Reviewed by Kelly Stewart

Jonathan Franzen’s collection of essays, How to be Alone, explores the difficulties of living in a society overflowing with stimuli. In 13 essays – several of which were previously published in The New Yorker, Harper’s and Details – Franzen covers such diverse subjects as Dumpster diving for furniture, a Supermax prison and its effect on a Colorado town, and Franzen’s brief stint as an Oprah Winfrey author for his 2001 novel The Corrections. Although he’s anguished about living in a society where television has replaced books, Franzen is ambivalent about distancing himself from everyone else. He writes, "I want to be alone, but not too alone. I want to be the same but different."

Franzen’s writing shines when he develops his characters and writes with focus. An essay about his father’s Alzheimer’s disease illuminates a big topic through the eyes of one family. A story focusing on the troubled Chicago post office offers a compelling mix of fascinating characters and meticulous detail, told through Franzen’s distinctive point of view. The Postal Service has become "a foreign country within a country," Franzen writes, where postal workers keep their work lives and private lives distinct — some even going as far as lying about their occupations to avoid inevitable complaints about mail service.

In several essays, however, Franzen overemphasizes what he sees as the encroaching dangers of mass culture. He’s wise to question what the future holds for novelists, yet he could summarize his fears in a single piece — his much-discussed 1996 "Harper’s essay," in which he mourns the commodification of the novel, and yet acknowledges that writing gives him the power to be an individual in a culture of conformity. Still, in How to be Alone, Franzen is at his best when he leaves cultural criticism behind and focuses on story and character.