Uncover the Hidden Truths of Creativity and Suffering in Alex Boyd’s Latest Essay Collection
By the third part of the book, it is easy to see how the young writer scribbling in that Irish notebook eventually becomes the critic of the Reviews section, and it’s here that the ars scribendi framework asserts itself most forcefully in Boyd’s treatment of Jonathan Franzen’s How to Be Alone. Boyd notes that Franzen’s old rotary phone and typewriter are described in loving detail, and that it’s ultimately “the use of abandonment” of objects that gives them character. Boyd posits this as a quiet argument against the disposability of consumer culture, and though he is writing about Franzen, the concern is plainly his own, the same concern that surfaced in the Brontë essay when he invoked that long Starbucks line as evidence of something subtly lost. Modern life may provide plenty of content, but in Boyd’s eyes it also fosters existential conundrums.
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