Farther Away (book)

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

• “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)

In The New York Times Book Review, the essayist Phillip Lopate wrote 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."[1]

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."[2]

• The New York Times Book Review on Farther Away