Jonathan Franzen's non-fiction: Purposefully dreaming Farther Away: Essays. By Jonathan Franzen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 336 pages; $26. To be published in Britain in June; Fourth Estate; £16.99. LATE in 2010, after spending months promoting his latest novel, "Freedom," Jonathan Franzen decided to cut himself off from the world and take a break. He opted for a rocky outcrop deep in the South Pacific, 500 miles from Chile, called by the locals Mas afuera - farther away. Along with his camping gear he packed a copy of "Robinson Crusoe" and some of the ashes of his friend and literary rival, David Foster Wallace, who had committed suicide two years earlier. The account is described in "Farther Away," the title essay in a collection written between 1998 and 2011. Each work focuses on the artist in miniature while also commenting on the wider world, highlighting Mr Franzen's often cranky opinions. He returned from his self-imposed exile if not rejuvenated, at least more resigned to the fact that he is not entirely alone, that "each of us is stranded on his or her own existential island." In addition to the essays, "Farther Away" also contains speeches (including a eulogy at Wallace's funeral), book reviews and a mock interview. The reader learns a great deal about Mr Franzen's quirks: he loves birds, finds mowing lawns "despair-inducing," plays golf but at heart dislikes it, and after many false starts, has learned to love the fiction of Philip Roth. As with the best of essayists, Mr Franzen uses personal thoughts or anecdotes as a springboard to explore wider themes. In "I Just Called To Say I Love You," he tells of his loathing for mobile phones, before moving on to the attacks of September 11th 2001 and his parents" love. In "Pain Won't Kill You" he draws clever parallels between love and technology; "The Chinese Puffin" blends golf and ornithology into angry tirades on consumerism and conservation. Mr Franzen is on slightly less firm ground with his book reviews, which seldom get to the heart of the matter. On an Alice Munro book: "Basically, "Runaway" is so good that I don't want to talk about it here. Quotation can't do the book justice, and neither can synopsis. The way to do it justice is to read it. A nice tribute but no substitute for a piece of thoughtful analysis. However, Mr Franzen is a sturdy enough authority elsewhere. His essays are riddled with aphorisms ("One half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love") and, surprisingly, humour (theory and sex prove incompatible bedfellows when his wife-to-be declares: "You can't deconstruct and undress at the same time"). A multifaceted and revealing collection, "Farther Away" actually brings the reader closer to the author.