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Originally Posted by Jenson71
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Yeah, that's interesting, and it makes me not want to read him. The only thing I've read from him is a short story (the name of it escapes me) that was included in The Best American Short Stories anthology a few years back.
I had been considering reading his book because I'd been hearing that he's a great novelist, but this write up makes me feel like reading him would be sort of like reading Updike's Rabbit novels, which I don't really care for. They're well written, but I just don't care about or like the characters. And I really don't care much about suburban malaise, which Franzen seems to write about from what I understand.
The impression I get from that article is that Franzen is sort of 50% Updike and 50% Unbearable Lightness of Being-Kundera, but that it doesn't work because he's not as talented a writer as Updike and he's not as imaginative or deep as Kundera. And actually, some of those passages he included were almost a little Stephen King-like.
Maybe it's unreasonable to come to that conclusion without reading Franzen's novel, but that's the impression I get and I doubt I'll read his stuff anytime soon. I know a lot of people like his stuff, it just sounds dull to me. The worst thing this critic says about the novel, in my opinion, isn't that he think's the writing is juvenile, but that he just didn't give a crap about the characters. That's the greater sin, to me. Boring is worse than bad.