The End of the End of the Earth

Posted on 25 April 2017 by Jonathan Franzen

A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award winning author of Freedom and The CorrectionsThe essayist, Jonathan Franzen writes, is like a fire fighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them For the past twenty five years, even as his novels have earned him worldwide acclaim, Franzen has led a second life as a risk taking essayist Now, at a moment when technology has inflamed tribal hatreds and the planet is beset by unnatural calami ties, he is back with a new collection of essays that recall us tohumane ways of being in the world.Franzen s great loves are literature and birds, and The End of the End of the Earth is a passionate argument for both Where the new media tend to confirm one s prejudices, he writes, literature invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you Whatever his subject, Franzen s essays are always skeptical of received opinion, steeped in irony, and frank about his own failings He s frank about birds, too they kill everything imaginable , but his reporting and reflections on them on seabirds in New Zealand, warblers in East Africa, penguins in Antarctica are both a moving celebration of their beauty and resilience and a call to action to save what we love.Calm, poignant, carefully argued, full of wit, The End of the End of the Earth provides a welcomebreath of hope and reason. Free Download Books The End of the End of the Earth by Jonathan Franzen – kino-fada.fr Sigh Franzen can write He is intelligent His nonfiction is just not my cup of tea There is an authorial distance I find offputting but I understand why he might write with that distance As a whole, the collection is uneven There is a set of rules for the novelist that feels like he jotted some ideas on a napkin and included them in the book The essay on Edith Wharton yikes He spends quite some time discussing that she was unattractive and like, has he seen male writers throughout his Sigh Franzen can write He is intelligent His nonfiction is just not my cup of tea There is an authorial distance I find offputting but I understand why he might write with that distance As a whole, the collection is uneven There is a set of rules for the novelist that feels like he jotted some ideas on a napkin and included them in the book The essay on Edith Wharton yikes He spends quite some time discussing that she was unattractive and like, has...If you stand in a forest in Southeast Asia, you may hear and then begin to feel, in your chest, a deep rhythmic whooshing It sounds meteorological, but it s the wingbeats of Great Hornbills flying in to land in a fruiting tree They have massive yellow bills and hefty white thighs they look like a cross between a toucan and a giant panda As they clamber around in the tree, placidly eating fruit, you may find yourself crying out with the rarest of all emotions pure joy It has nothing to do If you stand in a forest in Southeast Asia, you may hear and then begin to feel, in your chest, a deep rhythmic whooshing It sounds meteorological, but it s the wingbeats of Great Hornbills flying in to land in a fruiting tree They have massive yellow bills and hefty white thighs they look like a cross between a toucan and a giant panda As they clamber around in the tree, placidly eating fruit, you may find yourself crying out with the rarest of all emotions pure joy It has nothing to do with what you want or what you possess It s the sheer gorgeous fact of the Great Hornbill, which couldn t care less about you I always love those moments when something reminds me of how insubstantial I am, compared to the forces of nature The ultimate feeling of insignificance for me was to see, in a flash of lightning, a tornado, in all its beautiful glory, just off the road from...Before you denigrate yourself for picking up a collection of essays instead of a novel, Franzen makes a brazen argument early on in The End of the End of the Earth for its importance the essay s in our lives in Litland as a whole An essay is a mirror to the writer, to society, to the reader He gives it a valid worth these little nuggins are all worth their weight in gold.Please go read The Corrections , yeah, even Freedom has its good parts But essays Like what personal Before you denigrate yourself for picking up a collection of essays instead of a novel, Franzen makes a brazen argument early on in The End of the End of the Earth for its importance the essay s in our lives in Litland as a whole An essay is a mirror to the writer, to society, to the reader He gives it a valid worth these little nuggins are all worth their weight in gold.Please go read The Corrections , yeah, even Freedom has its good parts But essays Like what personal stuff, apart from the writer s autobiography there s a little bit of that, obviously , do I really need to take away Jeez, theI read about affluence, and a sustained type of it, theI m left peeved Like, I will listen to you, buddy Even admire the way your argument is meticulously flouncy but in serious ahem, masterful prose It is yo...The two prevalent themes in this collection of essays by the celebrated fiction writer are climate change and birds They often crop up in tandem too, and sometimes unexpectedly interrupt the discourse on another subject Birds are certainly the author s passion, they represent his hobby he s a lister he says, keeping records of every bird he sees and sub dividing his lists to ensure he can track his captures by timeline and global warming and all its resultant ills seems to be the nightmare s The two prevalent themes in this collection of essays by the celebrated fiction writer are climate change and birds They often crop up in tandem too, and sometimes unexpectedly interrupt the discourse on another subject Birds are certainly the author s passion, they represent his hobby he s a lister he says, keeping records of every bird he sees and sub dividing his lists to ensure he can track his captures by timeline and global warming and all its resultant ills seems to be the nightmare scenario he s long feared but now accepts as inevitable To me, there was rather too much of both subjects here and I was particularly irked when one or another upset the ...Birds, birds, birds, birds, birds, andbirds listen to the cover, not the blurb Most of these texts deal with the before mentioned flying animals, how they are threatened, what it means to Franzen to be a birdwatcher, and why birds are generally awesome In my opinion, Franzen is also generally awesome, but the bird overload in this essay collection was really testing my patience There is nothing wrong with writing about your favorite animal, but the book marketing appears to make an ef Birds, birds, birds, birds, birds, andbirds listen to the cover, not the blurb Most of these texts deal with the before mentioned flying animals, how they are threatened, what it means to Franzen to be a birdwatcher, and why birds are generally awesome In my opinion, Franzen is also generally awesome, but the bird overload in this essay collection was really testing my patience There is nothing wrong with writing about your favorite animal, but the book marketing appears to ma...Reading this book was a bit like being chained to a radiator for 5 hours while an old eccentric yells at you about birds.I don t feel the need to read every essay in this collection, but I do feel the need to defend Edith Wharton s honor I also have a personal anecdote about running into Franzenor Franzen running into me In 2012, which was the 150th anniversary of Wharton s birth, Franzen wrote a piece about her for The New Yorker entitled A Rooting Interest For what it s worth, I am a Wharton fanatic I wrote my MA thesis on her, I ve read almost every secondary source about her that was published before I don t feel the need to read every essay in this collection, but I do feel the need to defend Edith Wharton s honor I also have a personal anecdote about running into Franzenor Franzen running into me In 2012, which was the 150th anniversary of Wharton s birth, Franzen wrote a piece about her for The New Yorker entitled A Rooting Interest For what it s worth, I am a Wharton fanatic I wrote my MA thesis on her, I ve read almost every secondary source about her that was published before 2010, and I have been to The Mount twice While at The Mount, I got mistaken for a docent while I was talking to a fellow fan about her, which was embarrassing and flat...The cover is accurate there are LOTS of birds in these essays Unless you re a birdwatcher or have a burning interest in the plight of birds threatened by hunting and habitat loss, be prepared to skim or completely skip over the multiple pieces on traveling to a particular place to appreciate its endemic or migratory bird species I enjoyed theautobiographical pieces his temporary friendship with William Vollmann, what it was like in New York City two days after 9 11, and taking a two we The cover is accurate there are LOTS of birds in these essays Unless you re a birdwatcher or have a burning interest in the plight of birds threatened by hunting and habitat loss, be prepared to skim or completely skip over the multiple pieces on traveling to a particular place to appreciate its endemic or migratory bird species I enjoyed theautobiographical pieces his temporary friendship with William Vollmann, what it was like in New York City two days after 9 11, and taking a two week Antarctic cruise.I also valued Franzen s general conclusions about the state of the planet and what we can and can t do about it drastic planetary overheating is a done deal our world is poised to change vastly, unpredictably, and mostly for the worse I don t have any hope that we can stop the change from coming My only hope is that we can accept the reality in time to prepare...By any measure, Jonathan Franzen is a fortunate man For one thing, he has a God given talent for writing both fiction and non He has not been without controversy, but has managed to rise above it and when he churns out one of his lengthy, involving novels every seven years or so, is rewarded with a loyal readership Another way in which he is lucky is that he has an all consuming passion he loves birds Anyone favored with such an interest can be considered lucky Having something to aim By any measure, Jonathan Franzen is a fortunate man For one thing, he has a God given talent for writing both fiction and non He has not been without controversy, but has managed to rise above it and when he churns out one of his lengthy, involving novels every seven years or so, is rewarded with a loyal readership Another way in which he is lucky is that he has an all consuming passion he loves birds Anyone favored with such an interest can be considered lucky Having something to aim for, to pursue, gives life flavor and brightness Because of his success as an author, he has time as well as means to pursue this pa...I once worked with a grumpy old coot with a lot of opinions, and despite the fact that I generally agreed with him re environmental horror, the contradictions of capitalism, etc., I generally wanted him to shut his damn trap I m already bummed out, and I d rather be bummed out by a brilliant essay in Dissent or Current Affairs then listen to an aging boomer talk about anything.It s the same with this volume of Franzen essays He s a grumpy old coot too, albeit one with writing chops.But do I once worked with a grumpy old coot with a lot of opinions, and despite the fact that I generally agreed with him re environmental horror, the contradictions of capitalism, etc., I generally wanted him to shut his damn trap I m already bummed out, and I d rather be bummed out by a brilliant essay in Dissent or Current Affairs then listen to an aging boomer talk about anyt...We spend our days reading, on screens, stuff we d never bother reading in a printed book, and bitch about how busy we are Franzen seems to be the most divisive of all living authors I know he is abrasive and highly opinionated but so are many artists I have only read Franzen s The Corrections, which I did love I always wanted to try his essay work and when I learned that he was such an avid birder , I knew I wanted to try this collection There are birds galore here, so I was not disappo We spend our days reading, on screens, stuff we d never bother reading in a printed book, and bitch about how busy we are Franzen seems to be the most divisive of all living authors I know he is abrasive and highly opinionated but so are many artists I have only read Franzen s The Corrections, which I did love I always wanted to try his essay work and when I learned that he was such an avid birder , I knew I wanted to try this collection There are birds galore here, so I was not disappointed I just wish I had the money to go to all these amazing places Sadly, many of these pieces deal with the destruction of birds and their habitat, the numbers are truly staggering As a novice birder myself, it was enough to make you weep That said, his passion and joy watching and discovering birds, helped balance his well documented rants He also loves books, so a few of these essays also deal with authors and literature, which obviously I can also relate to This collection is no...

English
25 April 2017

Jonathan Franzen