
The End of the End of the Earth
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– Unabridged
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A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections.
In The End of the End of the Earth, which gathers essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, Jonathan Franzen returns with renewed vigour to the themes - both human and literary - that have long preoccupied him. Whether exploring his complex relationship with his uncle, recounting his young adulthood in New York or offering an illuminating look at the global seabird crisis, these pieces contain all the wit and disabused realism that we’ve come to expect from Franzen.
Taken together, these essays trace the progress of a unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature and with some of the most important issues of our day, made more pressing by the current political milieu. The End of the End of the Earth is remarkable, provocative and necessary.
- Listening Length6 hours and 26 minutes
- Audible release date13 November 2018
- LanguageEnglish
- ASINB07HZ542MJ
- VersionUnabridged
- Program TypeAudiobook
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Product details
Listening Length | 6 hours and 26 minutes |
---|---|
Author | Jonathan Franzen |
Narrator | Robert Petkoff |
Whispersync for Voice | Ready |
Audible.com.au Release Date | 13 November 2018 |
Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers Limited |
Program Type | Audiobook |
Version | Unabridged |
Language | English |
ASIN | B07HZ542MJ |
Best Sellers Rank | 97,840 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 68 in Extended Families 202 in Literary Essays 248 in Animals |
Customer reviews
Top reviews from other countries



However, there is very little anger in The End of the End of the Earth. Instead there is, if not despair, at least a bleak feeling of unstoppable loss permeating the text. Franzen devotes relatively few pages to criticizing Trump and his ilk and instead chooses to focus on his practical ethic of small concrete actions that can be done to preserve what is still good.
For Franzen himself, this is largely dedicated to efforts to preserve the world’s avian wildlife. But mixed in with it are portraits of other individuals defying the Facebook image conscious world by making meaningful human relationships, creating photographic portraits which convey a real sense of the person and, defying the omnipresence of Tweets, writing essays like those in this book that go to the pith of the matter.
Lest you harbor any illusions, the end of the end of the earth is not a new hopeful beginning but a description of the environmental havoc being wreaked in Antarctica (which Franzen aptly refers to as the end of the earth). Instead, what Franzen offers the reader is a vision of the need to do concrete good in a world and biosphere constantly falling into greater entropy.
I doubt this vision will much capture the attention of the American public when there are so many more vapid messages being shouted from megaphones. But that doesn’t make it less sincere or less important. If all that we have at the beginning of the twenty-first century is to ground ourselves in the concrete good before a coming ecological catastrophe it is more than a message of unmitigated despair.
Franzen should be commended for not deploying his artistic talent in the service of the left’s agenda but choosing to articulate his unique vision, popular or not. Highly recommended for those who are able to at least sympathize with such a bleak account of our civilization and planet.

