SOURCE: Minor, Kyle. Review of How to Be Alone, by Jonathan Franzen. Antioch Review 61, no. 2 (spring 2003): 370.

In the following review of How to Be Alone, Minor focuses on Franzen's rewriting of the essay “Perchance to Dream,” retitled “Why Bother?” in this collection.

The inevitable centerpiece of this essay collection is the so-called “Harper's essay,” originally titled “Perchance to Dream” and appearing here with substantial revision as “Why Bother?” In the preface to How to Be Alone, Franzen claims that the essay was widely misinterpreted by reviewers as a “promise” that Franzen's third novel, The Corrections, “would be a big social novel that would engage with mainstream culture and rejuvenate American literature.” The reader gets the feeling that Franzen has become uncomfortable with his reputation for brash egotism and might be trying to rewrite history. The new version of the essay is significantly less confrontational than the original, and...