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| The Entertainment Review |
| By: Jonathan Franzen Publisher: Picador |
Commercially successful memoirs these days might be best described as book length Amazing True Stories, often
triggered by, and ultimately reducible to, magazine articles. The quality of writing runs second to the raw material of
the author's life. If the memoirist is an escapee from a savage corner of the world, an adventurer in foreign places, an
inspiring survivor of disease, a superannuated prostitute or an actor with an unconventional background, the
purpose of the writing is to avoid drawing attention to itself as writing but instead it is important to make sure that all
of the attention should be focused on the story itself.
Sometimes there's a happy coincidence of an extraordinary life and a gift with words such as Joan Didion, Mary Karr
and Mandy Sayer who are all original writers with amazing true stories to tell. There is a sense though, that the
gripping personal history of these writers, whether exciting or plain in the writing, has sucked the oxygen away from
the literary memoir, the personal history of a writer who has led an outwardly quiet and unremarkable life. The bulk of
the reading public doesn't live in a time where art redeems or refreshes the most ordinary material instead they want
to cut to the chase and get to the fun and interesting parts of the story without the work of wading through the
exposition of the story itself.
Fiction writers such as Jonathan Franzen respond to their incident deficient lives in the fabulist's way by transforming
small amounts of experience, via vivid imagination and verbal style, into a form of art. Franzen's three novels,
including “The Twenty-Seventh City” written in 1988, “Strong Motion” written in 1992 and “The Corrections” written in
2001 have arrived like well spaced memos from a world that looks very much like ours but is reconfigured through the
novelist's talent of writing. His nonfiction articles, some collected in “How To Be Alone” in 2002, have ranged from
meditations on reading to a sensitive and, for the detective-reader of The Corrections, intriguing recollection of his
own father's fight with Alzheimer's Disease.
“The Discomfort Zone” is neither fish nor fowl, too discontinuous for a conventional memoir yet more tightly knit than
a typical group of essays. As the title suggests, it is threaded through with Franzen's social awkwardness at school,
at college, as a writer and even domestically.
Discomfort is also perceptible in the author's relationship with the book itself, as if he has been dragged kicking and
screaming into shaping his life into a coherent story and has taken his revenge by self-sabotage.
“The Discomfort Zone” is comprised of six different pieces, some previously published in The New Yorker. House For
Saleinter leaves fragments of childhood with an account of trying to sell the family home in St. Louis after Franzen's
mother's death. Though this book is in no way for every reader, this book does offer some humorous moments to
those that are willing to sit down and read it. A great recommendation for someone looking for something new and
interesting to read.
triggered by, and ultimately reducible to, magazine articles. The quality of writing runs second to the raw material of
the author's life. If the memoirist is an escapee from a savage corner of the world, an adventurer in foreign places, an
inspiring survivor of disease, a superannuated prostitute or an actor with an unconventional background, the
purpose of the writing is to avoid drawing attention to itself as writing but instead it is important to make sure that all
of the attention should be focused on the story itself.
Sometimes there's a happy coincidence of an extraordinary life and a gift with words such as Joan Didion, Mary Karr
and Mandy Sayer who are all original writers with amazing true stories to tell. There is a sense though, that the
gripping personal history of these writers, whether exciting or plain in the writing, has sucked the oxygen away from
the literary memoir, the personal history of a writer who has led an outwardly quiet and unremarkable life. The bulk of
the reading public doesn't live in a time where art redeems or refreshes the most ordinary material instead they want
to cut to the chase and get to the fun and interesting parts of the story without the work of wading through the
exposition of the story itself.
Fiction writers such as Jonathan Franzen respond to their incident deficient lives in the fabulist's way by transforming
small amounts of experience, via vivid imagination and verbal style, into a form of art. Franzen's three novels,
including “The Twenty-Seventh City” written in 1988, “Strong Motion” written in 1992 and “The Corrections” written in
2001 have arrived like well spaced memos from a world that looks very much like ours but is reconfigured through the
novelist's talent of writing. His nonfiction articles, some collected in “How To Be Alone” in 2002, have ranged from
meditations on reading to a sensitive and, for the detective-reader of The Corrections, intriguing recollection of his
own father's fight with Alzheimer's Disease.
“The Discomfort Zone” is neither fish nor fowl, too discontinuous for a conventional memoir yet more tightly knit than
a typical group of essays. As the title suggests, it is threaded through with Franzen's social awkwardness at school,
at college, as a writer and even domestically.
Discomfort is also perceptible in the author's relationship with the book itself, as if he has been dragged kicking and
screaming into shaping his life into a coherent story and has taken his revenge by self-sabotage.
“The Discomfort Zone” is comprised of six different pieces, some previously published in The New Yorker. House For
Saleinter leaves fragments of childhood with an account of trying to sell the family home in St. Louis after Franzen's
mother's death. Though this book is in no way for every reader, this book does offer some humorous moments to
those that are willing to sit down and read it. A great recommendation for someone looking for something new and
interesting to read.
