Franzen's Freedom

What a piece of shit! This novel is so cock-centered. Someone's cock is constantly pressing against his pants and there is always some uninteresting female character anxious to have it. Certainly only a book that a man would write.

I imagine that Franzen fancies himself a cross between the genius of Walter and the sexiness of Richard, but if his writing is reflective of his personality, he's a dull dork. His arrogance shines through in his male characters and his imperviousness to his own droning while his female characters are the most boring I have ever read (apart from that one crack pot that was practically stalking Patty when she was in college). The political interests of Walter are somewhat interesting, but never fully developed and population control is better addressed in Lionel Shriver's Game Control. By the end I didn't care if they all dropped dead.