M > Status Update

Franzen to literature is like Andy Roddick to tennis, then -- very good always, but never destined to be one of the greats.

I wouldn't go that far, NE. In tennis-ese, I'd compare Franzen to McEnroe, minus the talent.

Isn't that going further? ;-)

Newengland wrote: "Isn't that going further? ;-)"

All right. I wouldn't go that fur. Better :)?

I mean, McEnroe without TALENT??? He'd wind up in The Corrections facility in no time.

Also, Mike is about to be upstaged. I see that a bookstore on the Vineyard gave Obama an ARC of Freedom. Probably the President's updates will be tennis-allusion free.

P.S. For his daughters, he bought To Kill a Mockingbird and The Red Pony. So much for light vacation reading. There's a dead horsie inside of 30 pp with Steinbeck's book.

"Better dead than Red," I'm guessing the Pony surmised.....

I like Franzen but I do tend to like his essays better than his fictions. With all his fiction I feel like he is trying too hard. This said I still like him quite a bit and will always read whatever he writes.

Rick Moody is who I think of as a talentless overrated hack. Ok, not hack. But some writers never get past that talented college kid stage.

I always wanted to like Moody more, just cause Dale Peck was such a tool. As to seeing the effort in Franzen... yeah. (Therefore, fur the record, I'm with NE on the Roddick comparison, 'cause McEnroe may have burst a few blood vessels but his effort always seemed exactly in line with his achievements.)

have you seen the cover of the new TIME magazine with the Jonathan Franzen cover? a bit of overkill.

Lethem, Moody, Franzen. Three I feel I should really love but just end up feeling not much of anything. Franzen is definitely at the top of the heap though.

I am still slogging through Infinite Jest so the tennis allusions are a bit much for me? who is agessi is contemporary american literature?