Author Jonathan Franzen to Discuss His Bird Problem in Public

The Discomfort Zone and Corrections author to share his ornithological troubles and insight with Conservancy guests on Monday, November 6, at 6:30 pm

“Much of bird watching is about disappointment. Part of the appeal is that really, more often than not, you don't see what you're looking for. The great pursuits are more about failure than about success." – Jonathan Franzen, Time magazine, 8/20/06

New York, NY—October 18, 2006—"My Bird Problem" is the title of a profoundly moving essay published earlier this year in The New Yorker, and included in Jonathan Franzen’s recent memoir, The Discomfort Zone (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). In it, Franzen links birdwatching to his reluctant concern for the environment, and then to his collapsing marriage, and later his love for a woman who did not want his children.

Franzen will share his “bird problem” and other insights into conservation, birding, and literature in an exclusive appearance on

Monday, November 6th, at 6:30pm at the New-York Historical Society Theater, located at
170 Central Park West (btw 76th and 77th).
Reservations are recommended. Please contact nycevents@tnc.org or
(212) 381-2195 to RSVP or for more information.

The discussion will be moderated by Nature Conservancy scientist and author, Phil Hoose.

The Discomfort Zone is Franzen’s intimate memoir of his growth from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions. It’s also a portrait of a middle-class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s and a vivid personal history of the decades in which America turned away from its mid-century idealism and became a more polarized society.

The story Franzen tells draws on elements as varied as the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka’s fiction on his protracted quest to lose his virginity, the elaborate pranks that he and his friends orchestrated from the roof of his high school, his self-inflicted travails in selling his mother’s house after her death, and the web of connections between his all-consuming marriage, the problem of global warming, and the life lessons to be learned in watching birds.

This unique presentation with Jonathan Franzen is part of The Nature Conservancy’s public events and outreach initiative in New York, which is designed to engage Conservancy members and supporters in the Tri-State area. The New York City Office also sponsors a vigorous educational internship program intended to introduce New York City’s urban youth to nature and the world of conservation. For a full list of The Nature Conservancy’s year-round trips, talks and walks in New York, please contact nycevents@tnc.org.