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James Ley

James Ley

James Ley is an essayist and literary critic who lives in Melbourne. A former Editor of Sydney Review of Books, he has been a regular contributor to ABR since 2003.

James Ley reviews 'Freedom' by Jonathan Franzen

December 2010–January 2011, no. 327 07 December 2010
In 1996, with two well-received but not widely read novels to his credit, Jonathan Franzen published a long essay in Harper’s magazine in which he aired his concerns about the novel’s waning cultural authority. As Franzen later admitted, the essay was not a particularly cogent piece of writing. Even in the clarified version that appears in How to Be Alone (2002), lumpenly retitled ‘Why Bothe ... (read more)