The Discomfort Zone

The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History is a 2006 memoir by Jonathan Franzen, who received the National Book Award for Fiction for his novel The Corrections in 2001.[1][2]

The Discomfort Zone
First edition cover
AuthorJonathan Franzen
Cover artistJacket design by Lynn Buckley
Jacket art: "Map of a Man's Heart", from McCall's Magazine, January 1960, pp. 32-33. Adapted from nineteenth-century originals by Jo (Lowrey) Leeds and the editors of McCall's.
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
September 5, 2006 (2006-09-05)
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages195 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN0-374-29919-6 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC63277685
813/.54 B 22
LC ClassPS3556.R352 Z46 2006

Themes

According to L'espresso, The Discomfort Zone reflects the values and contradictions of the American midwest in the 1960s. Franzen holds up Charlie Brown from the Peanuts cartoons as an exemplary representation of life of the American middle class in the author's home town of Webster Groves, Missouri, and countless similar towns. Values such as the love of nature are described as being related to traditional Protestant values, and as waning because of the decline of traditional religious belief.[3]

Perhaps most important, Franzen explores the duality of solitude and interpersonal relationships. Primarily using his mother's death as a metaphor for all human relationships, Franzen concludes that although relationships are essential to our existence, we often fail to recognize and appreciate their importance at the time.

Contents
  • "House for Sale" (on the author's mother, sale of the family house)
  • "Two Ponies" (on "Peanuts" by Charles Schulz)
  • "Then Joy Breaks Through" (on Christian education)
  • "Centrally Located"
  • "The Foreign Language" (German, that is)
  • "My Bird Problem" (the author's marriage, his birding hobby)

Critical reception

In 2006, New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani called The Discomfort Zone "an odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass." Franzen subsequently called Kakutani "the stupidest person in New York City".[4][5]

Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor called the book a "whipsaw reading experience" that was both "sharply insightful and frustratingly obtuse".[6]

References
  1. National Book Foundation 2001 National Book Award Winners and Finalists
  2. National Book Foundation Jonathan Franzen National Book Award Acceptance Speech
  3. "C´era una volta il Midwest", L´Espresso, August 24, 2006, p. 120.
  4. Cochrane, Kira (April 30, 2008). "Don't mess with Michiko Kakutani". the Guardian. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
  5. Pompeo, Joe (2017). "Michiko Kakutani, the Legendary Book Critic and the Most Feared Woman in Publishing, Is Stepping Down from The New York Times". The Hive. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
  6. Kehe, Marjorie (2006-09-05). "Classic review: The Discomfort Zone". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 2022-07-25.


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