In Defense of the 21st Century's Most Maligned Writer

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– You won’t change the world with what you do, And since this frankness seems to have such charms for you, I tell you, frankly, you’ve become so querulous That nowadays the world finds you ridiculous. You turn your nose up, claim our modern manners shock, But everyone around thinks you’re a laughing stock.

– Well, good, damn it! Yes, good! I ask for nothing more. I’m quite delighted, that’s what I’ve been hoping for. Since everyone I know seems hateful in my eyes, I’d be disgusted, if they thought that I was wise.

(from Moliere, The Misanthrope )

Has any serious writer in our time been so widely maligned as Jonathan Franzen? After his public scuffle with Oprah made him a household name, he came out against the internet – and especially against Twitter culture – a decade too early, in those dulcet Obama years when guys like Zuck and Dorsey were still hailed as visionaries, social media as this radical new technology on the brink of liberating the Arab world. Yet instead of freeing the good people of Egypt and Iran, it now appears these media technologies have enslaved us.

Franzen was called a misogynist and worse for dissing Twitter and its attendant websites, Vulture, Salon, Jezebel, et al. The legion of haters have defined Franzen’s public persona, and even cooler heads still posit that Franzen, though an excellent novelist, is a mediocre essayist.

In “Hating Jonathan Franzen”, for instance, Kevin Power proposes to survey Franzen’s essays – but allows the haters to define his work:

Successive waves of online Franzen-hatred have generally taken the form of ad hominem responses to essays, or t…