(b. 1959– )
U.S. novelist and essayist
Jonathan Franzen
When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them. And who knows what might happen to you then?
“Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts,” The New York Times, May 28, 2011.
He’d lost track of what he wanted, and since who a person was was what a person wanted, you could say that he’d lost track of himself.
The Corrections (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 539.