Book #58: The Discomfort Zone

Title: The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History
Author: Jonathan Franzen

In The Discomfort Zone, Jonathan Franzen took away one of my excuses. I've always said that I could never be a "real" writer because I'm not tortured enough. I'm the opposite of tortured. My life is great. I have great kids. I have a great husband. I grew up with a stable, loving family. I keep a neat house, with no skeletons in my closet. How could I possibly have anything to say, especially anything that I've made up with my own brain, that people would find remotely interesting? One of the essays in Discomfort Zone is about Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts. Like me (and like Franzen), Schulz had a fairly complicated childhood. He served in the military. Then he started writing comics and developed all sorts of neuroses. Franzen says that Schulz didn't become a great artist because he was weird, but rather that he became weird once he was an artist. So I guess I'd have to be weird to be a good writer, but I wouldn't have to start out weird to get that way. Do I really want to be weird?

Franzen seems a lot less weird in The Discomfort Zone than I would have expected based on reading The Corrections. I loved The Corrections. Franzen isn't weird. Maybe there still is hope for me...