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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
At its best, using birds as a lens to talk about climate change. At its worst, going on a diatribe about a long dead author. Be thinking about this for a while.
I know Mr. Franzen is polarizing at best and infuriating to many, but the man can write, and he loves birds. I enjoyed this collection of essays, many of which were about birds or birding, many of which touched on the all-too-real issue of climate change and how it is affecting the world-- people and places outside the US (gasp) and species other than humans (gasp). Other essays poignantly introduced us to family members, introspectively talked about 9/11, and showed proper respect for William Vollman and Edith Wharton. A good collection overall.
Meanwhile the personal essay itself - the formal apparatus of honest self-examination and sustained engagement with ideas, as developed by Montaigne and advanced by Emerson and Woolf and Baldwin - is in eclipse.
Franzen gets into line with the tradition of essayists that share both their ideas and experiences and does so impeccably.
This copy was kindly provided to me in exchange for an honest review by the publisher via NetGalley.
A quaint collection of essays from Franzen with occasional banality peppered through it. The titular essay is one of the best, so is the one that charts Franzen's friendship with William T. Vollmann.
Fair warning, this book is 95% about birds. So if you’re down for a bird bio, go for it. The remaining 5% is just pompous privilege manifesting itself in sexism. (I am glad I only paid $6 for it, thank u Rosie).
Franzen doesn't care what you think but he really cares that you don't think he's wrong.
Readable, thought-provoking, and as usual, delivered with deadpan intelligence, especially his arguments for natural conservation in the mids of the climate change politics.
I was intrigued by the first page;Shared in these essays are the realities we are afraid to voice or even admit silently. The truths gathered here are an intelligent and raw meditation on the various and sundry anxieties that define our collective human guilt.
First time reading Franzen and probably the last. His prose is lovely, clear, clean and smooth. However his ego is large and gets in the way of his writing being pleasurable. I can't put my finger on anything specific, but I felt like I was being talked down to, that he thinks he is smarter and better than everyone. In one essay he remarks that his girlfriend was extremely grateful to him for being understanding about her needing to move to California to take care of her mother who was alone and had dementia. She was so grateful she said he she agreed to go on a big vacation with him to wherever he wanted. He chose a trip to Antarctica. He ended up going with his brother instead of his girlfriend. Um, yeah.
Also, since he is an avid birder, I expected he would be more concerned about climate change and loss of bird habitat, etc. And while he cares about it, he has an attitude of "nothing I can do about it" which is convenient for him so he can jet around the world to check birds off his life list. It seems like it was easier for him to be angry about birds dying against the glass of the new football stadium in Minneapolis than birds dying from habitat loss and climate change.
Also, since he is an avid birder, I expected he would be more concerned about climate change and loss of bird habitat, etc. And while he cares about it, he has an attitude of "nothing I can do about it" which is convenient for him so he can jet around the world to check birds off his life list. It seems like it was easier for him to be angry about birds dying against the glass of the new football stadium in Minneapolis than birds dying from habitat loss and climate change.
Whatever your opinion of Franzen's writing, this isn't going to change it.