Die Unruhezone

Franzen on Franzen: His most personal book. Jonathan Franzen was not only afraid of locker rooms and jellyfish as a boy. At home, he felt like Snoopy, living among larger beings of a different species. At least among his peers, he wanted to belong, so he avoided the bus of social death on a trip to a Christian summer camp. He learned his first bits of German from an Austrian woman in an irritatingly short skirt, and in his attempt to lose his virginity, Kafka played a role – as did his journey to writing. The Comfort Zone is both a story of youth in the American Midwest and an adult life in New York. A colorful, sometimes comically defiant self-portrait of a person in his time.