/lit/ - Literature

>>8985531
Franzen is the Jeb Bush of literature
Sad, dejected, has to pretend to take himself seriously to make up for the fact that nobody else does. He's the would-be bastion of new sincerely, which is to say he isn't because his books don't hold up under any kind of sincere scrutiny. I think Oprah putting him on her list really ruined him. It turned him from a mediocre high-brow author to a quality middle-brow author. And that shot him straight out of the canon, so to speak. Now he has to pretend he's as good as the middle-aged housewives who read him say he is. Poor guy.

>>8045866
Franzen is the Jeb Bush of literature
Sad, dejected, has to pretend to take himself seriously to make up for the fact that nobody else does. He's the would-be bastion of new sincerely, which is to say he isn't because his books don't hold up under any kind of sincere scrutiny. I think Oprah putting him on her list really ruined him. It turned him from a mediocre high-brow author to a quality middle-brow author. And that shot him straight out of the canon, so to speak. Now he has to pretend he's as good as the middle-aged housewives who read him say he is. Poor guy.