathize with. And the fact that he is so misunderstood, that critics condescendingly refer to him as a "neo-Luddite," that he is ridiculed for his disregard for words not printed on a sheet of paper, and that his deep, unrelenting passion and concern for the world he lives in and for the people in it with him make it easier for people to laugh him off as a "Downer"--these are things that only prove to endear him further to me.
There are, of course, more technical concrete reasons to love Franzen's work. His uncanny knack to see the hypocrisies and contradictions upon which modern society is founded, his nearly flawless prose, and his ability to create characters that feel all-too real to us (regardless of whether or not we like them, which is a topic for another day)--these are all good reasons to explore the man's work, and to tune out the critics whom, I suspect, mostly haven't read it.
I don't know when Franzen's innate un-hipness became official. Was it when he announced his mixed feelings about his work being included in Oprah's book club? Was it when he wrote his essay on Edith Wharton--an article that would go on to become perhaps the most misunderstood piece of nonfiction in the last 10 years? Was it when he started bashing Kindles and Twitter? Was it, perhaps, when he wrote an essay included in this collection, in which he professes in detail his love of bird-watching? Maybe it was when his latest essay was published, on his admiration of Karl Kraus and his disdain for Amazon (and, let's face it, implying that Jeff Bezos is the anti-christ was just a tad harsh).
More likely, though, it was a culmination of all these things, as well as a few misguided editorial rants (written by people who have clearly not read Franzen's work) which heavily suggested Franzen is responsible for misogyny in the publishing industry.
If you're into word association, some of the most common adjectives that come up when I talk with friends about Franzen are, in no particular order: "asshole," "pretentious," "technophobe," and, in so many words, "that guys who knew David Foster Wallace."
In spite of all this, I have always had, and continue to have, a deep admiration of Franzen's work, and furthermore, I think the qualities I like most about what he does are displayed perfectly in this short collection of essays (which has, in my opinion, been mislabeled as a memoir, or, in Franzen's words, "A Personal History).
It is the brutal honesty Franzen possesses and the beautiful articulation of alienation, of self-consciousness (without, unlike most of his contemporaries, implementing self-consciousness into his prose), of ineptitude and anxiety and shame and, perhaps most of all, guilt.
The fearlessness required of anecdotes like the ones in this book, where, for instance, a pre-pubescent Franzen exposes himself to a pair of twin girls who just moved into the house next door, the bravery innate in a sentence like: "I'd finally started to love my mother near the end of her life, when she was undergoing a year of chemotherapy and radiation and living by herself." There is a sternness and a mad pursuit of what his old friend DFW would call "the capital-T Truth" which exists in all of Franzen's work, fiction and nonfiction, that I identify and sympathize with. And the fact that he is so misunderstood, that critics condescendingly refer to him as a "neo-Luddite," that he is ridiculed for his disregard for words not printed on a sheet of paper, and that his deep, unrelenting passion and concern for the world he lives in and for the people in it with him make it easier for people to laugh him off as a "Downer"--these are things that only prove to endear him further to me.
There are, of course, more technical concrete reasons to love Franzen's work. His uncanny knack to see the hypocrisies and contradictions upon which modern society is founded, his nearly flawless prose, and his ability to create characters that feel all-too real to us (regardless of whether or not we like them, which is a topic for another day)--these are all good reasons to explore the man's work, and to tune out the critics whom, I suspect, mostly haven't read it.
February 9, 2008
A Mixed Bag
I believe Jonathan Franzen fans will be both delighted and disappointed with this collection, The Discomfort Zone. It starts out very strong, showing off Franzen's remarkable vocabulary, storytelling ability, and his disregard for political-correctness. In a piece called, "House for Sale," Franzen tells what it feels like to take on the chore of emptying and selling what was his childhood home. Anyone who has faced the death of a parent and has undergone this emotional task will relate to his musings, admissions, and actions. We get to know his mother in this opening tale and soon learn she is a central figure throughout the collection. At first her controlling nature seems relatively benign, when we learn she's written the classified ad meant to showoff her home--her most successful investment--in the best light. Having done extensive research on her St. Louis-area neighborhood prior to her death, she even suggests an asking price. Franzen uses this story to kick-off a theme, where he comes off as a continual disappointment to his strict, provincial parents and shows how his mother's "strong opinions" have deeply affected his life.
The second entry, "Two Ponies," focuses on "Peanuts" cartoon creator Charles Schulz, and how Franzen related (or didn't relate) to the characters. He also relates to Schulz himself, particularly because of Schulz's feelings as an outsider while growing up. Additionally, I believe he admired Schulz for holding a grudge regarding his disdain for the label "Peanuts" placed upon his life's work. What I liked about "Two Ponies," is that I grew up reading this comic strip and could therefore relate to Franzen's story, and I liked the way the writing comes full circle.
Unfortunately, for me the collection goes downhill from there. Long passages about a Fellowship church camp and its youth minister, "Mutton" . . . a tale about his high school "gang" attempting acts of vandalism, and too much German (translations included) during a semester abroad, seem to be written more for himself and the characters he portrays than the general public.
Finally, with "My Bird Problem," Franzen is back on track. He offers political and personal takes on global warming, our country's energy policy, along with intimate revelations about his marriage and an ensuing relationship, and ultimately his passion for birding and what it has taught him about himself . . . and his mother.
Readable in one day.
I believe Jonathan Franzen fans will be both delighted and disappointed with this collection, The Discomfort Zone. It starts out very strong, showing off Franzen's remarkable vocabulary, storytelling ability, and his disregard for political-correctness. In a piece called, "House for Sale," Franzen tells what it feels like to take on the chore of emptying and selling what was his childhood home. Anyone who has faced the death of a parent and has undergone this emotional task will relate to his musings, admissions, and actions. We get to know his mother in this opening tale and soon learn she is a central figure throughout the collection. At first her controlling nature seems relatively benign, when we learn she's written the classified ad meant to showoff her home--her most successful investment--in the best light. Having done extensive research on her St. Louis-area neighborhood prior to her death, she even suggests an asking price. Franzen uses this story to kick-off a theme, where he comes off as a continual disappointment to his strict, provincial parents and shows how his mother's "strong opinions" have deeply affected his life.
The second entry, "Two Ponies," focuses on "Peanuts" cartoon creator Charles Schulz, and how Franzen related (or didn't relate) to the characters. He also relates to Schulz himself, particularly because of Schulz's feelings as an outsider while growing up. Additionally, I believe he admired Schulz for holding a grudge regarding his disdain for the label "Peanuts" placed upon his life's work. What I liked about "Two Ponies," is that I grew up reading this comic strip and could therefore relate to Franzen's story, and I liked the way the writing comes full circle.
Unfortunately, for me the collection goes downhill from there. Long passages about a Fellowship church camp and its youth minister, "Mutton" . . . a tale about his high school "gang" attempting acts of vandalism, and too much German (translations included) during a semester abroad, seem to be written more for himself and the characters he portrays than the general public.
Finally, with "My Bird Problem," Franzen is back on track. He offers political and personal takes on global warming, our country's energy policy, along with intimate revelations about his marriage and an ensuing relationship, and ultimately his passion for birding and what it has taught him about himself . . . and his mother.
Readable in one day.
May 6, 2015
I enjoyed some of the stories of him as a kid, especially the Christian stuff, less so his school exploits. However, I am not a fan of writer-as-hero books with context, and other characters, left fuzzy, and so I found the book mostly pretty tedious.
July 14, 2011
I read the New York Times’ review of The Discomfort Zone earlier today. The Times’ conclusion after reading was that Jonathan Franzen is hopelessly self-absorbed. I don’t disagree, but I don’t think that’s such a terrible thing. We’re all self-absorbed and at least Franzen had the good sense to use it for comedy.
Anyways, onward with my review…
I enjoyed learning more about Franzen as a person. I liked seeing how his personal experiences (fascination with birds, environmentalism, strange relationship with his mother, etc.) are echoed through his characters in his novels. It seems to me that Franzen uses his characters as a vehicle to express his own feelings and the character development in his fiction is much deeper than that in The Discomfort Zone.
After reading stories about Franzen’s own interactions with his family, particularly his mother, I was reminded of his character Joey from the novel Freedom. I remember a particularly vivid scene where Joey, after a phone conversation with his mother Patty, begins to cry and looks for a nearby bush in which to hide himself. Joey’s conversation with his mother made him so upset that he was moved to tears, his stomach was unsettled and he felt he might have to vomit.
That sort of raw emotion isn’t found in The Discomfort Zone. Franzen discusses the unhappiness he felt with himself at certain points in his life, at one point referring to himself as a “small and fundamentally ridiculous person”, but it’s obvious that even though he’s written a memoir, he’s keeping the truly revealing moments to himself.
I really enjoyed Franzen’s reflections on his childhood and adolescence – there were moments that made me laugh out loud.
For me, the most memorable parts of the book came with Franzen’s reflections on his love for the “Peanuts” comic strip. He wrote:
“Like most of the nation’s ten-year-olds, I had a private, intense relationship with Snoopy, the cartoon beagle. He was a solitary not-animal animal who lived among larger creatures of a different species, which was more or less my feeling in my own house.”
Franzen continued later:
“’Everything I do makes me feel guilty,’ says Charlie Brown. He’s at the beach, and he has just thrown a pebble into the water and Linus has commented, ‘Nice going… it took that rock four thousand years to get to shore, and now you’ve thrown it back.’
“… I felt guilty about shunning my mother’s hugs when she seemed to need them most. I felt guilty about the washcloths at the bottom of the stack in the linen closet, the older, thinner, washcloths that were seldom used. I felt guilty for preferring my best shooter marbles, a solid red agate and a solid yellow agate, my king and my queen, to marble further down my rigid marble hierarchy. I felt guilty about the board games that I didn’t like to play – Uncle Wiggily, U.S. Presidential Elections, Game of the States – and sometimes, when my friends weren’t around, I opened the boxes and examined the pieces in the hope of making the games feel less forgotten. I felt guilty about neglecting the stiff-limbed, scratchy-pelted Mr. Bear, who had no voice and didn’t mix well with the other animals. To avoid feeling guilty about them, too, I slept with one of them per night, according to a strict weekly schedule."
That passage really reminded me of what it’s like to be a child and to feel ashamed for having the most innocent of preferences. Though The Discomfort Zone didn’t delve into adult emotions as well as his novels, I thought Franzen captured the feelings of a child perfectly.
Anyways, onward with my review…
I enjoyed learning more about Franzen as a person. I liked seeing how his personal experiences (fascination with birds, environmentalism, strange relationship with his mother, etc.) are echoed through his characters in his novels. It seems to me that Franzen uses his characters as a vehicle to express his own feelings and the character development in his fiction is much deeper than that in The Discomfort Zone.
After reading stories about Franzen’s own interactions with his family, particularly his mother, I was reminded of his character Joey from the novel Freedom. I remember a particularly vivid scene where Joey, after a phone conversation with his mother Patty, begins to cry and looks for a nearby bush in which to hide himself. Joey’s conversation with his mother made him so upset that he was moved to tears, his stomach was unsettled and he felt he might have to vomit.
That sort of raw emotion isn’t found in The Discomfort Zone. Franzen discusses the unhappiness he felt with himself at certain points in his life, at one point referring to himself as a “small and fundamentally ridiculous person”, but it’s obvious that even though he’s written a memoir, he’s keeping the truly revealing moments to himself.
I really enjoyed Franzen’s reflections on his childhood and adolescence – there were moments that made me laugh out loud.
For me, the most memorable parts of the book came with Franzen’s reflections on his love for the “Peanuts” comic strip. He wrote:
“Like most of the nation’s ten-year-olds, I had a private, intense relationship with Snoopy, the cartoon beagle. He was a solitary not-animal animal who lived among larger creatures of a different species, which was more or less my feeling in my own house.”
Franzen continued later:
“’Everything I do makes me feel guilty,’ says Charlie Brown. He’s at the beach, and he has just thrown a pebble into the water and Linus has commented, ‘Nice going… it took that rock four thousand years to get to shore, and now you’ve thrown it back.’
“… I felt guilty about shunning my mother’s hugs when she seemed to need them most. I felt guilty about the washcloths at the bottom of the stack in the linen closet, the older, thinner, washcloths that were seldom used. I felt guilty for preferring my best shooter marbles, a solid red agate and a solid yellow agate, my king and my queen, to marble further down my rigid marble hierarchy. I felt guilty about the board games that I didn’t like to play – Uncle Wiggily, U.S. Presidential Elections, Game of the States – and sometimes, when my friends weren’t around, I opened the boxes and examined the pieces in the hope of making the games feel less forgotten. I felt guilty about neglecting the stiff-limbed, scratchy-pelted Mr. Bear, who had no voice and didn’t mix well with the other animals. To avoid feeling guilty about them, too, I slept with one of them per night, according to a strict weekly schedule."
That passage really reminded me of what it’s like to be a child and to feel ashamed for having the most innocent of preferences. Though The Discomfort Zone didn’t delve into adult emotions as well as his novels, I thought Franzen captured the feelings of a child perfectly.
July 19, 2014
Franzen trying to dissect his own existence isn't quite as thrilling as Franzen dissecting the existence of the characters in his novels, but this definitely has its moments, and unlike so many memoir-ish books, this has no interest in romanticizing anything from out of the past, in fact when it works well, it does so because it reminds you that a mid-western, middle class upbringing (I'm telegraphing myself into this now) is usually just full of a lot of petty little triumphs and disappointments, and that genuinely formative experiences are usually few and far between, and almost never recognized as such at the time. It's also got some really great ruminations on the nesessity of isolation for the creative process, Charles Schultz, wildlife conservation, bird watching, the minor hypocrisies of being a middle aged, urban liberal, the really grotesque hypocrisies of being a neo-conservative anywhere, the creepy insularity of church youth groups, etc. Overall I found it by turns manic and poignant.
January 27, 2009
Franzen is a good writer, but leaves you with that nagging feeling that you wouldn't like him if you met him. He's awfully self-absorbed. Still, I really enjoyed this dream he relates - and he seems to be aware there's much truth in it:
“...I had a nightmare about the Averys’ sweet-tempered German shepherd, Ina. In the dream, as I was sitting on the floor in the Averys’ living room, the dog walked up to me and began to insult me. She said I was a frivolous, cynical, attention-seeking “fag” whose entire life had been phony. I answered her frivolously and cynically and chucked her under the chin. She grinned at me with malice, as if to make clear that she understood me to the core. Then she sank her teeth into my arm. As I fell over backward, she went for my throat.”
“...I had a nightmare about the Averys’ sweet-tempered German shepherd, Ina. In the dream, as I was sitting on the floor in the Averys’ living room, the dog walked up to me and began to insult me. She said I was a frivolous, cynical, attention-seeking “fag” whose entire life had been phony. I answered her frivolously and cynically and chucked her under the chin. She grinned at me with malice, as if to make clear that she understood me to the core. Then she sank her teeth into my arm. As I fell over backward, she went for my throat.”
June 6, 2020
Estou a ler as entrevistas que Eleanor Wachten fez a vários escritores.
Resolvi a seguir a cada entrevista ler um ou mais livros dos escritores dos quais não conheço a obra.
Escolhi “A zona de desconforto “ por ser autobiográfico género que costumo gostar.
Para mim este livro foi também uma “zona de desconforto “.
Demasiado tempo na adolescência.
Demasiado tempo a observar pássaros .
Pouco ou nenhum sentimento.
Parece que Franzen está a contar a vida de outra pessoa e não a sua .
Não gostei muito.
Resolvi a seguir a cada entrevista ler um ou mais livros dos escritores dos quais não conheço a obra.
Escolhi “A zona de desconforto “ por ser autobiográfico género que costumo gostar.
Para mim este livro foi também uma “zona de desconforto “.
Demasiado tempo na adolescência.
Demasiado tempo a observar pássaros .
Pouco ou nenhum sentimento.
Parece que Franzen está a contar a vida de outra pessoa e não a sua .
Não gostei muito.
September 10, 2007
Jonathan Franzen has come home to St Louis to get his parent's house ready to sell after the death of his mother. While he is waiting for it to sell he reflects on the significant moments of his life with particular emphasis on his childhood. The language in the book is beautiful and it is well constructed but for me, the characters were flat and uninteresting. For someone who has had such a rich and varied life and writes so well I think he could have come up with more interesting things to talk about. Even when his marriage is in trouble there is such a sense of distance that it is hard to care about the outcome.
I found myself having to force my attention back to the story time and time again. On so many levels this is a lovely book but in the end I just didn't care enough. If I hadn't been reading it for the committee I probably would have stopped reading it at some point along the way.
I found myself having to force my attention back to the story time and time again. On so many levels this is a lovely book but in the end I just didn't care enough. If I hadn't been reading it for the committee I probably would have stopped reading it at some point along the way.
October 1, 2019
Emberek, én úgy szeretem Franzent, hogy már pironkodom miatta. Az van, hogy ez az ember gondol, vagy érez valamit, és le tudja írni! Pontosan és érvényesen, úgy, hogy ha elolvassa másnap és harmadnap, akkor is megállja a helyét. Ez triviálisnak tűnhet, de nem az: próbáljatok csak meg szabatosan és érthetően beszélni az érzéseitekről valakinek, akár egy tányér leves kapcsán – és akkor a frusztrációinkról, félelmeinkről, mögöttes szándékainkról még szót sem ejtettünk. Próbáljatok csak meg leírni öt mondatban egy viccesnek tűnő képet, amit az imént osztottak meg veletek a molyon! Szóval elképesztő csuda ez, az irodalom kvintesszenciája, és valami hihetetlen, milyen munka feszül a színleg könnyeden ironikus mondatok mögött.
Pedig az amerikai középosztály ügyes-bajos dolgai, ha belegondolunk, alig állnak közelebb hozzánk, mint a tasmán bennszülöttek életeseményei. És azzal, hogy Franzen önmagát teszi meg ezeknek az esszé-novelláknak a főszereplőjéül, voltaképpen hatványra emeli a könyv „amerikaiasságát”, leszögezve: én ide tartozom, ha akarok, ha nem, csak erről tudok írni, de erről aztán tudok írni. Az egészben pedig az a pláne, hogy én is értem. A kamasz Franzen pitiáner megszégyenülései tökéletesen megfejthetőek a magam tapasztalatai alapján – eszembe jutott, milyen erőfeszítésekkel próbáltam bókként értelmezni 16 évesen, hogy éppen sarjadó körszakállam miatt valaki szerint Petőfire hasonlítok. És egyáltalán: eszembe jutott, mennyi munkám volt abban, hogy kitaláljam, mások mit gondolnak rólam, és hogy megpróbáljam ezt a képet a saját önképemmel közös nevezőre hozni. Persze ezek nem azok a tragédiák, amikkel a mélyszegénységben élők találkoznak – de azoknak, akik találkoznak vele, akkor és ott elég komoly ügynek tűnik. Szóval nagy öröm volt.
Pedig az amerikai középosztály ügyes-bajos dolgai, ha belegondolunk, alig állnak közelebb hozzánk, mint a tasmán bennszülöttek életeseményei. És azzal, hogy Franzen önmagát teszi meg ezeknek az esszé-novelláknak a főszereplőjéül, voltaképpen hatványra emeli a könyv „amerikaiasságát”, leszögezve: én ide tartozom, ha akarok, ha nem, csak erről tudok írni, de erről aztán tudok írni. Az egészben pedig az a pláne, hogy én is értem. A kamasz Franzen pitiáner megszégyenülései tökéletesen megfejthetőek a magam tapasztalatai alapján – eszembe jutott, milyen erőfeszítésekkel próbáltam bókként értelmezni 16 évesen, hogy éppen sarjadó körszakállam miatt valaki szerint Petőfire hasonlítok. És egyáltalán: eszembe jutott, mennyi munkám volt abban, hogy kitaláljam, mások mit gondolnak rólam, és hogy megpróbáljam ezt a képet a saját önképemmel közös nevezőre hozni. Persze ezek nem azok a tragédiák, amikkel a mélyszegénységben élők találkoznak – de azoknak, akik találkoznak vele, akkor és ott elég komoly ügynek tűnik. Szóval nagy öröm volt.
December 14, 2023
Surprising that reading an essay from this book got me into Franzen: his nonfiction is significantly worse than his fiction. Also, not a fan of the way he talks about women.
May 28, 2018
The start is very strong. Author uses his remarkable vocabulary, storytelling ability, and his disregard for political-correctness. The book is divided in five chapters and in first Franzen describes in detail how he chose the wrong realtor to sell his mother's house.
I believe he uses this start as an introduction where tries to bring a reader closer to his continual disappointment over strict, provincial parents and how mother's opinions have deeply influenced his life.
Franzen reflects back to his childhood with the next chapter "Two Ponies". He is telling about "Peanuts" and its creator Charles Schulz, and how is he related to these characters. At some point he also relates to Schulz himself, particularly because of Schulz's feelings as an outsider whiles growing up. I liked this chapter because story telling is sweet/bitter/sarcastic and entertaining.
Unfortunately, for me the book goes a bit downhill from there to the next chapters. Long passages about a Fellowship church camp were boring on a moment, with exception a tale about his high school gang adventures of vandalism. Furthermore the part of his German during a semester abroad and his college years were interesting to me. He describes his growing 'love/interest/criticism' to this language and its literature. I like it because it's full of wavering, grave consideration on the beginning, but then the debates with his professor Avery and colleagues ripped his opinion.
Finally, with "My Bird Problem," Franzen beat the spirit of the book. For me this was the most boring part. Bird chasing all over the country, description of rare species, its extinction, the world climate changes,...For some bird fans I believe this one would be enjoyable, but not for me so far.
However, this was the first book I read from him. I think it is not a very good choice reading his biography first. Since he got a National Book Award for The Corrections, maybe this would be better choice for a start.
I believe he uses this start as an introduction where tries to bring a reader closer to his continual disappointment over strict, provincial parents and how mother's opinions have deeply influenced his life.
Franzen reflects back to his childhood with the next chapter "Two Ponies". He is telling about "Peanuts" and its creator Charles Schulz, and how is he related to these characters. At some point he also relates to Schulz himself, particularly because of Schulz's feelings as an outsider whiles growing up. I liked this chapter because story telling is sweet/bitter/sarcastic and entertaining.
Unfortunately, for me the book goes a bit downhill from there to the next chapters. Long passages about a Fellowship church camp were boring on a moment, with exception a tale about his high school gang adventures of vandalism. Furthermore the part of his German during a semester abroad and his college years were interesting to me. He describes his growing 'love/interest/criticism' to this language and its literature. I like it because it's full of wavering, grave consideration on the beginning, but then the debates with his professor Avery and colleagues ripped his opinion.
Finally, with "My Bird Problem," Franzen beat the spirit of the book. For me this was the most boring part. Bird chasing all over the country, description of rare species, its extinction, the world climate changes,...For some bird fans I believe this one would be enjoyable, but not for me so far.
However, this was the first book I read from him. I think it is not a very good choice reading his biography first. Since he got a National Book Award for The Corrections, maybe this would be better choice for a start.
Read
November 10, 2011All my books nowadays come from the English section of the library in Oslo, so a smaller selection than I've ever experienced. I chose this book only for it's title. And I knew I'd heard of Franzen, but couldn't remember what.
The book travels through time while the main character, who seems to be Franzen himself,remembers his childhood, his teenage years, young adulthood, adulthood when his mother died, his divorce, his subsequent relationship and eventual immersion in bird watching as a hobby. The story was engaging, the writing was good, and I had to look up a few words, which I always appreciate, but the book also sometimes felt overly self-interested. I was a bit surpised, as I thought it was a work of fiction and his style has the fiction feel, but really it seems to be autobiographical. Franzen is introspective and anyone studying psychology appreciates a good look into someone's mind. There's something nice about hearing about awkward teenagers and how people magically grow up and "escape" into adulthood. When I hear stories spanning from adolescence to adulthood , I usually feel relief, as if getting to adulthood has finally and mysteriously rid the person of any aches, but of course on second thought, we mostly just carry these experiences with us for the rest of our lives. Reading stories like this helps me to remember that everyone has something they carry, whether it was being shunned in the school cafeteria, a violent home, too much focus on football, neglect, or bad skin. It helps me to humanize everyone and I value that.
The book travels through time while the main character, who seems to be Franzen himself,remembers his childhood, his teenage years, young adulthood, adulthood when his mother died, his divorce, his subsequent relationship and eventual immersion in bird watching as a hobby. The story was engaging, the writing was good, and I had to look up a few words, which I always appreciate, but the book also sometimes felt overly self-interested. I was a bit surpised, as I thought it was a work of fiction and his style has the fiction feel, but really it seems to be autobiographical. Franzen is introspective and anyone studying psychology appreciates a good look into someone's mind. There's something nice about hearing about awkward teenagers and how people magically grow up and "escape" into adulthood. When I hear stories spanning from adolescence to adulthood , I usually feel relief, as if getting to adulthood has finally and mysteriously rid the person of any aches, but of course on second thought, we mostly just carry these experiences with us for the rest of our lives. Reading stories like this helps me to remember that everyone has something they carry, whether it was being shunned in the school cafeteria, a violent home, too much focus on football, neglect, or bad skin. It helps me to humanize everyone and I value that.
August 11, 2016
I've only recently become aware that Jonathan Franzen exists, so when I saw this book at my local bookstore for the price of a meagre 3 euros, I sort of had to buy it. Tbh, I wouldn't have minded paying a bit more now that I've read it.
It's a great book all in all. Franzen gives us a relatable look at his early life; he explores and portrays the Franzen family dynamics, proclaims his love for the Peanuts (esp. Snoopy), recalls his boyhood antics, talks about his non-existent sex life as a young adult and yes, there is even a section dedicated to his love of German literature (every German lit major should read that part, tbh). The style is amazing and the story flows seamlessly, although the changes in the timeline can sometimes be quite abrupt. I loved reading it and I would have given it 5 stars if it were not for the last 20-30 pages. I was really engrossed in reading about his personal life, yet in the end he basically (more or less) just talks about observing birds in probably every US state and he becomes so obsessed with watching them that he secretly takes time off his work to continue this peculiar hobby. God, I wasn't ever a big fan of birds, but now I feel like I hate them with a passion.
Maybe I'm overreacting, but that part really bugged me. I would still recommend it tho.
It's a great book all in all. Franzen gives us a relatable look at his early life; he explores and portrays the Franzen family dynamics, proclaims his love for the Peanuts (esp. Snoopy), recalls his boyhood antics, talks about his non-existent sex life as a young adult and yes, there is even a section dedicated to his love of German literature (every German lit major should read that part, tbh). The style is amazing and the story flows seamlessly, although the changes in the timeline can sometimes be quite abrupt. I loved reading it and I would have given it 5 stars if it were not for the last 20-30 pages. I was really engrossed in reading about his personal life, yet in the end he basically (more or less) just talks about observing birds in probably every US state and he becomes so obsessed with watching them that he secretly takes time off his work to continue this peculiar hobby. God, I wasn't ever a big fan of birds, but now I feel like I hate them with a passion.
Maybe I'm overreacting, but that part really bugged me. I would still recommend it tho.
June 8, 2017
Io e Jon continuiamo forse quasi a capirci ma non ancora ad amarci.
Infanzia e adolescenza a Webster Groves (St. Louis), tra famiglia, amici, ragazze, Peanuts, scherzi idioti, corsi di tedesco.
Maturità, tra New York e il Texas, a guardare gli uccelli.
Mi piace l’idea di focalizzarsi inizialmente su un argomento e poi aprire parentesi più o meno coerenti portando il filo del discorso chissà dove. Forse però non ho trovato le varie parentesi così interessanti (del tipo che ti ci immergi dentro e ti dimentichi il fatto stesso che sia una parentesi).
Qualche bel passaggio ma in generale non imprescindibile. [68/100]
Capitava spesso che il giorno del mio compleanno coincidesse con l’arrivo del primo fronte freddo di fine estate. Il pomeriggio seguente, quando io e i miei genitori ci mettemmo in viaggio verso est per andare a un matrimonio a Fort Wayne, il cielo era terso come cristallo. I giganteschi campi dell’Illinois, con il grano quasi maturo, ondeggiavano nella luce dorata che arrivava da dietro le nostre spalle. L’aria, rinfrescata dal passaggio sopra il Canada, portava con sé il sapore della vita che ci circondava. (…) La stagione era cambiata nell’arco di una notte, e io leggevo libri migliori e cercavo di scrivere tutti i giorni, ricominciando da zero, per conto mio.
Infanzia e adolescenza a Webster Groves (St. Louis), tra famiglia, amici, ragazze, Peanuts, scherzi idioti, corsi di tedesco.
Maturità, tra New York e il Texas, a guardare gli uccelli.
Mi piace l’idea di focalizzarsi inizialmente su un argomento e poi aprire parentesi più o meno coerenti portando il filo del discorso chissà dove. Forse però non ho trovato le varie parentesi così interessanti (del tipo che ti ci immergi dentro e ti dimentichi il fatto stesso che sia una parentesi).
Qualche bel passaggio ma in generale non imprescindibile. [68/100]
Capitava spesso che il giorno del mio compleanno coincidesse con l’arrivo del primo fronte freddo di fine estate. Il pomeriggio seguente, quando io e i miei genitori ci mettemmo in viaggio verso est per andare a un matrimonio a Fort Wayne, il cielo era terso come cristallo. I giganteschi campi dell’Illinois, con il grano quasi maturo, ondeggiavano nella luce dorata che arrivava da dietro le nostre spalle. L’aria, rinfrescata dal passaggio sopra il Canada, portava con sé il sapore della vita che ci circondava. (…) La stagione era cambiata nell’arco di una notte, e io leggevo libri migliori e cercavo di scrivere tutti i giorni, ricominciando da zero, per conto mio.
May 20, 2013
I love his fiction, but hot damn this one was a tedious read. Some moments of brilliance, but for the most part this was self-satisfied self-indulgence that felt oh so clever. I'll stick to Franzen's fiction.
June 2, 2017
Enjoyed it even though I didn't know the author beforehand, which is the mark of a good bio.
September 27, 2021
I am trying to inject more nonfiction into my reading life by reading essays in between novels. I am making my way through Franzen’s nonfiction which I’ve found to be almost universally excellent. One the whole, arguably better than his fiction (which I also love).
This book is more narrative-based than I expected. The essays are essentially mini-memoirs from different parts of his life from childhood to his first marriage. His other essay collections are generally Franzen’s appraisals and reflections on world events, arts, and culture, so this was an interesting change of pace.
More than anything, it cemented in my mind a few things about Franzen as a writer and a man.
First off, he is incredibly funny. Whether it’s self-deprecation or observational humor, I was reminded page after page how biting and witty he can be. His novels have plenty of humor, but it’s usually situational. Here he is basically telling jokes, and they almost always land.
Second, and related, is how honest Franzen is about himself. Many people dislike him because he so often makes comments or admits things about himself that are offensive, off-putting, or just embarrassing. I give him immense credit, though. He doesn’t seem to care and wants to tell the truth about himself and what he is thinking at any given time. This includes his honest admissions about how he views his family, his friends, and himself (both prideful and self-loathing). Is there a foundation of white male privilege that allows for this? Of course. But I think people would hate me too if I was as honest and transparent as Franzen is. And I think a lot of people are in the same boat. I appreciate his forthrightness and think it makes these essays compelling.
Lastly, his well document love for birds is totally bizarre and also inspiring. I think he would agree.
This book is more narrative-based than I expected. The essays are essentially mini-memoirs from different parts of his life from childhood to his first marriage. His other essay collections are generally Franzen’s appraisals and reflections on world events, arts, and culture, so this was an interesting change of pace.
More than anything, it cemented in my mind a few things about Franzen as a writer and a man.
First off, he is incredibly funny. Whether it’s self-deprecation or observational humor, I was reminded page after page how biting and witty he can be. His novels have plenty of humor, but it’s usually situational. Here he is basically telling jokes, and they almost always land.
Second, and related, is how honest Franzen is about himself. Many people dislike him because he so often makes comments or admits things about himself that are offensive, off-putting, or just embarrassing. I give him immense credit, though. He doesn’t seem to care and wants to tell the truth about himself and what he is thinking at any given time. This includes his honest admissions about how he views his family, his friends, and himself (both prideful and self-loathing). Is there a foundation of white male privilege that allows for this? Of course. But I think people would hate me too if I was as honest and transparent as Franzen is. And I think a lot of people are in the same boat. I appreciate his forthrightness and think it makes these essays compelling.
Lastly, his well document love for birds is totally bizarre and also inspiring. I think he would agree.
April 8, 2022
I like the parallels in this essay/memoir. I read it mostly to get and idea of what the author was like first hand. Being "that guy" I hate fan-boying regardless of how much fun it is – I enjoyed the voyeuristic aspects and connections I made to the works of his I have read.
He bounces around a lot and that's ok, it's his book. Bird watching isn't something I have thought about in such depth, mind you, I do take time during the day to "watch the birds" if one or more flit buy, or land in my path. The book is bits and pieces assembled in some order, enough that it keeps pretty fresh; but you have to like the author. (I guess that goes without saying, but hey, this is as much my review as The Discomfort Zone is his book.) I seem to be enjoying Farther Away a little more (still reading it).
What I wanted to find out by reading these two was whether or not I liked the author as a person. I know this is a shallow way of knowing/finding out - but its all I got. It's not like I can just call him up and ask him if he misses David Foster Wallace, but thanks to the book it lets me know he does. Thanks Johnathan for talking about him. It helps get a better understanding of him and you first hand.
He bounces around a lot and that's ok, it's his book. Bird watching isn't something I have thought about in such depth, mind you, I do take time during the day to "watch the birds" if one or more flit buy, or land in my path. The book is bits and pieces assembled in some order, enough that it keeps pretty fresh; but you have to like the author. (I guess that goes without saying, but hey, this is as much my review as The Discomfort Zone is his book.) I seem to be enjoying Farther Away a little more (still reading it).
What I wanted to find out by reading these two was whether or not I liked the author as a person. I know this is a shallow way of knowing/finding out - but its all I got. It's not like I can just call him up and ask him if he misses David Foster Wallace, but thanks to the book it lets me know he does. Thanks Johnathan for talking about him. It helps get a better understanding of him and you first hand.
May 6, 2020
Horribly depressing. Well-written, though.
February 29, 2024
it was awesomeee
August 28, 2021
A delight, especially for those who grew up in the sixties and early seventies. And especially if you grew up in Webster Groves. Many stories about places and people you knew. Second half, his life as an adult, was less interesting to me. Still, it makes me want to read his other more famous books.
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