My review of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is out in the new issue of Threepenny Review. Excerpt:

Like Strong Motion, this is an angry novel, one that critiques every social institution it touches; unlike Strong Motion, it has characters strong enough to withstand the somewhat turgid plot. Each protagonist possesses a distinctive, consistent texture of thought, as well as a long (a multi-generationally long) personal history. The Franzen Intellect occasionally feels transplanted into certain characters—Richard, author of lyrics like “I hate sunshine!,” is also “deeply read” in French existentialism and Latin American literature and popular sociobiology, while the ostensible “jock” Patty fills her memoirs with eloquences like “a certain kind of voice would do well to fall silent in the face of life’s increasing somberness.” In spite of this, the characters are hefty and real, even the strongly ideological Walter and Joey. They’re clichés, but finely drawn ones, intelligible through both the jeweler’s loupe of psychology and the backwards telescope of sociology.