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Fiction

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

by •
October 2015, no. 375

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

Fourth Estate, $32.99 pb, 576 pp, 9780007532773

Fiction

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

by •
October 2015, no. 375

There was a moment around the time of the release of the final Harry Potter novel when I began to suspect the hype had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It wasn’t an event because of the book any more, it was an event because everybody knew it was an event.

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James Bradley

James Bradley is a writer and critic. His books include the novels, Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, Clade and Ghost Species; a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus; and The Penguin Book of the Ocean. His first book of non-fiction, Deep Water: The World in the Ocean will be published by Hamish Hamilton in April 2024.

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Comments (2)

  • Never got the fuss over Franzen, who sounds perpetually like a first-year aspiring lit student from a community college. He seems to think he's profound and tells us things we knew a decade ago. Writers are supposed to be ahead of the Zeitgeist, but he's catching up, and still often missing the point. Yet the Times and Journal scream praise, the sheep buy the thick tomes to seem educated and ‘in touch’, probably never really reading them closely, and come away thinking this is what modern ‘literature’ is. Sad to say they've never been anywhere near it.
    Posted by Jenni
    29 January 2017
  • nice to see Frantzen considered, rather than raved about!
    Posted by Kym Houghton
    16 October 2015

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