The Discomfort Zone. A Personal History [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I believe Jonathan Franzen fans will be both delighted and disappointed with this collection, The Discomfort Zone. It starts out very strong, showing off Franzen's remarkable vocabulary, storytelling ability, and his disregard for political-correctness. In a piece called, "House for Sale," Franzen tells what it feels like to take on the chore of emptying and selling what was his childhood home. Anyone who has faced the death of a parent and has undergone this emotional task will relate to his musings, admissions, and actions. We get to know his mother in this opening tale and soon learn she is a central figure throughout the collection. At first her controlling nature seems relatively benign, when we learn she's written the classified ad meant to showoff her home--her most successful investment--in the best light. Having done extensive research on her St. Louis-area neighborhood prior to her death, she even suggests an asking price. Franzen uses this story to kick-off a theme, where he comes off as a continual disappointment to his strict, provincial parents and shows how his mother's "strong opinions" have deeply affected his life.

The second entry, "Two Ponies," focuses on "Peanuts" cartoon creator Charles Schulz, and how Franzen related (or didn't relate) to the characters. He also relates to Schulz himself, particularly because of Schulz's feelings as an outsider while growing up. Additionally, I believe he admired Schulz for holding a grudge regarding his disdain for the label "Peanuts" placed upon his life's work. What I liked about "Two Ponies," is that I grew up reading this comic strip and could therefore relate to Franzen's story, and I liked the way the writing comes full circle.

Unfortunately, for me the collection goes downhill from there. Long passages about a Fellowship church camp and its youth minister, "Mutton" . . . a tale about his high school "gang" attempting acts of vandalism, and too much German (translations included) during a semester abroad, seem to be written more for himself and the characters he portrays than the general public.

Finally, with "My Bird Problem," Franzen is back on track. He offers political and personal takes on global warming, our country's energy policy, along with intimate revelations about his marriage and an ensuing relationship, and ultimately his passion for birding and what it has taught him about himself . . . and his mother.

Readable in one day.

Michele Cozzens, Author of A Line Between Friends and The Things I Wish I'd Said.

Admittedly, I did read some of the reviews that were published about THE DISCOMFORT ZONE, Jonathan Franzen's latest, before picking it up for myself. The Christian Science Monitor called the writing "exhaustingly and blindly self-involved." Esquire thought the book might "inspire a cringe or two." In an especially scathing review, The New York Times called it "solipsistic" and "incredibly annoying," before commenting "just why anyone would be interested in pages and pages about this unhappy relationship [with his then wife] or the self-important and self-promoting contents of Mr. Franzen's mind remains something of a mystery." After reading these reviews, I was thoroughly prepared to hate the book.

Thus, it came as a big surprise to me when, shockingly, I loved the entire thing.

Yes, Franzen is a bit of a narcissist. And, yes, some of his views or perceptions might be slightly strong for some readers. But isn't that the goal of a memoirist --- to hold nothing back when telling his or her own story? Isn't a memoir --- any memoir --- an exercise in self-absorption? Of selfishness? What rule states that memoirs must be filled only with agreeable and easily digestible topics and that their authors can only talk about themselves 45% of the time?

Arguably, THE DISCOMFORT ZONE could be viewed as a breath of fresh air. Here, readers can dive into a series of six stand-alone essays (many of which have been previously published in The New Yorker) that, when read consecutively (or even out of order), flow together and paint a retrospective of Franzen's life thus far. A bit of a departure from his previous works (THE CORRECTIONS, HOW TO BE ALONE and others) but nonetheless written with the same fervor, these six vignettes are intensely personal and explore with microscopic acuity the relationships and experiences that made him the man he is today.

In the opening story, "House for Sale," Franzen describes his final visit back to the house in which he grew up (in Webster Groves, Missouri) after his mother's death. As one is apt to do when going through old papers, drawers and closets, he uncovers vivid childhood memories and forgotten feelings associated with the tchotchkes still in the house. It is a moving experience, as one might imagine, and in his attempt to ready the house for eventual sale, so to must he grasp the passing of time and come to terms with the changes both in his own life and in the world around him.

Of course, Franzen is nothing if not painfully honest, even when directing his critical eye inward. The most entertaining stories to read in this collection are those in which he dissects his perception of himself as a puny, somewhat nerdy adolescent, with a silent need to be perceived as cool while also giving off a blasé, I-don't-really-care-what-others-think-of-me attitude. As he so aptly puts it, "adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, is its leading symptom...this cruel mixture of consciousness and irrelevance, this built-in hollowness, is enough to account for how pissed off you are. You're miserable and ashamed if you don't believe your adolescent troubles matter, but you're stupid if you do."

In probably the most enjoyable story of the collection, "Then Joy Breaks Through," Franzen describes himself as a boy afraid of "spiders, insomnia, fish hooks, school dances...urinals, puberty, music teachers...boomerangs, popular girls, the high dive," and most of all, his parents. He then goes on to relay with hilarious, often laugh-out-loud detail his involvement in a cult-like Christian youth fellowship group (read: hippie/radical counterculture group) where his urge to be accepted often rivaled his equally present disdain for appearing like he was trying too hard. In the equally witty "Centrally Located," he explores a (seemingly) more confident period wherein he and a group of friends form a club of their own. Throughout high school, they perform a series of hilarious pranks on the administration, and it becomes clear that Franzen's signature ingenuity is finding its niche.

In an especially telling summation, Franzen says of himself, "At forty-five, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen...At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who's still inside me." Ever humble and righteously self-aware, Franzen highlights the individual yet universal experience of what it means to be human. Yes, he might come off as overly snide, petulant and at times quite pompous. But it's his right to be that way when writing his memoirs for it's his experience and his alone.

If picking up THE DISCOMFORT ZONE means mulling over an entire book of supposedly self-indulgent moments such as this one and linking it to the broader experience of growing older and coming to terms with what it all could mean, then I'll gladly take the risk.

--- Reviewed by Alexis Burling

"To be hungry all the time, to be made for sex, to not believe in global warming, to be shortsighted, to live without thought of your grandchildren, to spend half your life on personal grooming, to be perpetually on guard, to be compulsive, to be habit-bound, to be avid, to be unimpressed with humanity, to prefer your own kind: these were all ways of being like a bird." Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen has written a mystifying and complicated book. He starts out with the death of his mother and he finished with the death of his mother. In-between he talks about himself- his childhood as strange as it was, with a Christian fellowship group to his college years in Germany studying Kafka. He discusses his adult life and his marriage and his new found love of birding. His various relationships, his need for a child and his badgering of his latest love to have his child. Throughout the book is a tale of one person, a boy who becomes a teenage who becomes a man. His journey, trials and tribulations. The not so subtle message is that this boy, a teenager and a man who didn't fit in, was trying to find his place.

His mother has the strongest connection and Jonathan Franzen says he grew to love her as she was dying, but, he could not stand to be with her more than three days. He would arrive on a Friday night and leave on a Monday. She who loved him best was bereft if they lost one hour of time. This gives us the strongest clue that this man has just begin to connect. He compares himself to that of a bird and this may explain why his new found love of birding takes up most of the book. He does not spare us of his silliness, his inadequacies and his selfishness. In the end I am not sure I like him. A strange book that is his connection, but is so self-centered.

In the midst of the book is the need to connect. As his German lit prof tells it, "Kafka was afraid of death, he had problems with sex, he had problems with women, he had problems with his job, and he had problems with his parents. And he was writing fiction to try to figure these things out." It does not take us much thought to put this together. However, how will we know the next chapter in Jonathan Franzen's life? Does Jonathan Franzen find himself, does he connect, and is he happy? Maybe,his next book will give us an answer.
Recommended warily. prisrob 9-24-06