SOURCE: Wolcott, James. “Advertisements for Himself.” New Republic 227, nos. 23-24 (2-9 December 2002): 36-40.

In the following review of How to Be Alone, Wolcott remarks on what he believes to be the gratingly self-important stances Franzen takes in many of his essays.

Noel Coward had a talent to amuse. Jonathan Franzen has the knack to annoy. Is it a conscious gift? Is he aware of how grating his pleaful moans and hopeful sighs have become? (It's like a snore turned inside out.) Or is he intentionally irritating us, passive-aggressively wearing down his readers' resistance until we finally crack and agree with what he thinks and, more importantly, how he feels? How he felt in the 1990s was melancholy. The country was partying, but he was gnawing on a dry bone. He evokes his sunken condition with a litany of “d” words: darkness, depression, despair (“My despair about the American...