Farther Away

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom was the runaway most-discussed novel of 2010, an ambitious and searching engagement with life in America in the 21st century. The editor of The New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus, proclaimed it “a masterpiece of American fiction” and lauded its illumination, “through the steady radiance of its author’s profound moral intelligence, [of] the world we thought we knew.” Now, a new collection of Franzen’s non-fiction brings fresh evidence of that moral intelligence, confirming his status not only as a great American novelist but also as a master noticer, social critic, and self-investigator.In ‘Farther Away’, which gathers together essays and …