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Farther Away (book)

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Farther Away
First edition cover
AuthorJonathan Franzen
LanguageEnglish
GenreEssays
PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
April 24, 2012
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardback)
Pages356 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN0-374-15357-4 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC759175040
814/.54 dc23
LC ClassPS3556.R352 A6 2012

Farther Away is a 2012 collection of essays by the American writer Jonathan Franzen.[1][2][3]

Essays

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Most of the essays previously appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, and others.

Table of contents

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  • Pain Won't Kill You” (2011)
  • Farther Away” (2011)
  • The Greatest Family Ever Storied” (2010)
  • “Hornets” (2010)
  • “The Ugly Mediterranean” (2010)
  • “The Corn King” (2010)
  • “On Autobiographical Fiction” (2009)
  • “I Just Called To Say I Love You” (2008)
  • “David Foster Wallace” (2008)
  • “The Chinese Puffin” (2008)
  • “On The Laughing Policeman” (2008)
  • “Comma-Then” (2008)
  • “Authentic But Horrible” (2007)
  • “Interview With New York State” (2007)
  • “Love Letters” (2005)
  • “Our Little Planet” (2005)
  • “The End Of The Binge” (2005)
  • “What Makes You So Sure You're Not The Evil One Yourself?” (2004)
  • “Our Relations : A Brief History” (2004)
  • “The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit” (2002)
  • “No End To It” (1998)

Reception

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Culture Critic assessed critical response as an aggregated score of 80%,[4] while The BookScore assessed it at an aggregated critic score of 7.3/10 based on an accumulation of British and American press reviews.[5][6] On July/Aug 2012 issue of Bookmarks Magazine, a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a (3.5 out of 5) based on critic reviews with a critical summary saying, "Franzen's crisp, incisive prose, frankness, and engaging sense of humor make Farther Away standard Franzen fare".[7][8]

In The New York Times Book Review, the essayist Phillip Lopate wrote that the pieces "demonstrate [Franzen's] generosity, humanity and love of fiction, as well as his own preference for the morally complex over the sentimental. The struggle to be a good human being, against the pulls of solipsism and narcissism, can be glimpsed in every page of these essays, which if nothing else offer a telling battle report from within the consciousness of one of our major novelists."[9]

In the English newspaper The Guardian, writer and critic Geoff Dyer found advances over Franzen's previous essay collection, How to Be Alone: "Franzen seems more gregarious than he was in How to be Alone...These essays are exemplary instances of reader-friendly criticism in that they can be studied profitably even by people unfamiliar with the works in question. They also display [a] related side-effect of becoming a great novelist. That the great novelist is, by default, a great reader...One way or another, the essays in Farther Away are attempts to enlarge the place where literature, and the responsiveness to it, can be preserved."[10]

References

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  1. ^ Levack, Chandler (8 June 2012). "Book Review: Farther Away, by Jonathan Franzen". National Post. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
  2. ^ Ulin, David L. (29 April 2012). "Review: Jonathan Franzen's 'Farther Away' wants to bridge distance". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
  3. ^ "Farther Away". www.neworleansreview.org. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
  4. ^ "Jonathan Franzen - Farther Away". Culture Critic. Archived from the original on 19 Sep 2012. Retrieved 12 July 2024.
  5. ^ "Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen". The BookScore. Archived from the original on 31 Aug 2012. Retrieved 12 July 2024.
  6. ^ "Farther away". Books & Media. Archived from the original on 16 Jun 2012. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  7. ^ "Farther Away". Bookmarks Magazine. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  8. ^ "Farther Away". Bookmarks Magazine. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  9. ^ Lopate, Phillip (18 May 2012). "Manageable Discontents". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
  10. ^ "Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen – review". the Guardian. 2012-06-09. Retrieved 2022-01-24.
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