Farther Away, Jonathan Franzen, 2012

An uneven set of essays ranging from excellent book reviews of James Purdy and Swedish detective stories to his anthologized essay on Selkirk and DFW (see #5 above), but also including an interminable piece on songbird hunting in the Mediterranean and a similarly difficult piece on sweat shops in China. I don’t think that Franzen’s strength is as a reporter, but rather as an observer of literary people and works.