Uneasy does it
Jonathan Franzen on suffering for art in suburbia
Greg Bottoms
The Discomfort Zone:
A Personal History
by Jonathan Franzen
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
$22.00 List Price
It's now downright obligatory for a critic reviewing a memoir to begin by offering a brief assessment of the genre, always including a disquisition on recent fiascos, the faddishness of the publishing industry, and the unearned capital inherent in words like true, tragic, and redemptive when modifying story. This requisite genre-bashing persists even though some of our finest novelists—Hilary Mantel, Orhan Pamuk, Amos Oz,
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