text: First off, I loved the book cover- spine and all-- one of my all time favorites. It's what first attracted me to this book amongst the other forward-facing covers on the store's front table. Then the title, I loved that just as much. Both share the characteristics of being straightforward, to the point, and revealing. Both are perfectly simple. I read most the essays and came to think that a. this guy really does his homework and b. he has a vocabulary more voluminous than the decimal numbers of pi. I constantly begged for my dictionary. It's probably what gets him the press I knew before I picked this up: an intellectual snob. I guess he got that from the Oprah incident. But I also guess that there's lots of worse name calling that can happen to anyone in their career. What's up with this culture that it's so unacceptably horrible to be labeled an intellectual snob and so enviously warming to be called a pop culture icon? The attraction to Franzen's work is that he investigates and reveals- in a binary way: He's researching facts, he's listening to feelings; he's processing both to give an opinion. The best example of this is My Father's Brain in which he relates the Alzheimer induced decomposing of his father's brain. There is lots about the history and science of memory in this essay; as much as there is about how a family discovers and lives with its loss. Reading it you sympathize, you empathize and you learn. Equally as insightful are :
  Lost in the Mail- a look into possible reasons behind Chicago's underperforming mail system
  The Reader in Exile- a great reflection on the intellectual and emotional fruits of reading
  First City- a historical and pensive piece about what pulls us towards cities
  Meet Me in St. Louis- a piece that shares the two-sided feelings in a trio of situations (including the Oprah incident).
  