Never got the fuss over Franzen, who sounds perpetually like a first-year aspiring lit student from a community college. He seems to think he's profound and tells us things we knew a decade ago. Writers are supposed to be ahead of the Zeitgeist, but he's catching up, and still often missing the point. Yet the Times and Journal scream praise, the sheep buy the thick tomes to seem educated and ‘in touch’, probably never really reading them closely, and come away thinking this is what modern ‘literature’ is. Sad to say they've never been anywhere near it.