October 22, 2010

Books

A World of False Choices

Freedom Jonathan FranzenFarrar, Straus & Giroux, $28, 576 pp.

William H. Pritchard

Nine years ago, Jonathan Franzen published The Corrections, his third novel but the first to make an impact on the world of American fiction. That impact was amplified by the dustup in which Franzen, selected for Oprah Winfrey’s book club, made abrasive remarks about the club (“I cringe,” he said of the books typically chosen), and was then disinvited from an appearance o (...)


 

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about the writer

William H. Pritchard is the Henry Clay Folger Professor of English at Amherst College. He is the author of Shelf Life: Literary Essays and Reviews (University of Massachusetts Press) among others.

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