The Discomfort Zone

As Jonathan Franzen tells it, he was the kind of boy who was afraid of spiders,school dances, urinals, music teachers, boomerangs, popular girlsand his parents.He had nothing against geeky kids except a desperate fear of being taken forone of them, a fate which would result in instant Social Death. Approachingpuberty the way a fraud artist confronts a particularly tough scam, he pretended tobe a kid who naturally said “shit” and who didn’t enjoy calculations on his new six functionTexas Instrument calculator.

The Discomfort Zone is Franzen’stale of growing up squirming in his own über-sensitive skin. It’s a multi-layeredtour de force that daringly cascades from single moments into a domino-like discourseof sometimes truculent, sometimes piercing, always entertaining investigationand insight. Whether he’s writing about the explosive dynamics of a Christianyouth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka’s fiction on his own protractedquest to lose his virginity, or the web of connections between birdwatching, hisall-consuming marriage and the problem of global warming, Franzen is always feelinglyengaged with the world we live in now. Franzen’s personal history of a Midwesternyouth and New York adulthood is warmed by the same blend of comic scrutinyand affection that characterize his fiction; the result is an arresting portrait of aman, his family and his time.