Jenny Diski/Jonathan Franzen Comparison

The pieces of travel writing by both Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Diski were different from all of the other works that we’ve read so far this semester. Whereas other pieces seemed like they were more focused on the traveling aspect, these pieces are more focused on the personal and emotional growth aspect of travel writing. They are also both pieces where the voice of the author comes through very strongly. There are similarities between the two in terms of content, both being about times in which the authors had, inspired by family members in one way or another, gone traveling in order to reflect with themselves. They also both use their trips to reconcile with their emotions. For Diski, it is about how her daughter went searching for Jenny’s mother, who she had not been in contact with for many years, and finding out that she had died. For Franzen, it was about the death of someone he was very close to that he had yet to truly process. They both use their time traveling to work through and understand, to some degree, the way that they feel about these things.

Although overall I found the two pieces to be really similar, there were a lot of key differences between them. For example, Diski was traveling with other people, so a lot of her piece is about how the other people on the trip impact and affect it. She briefly mentions noteworthy people, characters such as the sailors or Janice that stuck out to her, or the way that the trip was impacted by everyone using their cameras while she was the only one not. In Franzen’s piece, he is mostly alone. Because of this, I think that his writing follows a less straightforward plot than Diski’s does. He spends a lot of time not talking about things that are happening, but reflecting on his thoughts, or talking about the nature of novels. I can’t speak for him, but as someone who has also had to spend hours alone in nature in order to journal and touch base with myself, it seems as if the article was written to follow his sort of stream of consciousness while he was out alone.

These differences seem small, however, and hardly worth mentioning, when in general I found the two works to be very much within the same vein. I found that I really enjoyed the pieces, especially how strongly both authors’ voices came through. Both Franzen and Diski write with a frankness that was both relatable and refreshing. Where a lot of travel writing can seem very dry or impersonal, these were two incredibly personal pieces that maintained a good balance between the descriptions of both their physical, and mental-emotional journeys.