How to Be Alone

I have no idea why I put this collection of essays on my reading list but it was ok. There were a handful of stories that were phoned in, ‘Lost in the Mail’ comes to mind and I guess I forgot the others. I found the first three compelling though. ‘My Fathers Brain’, which can be found online, pulled me in and just made me sympathize with the author and his mother. ‘Imperial Bedroom’ is now dated as hell but in the face of the Mueller report there is a stark contrast. I was surprised how well it held up on the face of today’s privacy landscape. ‘Why Bother?’ starts and and holds a whining, lamenting, and grumpy survey of the novels place in the modern world of media. Even though it rambles there were spots that made me perk up, touching on diversity, cross pollination of ideas, and the common threads that make us readers. It was more interesting than unfocused. If you have time I’d pick at the first three essays, but the whole book might not be worth your time.

This was kind of a weird read for me. Franzen seems to be the kind of supporter of the form of cultural pessimism (highbrow literature is dying! TV and the internet are making us accept capitalism! only rotary phones are acceptable! [seriously, I only half-made up the last one, there is an essay on his rotary phone] etc) that in a way is still prevailing. Still I enjoyed reading even some of those essays, even if I strongly disagree with his conclusions.

To have a closer look into the different topics of the essays:

- The essays on his father's death, the US prison system and the US postal service were fun and interesting to read (and without the cult/tech pessimism iirc) and are main reason for the rating.
- His essay on privacy is amazing for the general analysis. Franzen's main line of argument is that privacy - a value not too many people actually care about in every day life - has risen and feels super important and that this rise starts to be a threat on the public sphere. Mind you, this essay was written in 1998 which is way before the Facebook-Google-NSA-era! He even goes on to mention public genetic data and why it might be less of a problem in itself than one of genetic discrimination etc. So from my point of view that's all spot on. But his conclusions are outright insane: If I get him correctly he then argues for people being less open and protecting their privacy more to defend the public sphere (dress up, go out, play your act in public) which feels just wrong and doesn't make too much sense to me.
- His ramblings on the death of highbrow/difficult literature aren't really coherent. In the one essay he can't stop to complain about how bad it is that the stupid masses turn away from difficult literature to bestsellers or (god forbid!) even TV. And in a later essay he claims how he can't stand difficult novels himself and thinks authors should try to make themselves understood. So, what is it?

There might have been other topics, but those apparently weren't too memorable or interesting to me. I'd say: Go for the prison/postal/death/privacy essays, skip the rest.