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The Discomfort Zone Audio CD – 28 August 2006
by
Jonathan Franzen
(Author)
Jonathan Franzen (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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The Discomfort Zone is Franzen's memoir of growth from his boyhood as a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions. It's also a portrait of a Midwestern middle-class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s and a vivid personal history of an America turning its back on a certain idealism. Daring, honest, and written with the comic scrutiny and unqualified affection that marks Franzen's fiction, The Discomfort Zone tells of the formation of one young mind in the crucible of an everyday American family.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHighbridge Co
- Publication date28 August 2006
- Dimensions12.95 x 1.8 x 14.78 cm
- ISBN-101598870548
- ISBN-13978-1598870541
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Product details
- Publisher : Highbridge Co; Unabridged edition (28 August 2006)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 1598870548
- ISBN-13 : 978-1598870541
- Dimensions : 12.95 x 1.8 x 14.78 cm
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
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Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels--Purity, Freedom, The Corrections, The Twenty-Seventh City, and Strong Motion--and five works of nonfiction and translation, including Farther Away, How to Be Alone, and The Discomfort Zone, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the German Akademie der Kunste, and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
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4 out of 5
74 global ratings
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Top reviews from other countries

W. Birchall
2.0 out of 5 stars
A 'great' American writer?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 September 2015Verified Purchase
I read this author on impulse, as I had heard that he had been described as a 'great' American writer. May be I selected the wrong book to determine whether he is or isn't a great writer, but I found him pretentious, unfocused and overly verbose. I do not consider it good writing, to describe something in a way that the reader needs to be constantly referring to a dictionary, in order to understand it. The book was erratic and skipped from one uninteresting subject to another, without any real understanding of what he was trying to achieve. It seemed like a scrapbook of memories, that he thought the reader might be interested in. I was not. The book depicted him as spoiled, wealthy with a puerile sense of humour. A writer, I guess so but, Great, surely not.
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Sisyphus
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lyrical, innovative and playful - I will read this again and again
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 January 2014Verified Purchase
Jonathan Franzen became my favourite author after I read "The Corrections" - and read it again and again. The book is so deeply layered and each section so valuable and intertwined with the others that it is a pleasure to reread, but what appeals before all else is Franzen's breathtaking style. In "The Discomfort Zone" he is playful, self-deprecating; he solicits our compassion and makes us cringe and laugh along with his younger self. There were so many great lines and great passages that I took to reading it with a pen in hand to underline things. I would definitely recommend this to any fan of Franzen's work.
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Julian Preece
5.0 out of 5 stars
A German Scholar
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 April 2020Verified Purchase
The chapter 'The Other Language' is the best account of sex and learning German that I know.

AnnaB
5.0 out of 5 stars
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 December 2015Verified Purchase
Favourite author

ms laj
3.0 out of 5 stars
although generally I love Franzen. Freedom and The Corrections are much better
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 February 2015Verified Purchase
Patchy, although generally I love Franzen. Freedom and The Corrections are much better.