![]() ![]() Conversely, we are unable to keep other people's private lives out of our public space. ![]() Almost perversely, he notes that most of us live in ever MORE private spaces - large suburban houses where no one has to share a room or bathroom, or condominium apartments where you might not know your neighbors, quite unlike what he calls the near-panopticon of small town life a century ago. Franzen presents 15 essays of varying length and on a wide variety of topics, some very personal, some more the type you might encounter in a magazine like the one in the Sunday New York Times or the New Yorker.The personal ones are often quite affecting, in particular the first, "My Father's Brain", which concerns the difficulty he and his family had dealing with his father's mental deterioration, especially in light of his parents' difficult marriage, and the last, where he is forced to 'go home again' years later for a televised interview and finds it torture."Imperial Bedroom" is Franzen's take on the conventional cry that our privacy is evaporating. I've had this book of essays and articles on my shelf for some time, and picked it up when a book funk was looming. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |