Passionate independent-minded nonfiction from the international bestselling author of The Corrections. Jonathan Franzens Freedom was the literary sensation of 2010 whilst The Corrections was the best-loved & most written-about novel the previous decade. How to be Alone is a collection of the personal essays & painstaking often humorous reportage that have earned Franzen a wide & loyal readership including what has come to be known as The Harpers Essay Franzens controversial 1996 look at the fate of the novel. From the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works from his fathers struggle with Alzheimers disease to a rueful account of Franzens brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author each piece wrestles with Franzens familiar themes: the erosion of civic life & private dignity & the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern imperial America. These collected essays record what Franzen calls a movement away from an angry & frightened isolation toward an acceptance -- even a celebration -- of being a reader & a writer. They voice a wry distrust of the claims of technology & psychology the love-hate relationship with consumerism & the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of the sharpest toughest-minded & most entertaining social critics at work today.