Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed

for you are the only animal who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblad, and this is Bookworm. Today I have with me here

in the studio, Jonathan Franzen, the author of How to Be Alone, a book of essays published by Faris Strauss and Jureau.

He is, of course, the author of the Corrections, which has recently come out in paperback from Piccadour,

and I thought that we would talk mostly about the essays because I think in many ways they will surprise and enhance

the way people read the corrections.

Now, when I first got the book, I saw the title, How to Be Alone, and I thought, he's

written a how-to book.

And I wondered, was that in your mind when you submitted it, how funny it would be to have a

how-to book or something that looks like a how-to book that would teach you to be alone?

Was I trying to have fun with the how-to genre?

Not particularly. I was desperate for a title and that as I was flipping through the

essays, I kept seeing the word alone and then one essay ended with the phrase how to be alone.

And there's really nothing more than that except that I hope it's ironic. Almost everything

in the book has

some potential irony or ironic spin and beyond that now. But it does seem as if it's a, it's

something of a vital, if ironic concern. I came to the phrase in that essay that you mentioned, the reader exiled.

Is that the title?

The reader in exile.

...