How to Be Alone (As she puts it: "That's

(As she puts it: "That's how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November

grain stacks

and unbearable sacrifice

and letting your music ring out

"the theorist of beginnings

How to Be Alone (As she puts it: "That'sFrom the National Book Award winning author of The Corrections, a collection of essays that reveal him to be one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics While the essays in this collection range in subject matter from the sex advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each one wrestles with the essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civil life and private dignity; and the hidden persistence of loneliness