Tow #12 IRB

For this Text Of The Week, I am going to go into detail about the boring yet somehow and somewhat interesting book, How To Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen. Before you raise an eyebrow or two and question why an oxymoron describes this fiction book, let me give you a taste of the book. In the beginning, Jonathan brings the reader along the hard times during in adulthood life, zooming in on his father in particular. His father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and it was tremendously affecting Jon's mother and the rest of his family. With the sad details of how his father’s last days were spent as he aged back down to a baby, I had been pulled into the book and was gripping onto the edge of my seat with the plot building slowly and the details only getting denser. That was the first chapter. The next chapter consisted of nothing but Jonathan contemplating whether or not to write another book while he was laying down on a couch surrounded by food and television Not only was this chapter boring, it lacked the small details that he had presented in the previous chapter. Where was the motivation? Why wasn't he describing how his pen glided across the paper as his creative mind exploded with ideas? These questions flew through my mind as I read page after page, the content just not improving after each flip. The content had its ups and downs, at some points being so boring to me that it eventually became a hassle to read. Pushing through those hard-to-read-chapters, I began to notice the author's purpose. With the sophisticated diction, dense detail, and his anecdotes, I realize how the book highlighted the struggles of the author, his successes, and the times where he questioned himself. Although not fully done the book, the boringness of the content is going away and my interest is being pulled back in.