How to Be Alone (book)

Most of the essays previously appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Details, and Graywolf Forum. In the introductory essay, "A Word About This Book," Franzen notes that the "underlying investigation in all these essays" is "the problem of preserving individuality and complexity in a noisy and distracting mass culture: the question of how to be alone."^[1]

Included in the collection are "Why Bother?"—a revised version of "Perchance to Dream," Franzen's infamous 1996 Harper's essay on the novelists' obligation to social realism—and "My Father's Brain," nominated for a 2002 National Magazine Award. The latter essay details the elder Franzen's struggle with Alzheimer's.^[2] These experiences informed Franzen’s writing of the character Alfred Lambert in his 2001 novel The Corrections.

The 2003 trade paperback edition includes a fifteenth essay, "Mr. Difficult", on the subject of "difficult" fiction in general and the novels of William Gaddis in particular. To accommodate this additional essay, the essay “Scavenging” was substantially edited.

• "A Word About This Book"
• "My Father's Brain" (an edited version appeared in The Guardian; see External links)
• "Imperial Bedroom"
• "Why Bother?"
• "Lost in the Mail"
• "Erika Imports"
• "Sifting the Ashes"
• "The Reader in Exile"
• "First City"
• "Scavenging"
• "Control Units"
• "Books in Bed"
• "Meet Me in St. Louis"
• "Inauguration Day, January 2001"

Note: In the trade paperback edition "Mr. Difficult" was inserted after "Control Units".