“One opens a new novel and is promptly introduced to some dull minor characters. Tiring of them, one skims ahead to meet the leads, only to realize: those minor characters are the leads.”

So begins Melville House author B.R. Myers‘ (author of The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matter) review of Jonathan Franzen‘s Freedom in the current issue of The Atlantic. His greatest criticism?

Franzen uses facile tricks to tart up the story as a total account of American life: the main news events of the past quarter century each get a nod in the appropriate chapter. Brands are identified whenever possible; we go from Parliament butts in the first chapter to Glad-wrapped cookies in the last. Countless pop-cultural artifacts are name-checked, in the most minimal sense of the term. When Joey and a girl fly to Argentina, Pirates of the Caribbean is playing on the seat backs in front of them. Facile, yes, but Franzen knows his market. Many people who eschew great books for the latest novels do so because they want precisely this kind of thing. (Every new book we read in our brief and busy lives means that a classic is left unread.) These readers want a world that is recognizably their own in every trivial particular, right down to Twitter, even if the book says less of real relevance to their lives than one written a century ago. The critics do their bit by acting as though name-checks constituted themes and issues. I can hear the prize laudation for Freedom now: It is a novel about commercialism, about the war in Iraq, about the pervasiveness of Hollywood culture.

Myers, however, does find at least one passage he likes, saying that it conveys “a mature thought and a fine shading of sadness.” The few good lines mean that Myers prefers:

… to give Franzen the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he can learn a lesson from Freedom: write a long book about mediocrities, and in their language to boot, and they will drag you down to their level.