Culture

Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen

Farther Away: Essays BY Jonathan Franzen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hardcover, 336 pages. $26.
The cover of Farther Away: Essays

I'd heard that the title essay of Jonathan Franzen's new collection was about his punishing experiences on a rough and tiny island. Some of what happened there is by now well known. The inhabitants of this island welcomed him by printing the wrong version of his novel Freedom, necessitating the pulping of its entire first print run.