Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen

Like many of you, I am a big fan of Jonathan Franzen’s fiction. But I think his essays may have just a slight edge in my heart. Maybe I just like seeing the compassionate, thoughtful everyman lurking behind the persona of the darkly comic novelist. Whether probing the life of his troubled friend David Foster Wallace, or traveling the world in aid of the vanishing songbirds, Franzen always has something interesting to say, and he is often unexpectedly self-revealing.