Whether it's birdwatching, literary criticism or the rough edges of his life as a self-described "depressive pessimist," Jonathan Franzen returns to familiar territory in his new book of essays, THE END OF THE END OF THE EARTH. Comprising 16 pieces, the collection displays Franzen's undisputed skill as a writer, but there's a slightness to the book that makes one wonder whether he wouldn't have been better advised to wait to flesh it out with a few more substantial essays, like some of the ones in his 2012 collection, FARTHER AWAY.

There's plenty here to delight those who are fond of Franzen for his status as the literary world's most famous birdwatcher. Even if you don't know or care about the difference between a Painted Bunting (Texas) and a Magenta Petrel (New Zealand), there's a certain infectious quality to Franzen's enthusiasm. Fully seven of the collection's pieces deal, in substantial part, with birdwatching excursions to distant destinations, including Jamaica, East Africa and the Mediterranean, as he piles up more species sightings in what he acknowledges is a "compulsive counting" that he confesses makes him "morally inferior to birders who bird exclusively for the joy of it."

But it seems that no Franzen work would be complete without at least a dash of controversy. In the piece that opens the collection, "The Essay in Dark Times," he describes his ire with the National Audubon Society, "once an uncompromising defender of birds, now a lethargic institution with a very large PR department." Franzen fleshes out that antagonism in "Save What You Love," as he thoughtfully explores his unease over the way that the climate change message of organizations like Audubon has drowned out the value of present-day conservation efforts, a point he illustrates by describing small-scale, but valuable, programs underway in Peru and Costa Rica.

"Franzen's detractors aren't likely to find much here that will win them over, but those who admire his work, even the relatively modest amount collected here, will appreciate another helping of the qualities that have drawn them to him."

Determined to do what he can to preserve populations of his beloved birds, in the essay "May Your Life Be Ruined," he reprises the subject matter of "The Ugly Mediterranean," a piece from FARTHER AWAY, in which he decried the wanton slaughter of migrant songbirds by residents of Cyprus, Malta and Italy. Here, he turns his attention to the countries of Albania and Egypt, where the wholesale eradication of these birds he describes as "appalling" continues unchecked.

As he did with the title essay in his last collection, in its counterpart in THE END OF THE END OF THE EARTH, Franzen masterfully blends travel writing and the personal essay. The piece begins by explaining the genesis of an expedition he took to Antarctica with his brother, Tom: a $78,000 bequest the writer received from his uncle and godfather Walt, of Dover, Delaware. From there Franzen moves on to a narrative of the trip, one where he describes how he "never before had the experience of beholding scenic beauty so dazzling that I couldn't process it, couldn't get it to register as something real that I was really in the presence of."

But before Franzen gets too far along on his journey, one highlight of which was the spotting of a solitary Emperor Penguin, he reveals that the reference to Walt is anything but casual. Instead, in an economical, affectionate account, he shares Walt's unexceptional but moving life story, one marred by a loveless marriage, the loss of an adult daughter in a highway accident, and the discovery, too late, that he's missed out on sharing the latter years of his life with a woman he truly loves.

Franzen's literary criticism in this volume doesn't add up to great deal. There's a brief survey of the major novels of Edith Wharton on the occasion of her 150th birthday anniversary, but one suspects that Franzen mainly finds in her --- "an isolate and a misfit, which is to say, a born writer" --- a kindred spirit. He includes a brief review of MIT professor Sherry Turkle's RECLAIMING CONVERSATION that allows him to revisit his critique of our "rapturous submission to digital technology" and an account of his once intense "big-and-little-brother relationship" with the writer William Vollmann that ended when the two "drifted apart" for reasons Franzen leaves mostly to speculation. In the hands of an accomplished writer like Franzen, "Ten Rules for the Novelist" could be a fascinating piece, but he contents himself with a barebones list.  

Franzen's detractors aren't likely to find much here that will win them over, but those who admire his work, even the relatively modest amount collected here, will appreciate another helping of the qualities that have drawn them to him.