katiebakes replied to your quote: But the critics who have been celebrating this…

i haven’t read freedom (and i have unread corrections on shelf, assuming i should read that first anyway) but have you read that atlantic article? it was pretty burny!

I read the Atlantic piece a few times, and I found its essence bland. The Franklin review was a lot more nuanced and interesting. I mean, I think a big part of it is trying to tell your reader that you actually read the book. Honestly. So they both do a lot of late-book plot synopsing. Both of them found similar faults with the book, but Franklin’s piece was able to enunciate why the faults were bad, whereas the Atlantic one seemed like it was written by an apoplectic octogenarian.

The key to reading Franzen, I think, is not to take anything in his books too personally, which is why he kind of fails as a serious novelist. Once you get past taking what he’s saying seriously (which I understand is different than personally), it’s like reading a funny episode of Mad Men or a serious episode of 30 Rock.