Thanks to Dave Lull ...

... I have had the opportunity to read David Myers's Commentary review of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. It is excellent ( though I still demur about Steinbeck as mid-cult, because in so many instances Steinbeck writes so well). That aside, I will quote but one paragraph:

It is not uncom­mon for a mid­dle­­brow American novelist to tack a social theme onto his huffing bestseller in the hope of being taken seriously. What is unusual is Franzen’s self-conscious appeal to a mass audience of self-regarding elitists. That Franzen should have caught Obama’s notice should be no surprise—he got to meet the president in October—because his novels attract the same kind of person who is attracted to Obama. His characters populate the same class of Americans with good educations and better intentions who boast of sub­or­dinating self-inter­est to facts and science and argument. They speak the correct language, dis­play the correct tastes, glorify the correct ideals, affirm the self-image of the correct people, and despise the incorrect.

Franzen, in short, is a panderer.