The End of the End of the Earth

July 16, 2018
A compulsive need to find order, and a love of birding, represent two of the central threads of this stimulating collection of previously published essays from novelist Franzen (Purity). In the opening essay, “The Essay in Dark Times,” Franzen self-identifies as “what people in the world of birding call a lister,” which makes him “morally inferior to birders who bird exclusively for the joy of it.” Throughout the essays that follow, Franzen muses about writing, Edith Wharton, climate change, Antarctica, the photographs of Sarah Stolfa, and birds, always birds. Some of his opinions have already stoked controversy: In “A Rooting Interest,” he comments on Wharton’s privileged position amid New York City’s social elite, and observes she had “one potentially redeeming disadvantage: she wasn’t pretty.” In “Save What You Love,” he takes the Audubon Society to task for naming climate change as the greatest threat to birds, when “no individual bird death can be definitively attributed” to it, while statistics indicate that picture windows and outdoor cats kill three billion birds annually. Whether observing the eerie beauty of Antarctica (“far from having melted,” he reports) or dispensing “Ten Rules for the Novelist,” Franzen makes for an entertaining, sometimes prickly, but always quotable companion.

August 15, 2018
A new collection of personal essays from a self-proclaimed "depressive pessimist" and "angry, bird-loving misfit."Franzen's (Purity, 2015, etc.) third collection of recently published essays and speeches sparkles with intelligent and insightful forays into a limited range of subjects. The opening piece, "The Essay in Dark Times," could function as a primer for the book. We might be "living in an essayistic golden age," while the personal essay "is in eclipse." After recounting lessons learned while working on an essay with a wise New Yorker editor, the author jumps to bashing a "short-fingered vulgarian" and his "lying, bullying tweets," concluding with his bird obsession and global warming, the "biggest issue in all of human history." In "Why Birds Matter," Franzen lovingly describes falcons, roadrunners, and albatrosses, among others. "Wild birds matter," Franzen writes, because "they are our last, best connection to a natural world that is otherwise receding." In another piece, the author describes his visit to South America to observe the beleaguered Amazon Conservation Association in action. In "May Your Life Be Ruined," he chronicles his travels to Egypt to painfully watch migratory bird-killing with Bedouin falcon trappers. There's literature here, too. In the expected writer-to-writers advice essay, he offers up one page of 10 pithy, odd dos and don'ts--e.g., "You see more sitting still than chasing after." Franzen resuscitates Edith Wharton, praising her "most generously realized" The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, in which she "embraces her new-fashioned divorce plot as zestfully as Nabokov embraces pedophilia in Lolita." There's also the affectionate "A Friendship," in which the author praises William Vollmann's work ethic, vast projects, fine style, and "hunger for beautiful form." The last, titular essay about a voyage to Antarctica is worth the cover price.Witty, reflective, opinionated essays from a writer with the ability to "laugh in dark times."

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October 1, 2018
Franzen (Purity?, 2015) begins his fourth collection of personal essays with praise for how the form invites honest self-examination and sustained engagement with ideas, qualities he masterfully demonstrates in 16 thought-provoking narratives in which he flies against the prevailing winds of common assumptions and expectations. A birder, Franzen travels the world to add to his life list, a mission that enmeshes him in environmental conundrums as he celebrates the wondrous variety and beauty of avian species and seeks to understand the myriad threats against them. Franzen recounts journeys to Peru, Ghana, Egypt, Albania, and the Caribbean, and profiles the people he meets who are trying to protect birds and their habitats by thinking and acting locally, an infinitely more productive approach, he argues, than idealistic attempts to address climate change. Franzen displays his literary-criticism chops in an intriguing reconsideration of Edith Wharton, while in the intricately affecting title essay he candidly reports on a voyage to Antarctica and shares a bit of family history. Another essay title neatly states Franzen's reverberating core theme: Save What You Love. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 15, 2018

As the ambiguous title of the latest work from National Book Award winner Franzen (The Corrections) suggests, the essays in this collection contemplate our uncertain future in the face of climate change. But rather than a rallying cry to rescue the world from destruction, Franzen concedes that it's already too late. Yet despite this gloomy position, he does not yield to defeatism either. Rather, he focuses on what can be saved: a view, a bird, a memory. An avid birdwatcher, Franzen mostly focuses on birding adventures in faraway places--Africa, Jamaica, Antarctica. Reading them one after another, his obsession builds to reveal what is, to the author, imperative: paying attention. These fleeting, winged creatures appear to remind readers to witness, to see what is left to be seen, and to notice life before it disappears forever. Carbon dioxide is not to blame for our planet's ruin so much as our failure to observe--our relationships and interconnectedness. VERDICT This book is a Silent Spring for today, but instead of challenging readers to change the world, it pushes them to change themselves. [See Prepub Alert, 5/14/18.]--Meagan Lacy, Guttman Community Coll., CUNY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2018

Legend-in-his-time Franzen veers from fiction, here collecting essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years that examine themes contained in his novels. From his young adulthood in New York to the global seabird crisis, he takes a gimlet-eye view of the world today, our place in it, and what role literature plays as we sort out key issues.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.