Farther Away: Essays (31 page)

Desperate Characters
is a novel in revolt against its own perfection. The questions it raises are radical and unpleasant. What is the point of meaning—especially literary meaning—in a rabid modern world? Why
bother
creating and preserving order if civilization is every bit as killing as the anarchy to which it's opposed? Why not be rabid? Why torment ourselves with books? Rereading the novel for the sixth or seventh time, I feel a cresting rage and frustration with its mysteries and with the paradoxes of civilization and with the insufficiency of my own brain, and then, as if out of nowhere, I
do
get the ending, I feel what Otto Bentwood feels when he smashes the ink bottle against the wall; and suddenly I'm in love all over again.

Special thanks to Francesco Zippel, Sean Wilsey, Wang Juan, Andrea Walker, David Remnick, Jason Pontin, Silvia Pareschi, Antonio Monda, David Kelly, Peter Hodum, Peter Hessler, Jim Harkness, Jeremy Haft, Karen Green, Susan Golomb, Dwight Garner, Jonathan Galassi, Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn, Henry Finder, and Kathy Chetkovich.

NOVELS

Freedom

The Corrections

Strong Motion

The Twenty-Seventh City

NON-FICTION

The Discomfort Zone

How to Be Alone

TRANSLATION

Spring Awakening
(by Frank Wedekind)

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 8JB

First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2012

Copyright © Jonathan Franzen 2012

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

The right of Jonathan Franzen to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

HB ISBN 978-0-00-745951-3
TPB ISBN 978-0-00-746308-4

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EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780007459520