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  1. The New YorkerJonathan Franzen4/11/1163 min
    2 reads3 comments
    10
    The New Yorker
    2 reads
    10
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    • Pegeen
      Top reader this weekReading streakScoutScribe
      4 years ago

      I loved the layering of this piece - Aljejandro Selkirk Island in the South Pacific; Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Caruso; the novel’s origin; David Foster Wallace; and the elusive Rayadito. Jonathan Franzen’s adventure was very brave, in my opinion, but then again, I’m afraid to pitch a tent in my back yard. Really well written.

      • Pegeen
        Top reader this weekReading streakScoutScribe
        4 years ago

        Sorry for the typo’s! Alejandro and Carusoe. I definitely need spell check!

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      4 years ago

      Nowhere was Defoe’s psychology more acute than in his imagination of Robinson’s response to the rupture of his solitude. He gave us the first realistic portrait of the radically isolated individual, and then, as if impelled by novelistic truth, he showed us how sick and crazy radical individualism really is. No matter how carefully we defend our selves, all it takes is one footprint of another real person to recall us to the endlessly interesting hazards of living relationships.

      Im trying to get “farther away” from everything and everyone I’ve ever known. We’ll see how that goes. I think Franzen is right that “to try to add more to what is already everything is to risk having nothing: to become boring to yourself.”

      This is such a 10 it almost makes me want to pick up the phone and call some people. But, nahhh.