The Discomfort Zone

As Jonathan Franzen tells it, he was the kind of boy who was afraid of spiders,school dances, urinals, music teachers, boomerangs, popular girls--and his parents.He had nothing against geeky kids except a desperate fear of being taken forone of them, a fate which would result in instant Social Death. Approachingpuberty the way a fraud artist confronts a particularly tough scam, he pretended tobe a kid who naturally said "shit" and who didn't enjoy calculations on his new six functionTexas Instrument calculator. The Discomfort Zone is Franzen'stale of growing up squirming in his own über-sensitive skin. It's a multi-layeredtour de force that daringly cascades from single moments into a domino-like discourseof sometimes truculent, sometimes piercing, always entertaining investigationand insight. Whether he's writing about the explosive dynamics of a Christianyouth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka's fiction on his own protractedquest to lose his virginity, or the web of connections between birdwatching, hisall-consuming marriage and the problem of global warming, Franzen is always feelinglyengaged with the world we live in now. Franzen's personal history of a Midwesternyouth and New York adulthood is warmed by the same blend of comic scrutinyand affection that characterize his fiction; the result is an arresting portrait of aman, his family and his time.