Front of Book

Any attempt to cast literature’s ultimate purpose as the easing of loneliness eventually runs into a single, qualified response: “Yes, to a point.” Even the most isolated reader, for all the solace they take in books, at some point finds that imaginative community insufficient; they miss company. What Franzen knows (yet often writes around) is what anyone who’s tried to fill a blank page with a true distillation of all of their hopes and fears and longings also knows: that the written word is a powerful but flawed way to love. Whether you’re the writer at the desk or the reader on the subway, you’re alone.

James Santel on Jonathan Franzen’s Farther Away.