"What Franzen is getting at is the concept of being "islanded," the notion that — no matter what — we are on our own, all the time. This is among his fascinations; there's a reason his first essay collection was called "How to Be Alone." In that sense, all of it — from the kid in that car to the teenager wandering New York to the birder on Robinson Crusoe's island — is of a piece with David Foster Wallace and even Neil Armstrong: isolated dots of consciousness in a capricious universe, trying to find a point of real connection before time runs out. "The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking," Franzen acknowledges, but in the end, it is the counter-argument that lingers, even (or especially) when it leaves us exposed." - David L. Ulin (from a recent LA Times book review)
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