A review by pkrikau
The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen

4.0

I love Franzen's craft with sentences. It is clear he does not write casually and that sentences are worked and worked until he is satisfied. Of course, I can't KNOW that, but when a sentence makes me read it over and over again until I have truly thought about the meaning and the artfulness of its phrasing and its evocative qualities...well, I just sit (sometimes I'm standing, but very rarely) amazed. Franzen did this in the Corrections repeatedly and he does it to a lesser extent in this biography. I have to be clear, Franzen has not led an exciting life. This book is proof that well-crafted writing can make anything enjoyable. I could give a crap about bird watching, yet Franzen made his hobby interesting and borderline compelling. I have no new desire to bird watch, but I feel like I understand Franzen better. To me, that is the sign of a good writer. This is the second book I have read by him and I have to say he is as good as his accolades and that, I find, is rare company (Eugenides, Perlman, Chabon, and Franzen). As a side note, it occurs to me that I have no favorite living female writers and that is because I have not made an effort to seek out female literature writers. I will be rectifying this in the near future.