Sounded to me like he had a pretty good idea what he was saying," Van replied, with surprisingly little anger. "It's a pity he had to overintellectualize like that. He did such good work, and then he had to go and intellectualize it.

It has very little to do with democracy or the will of the people. In recent years Franzen has become recognized for his purveyance of opinions on everything from social networking services such as Twitter ("the ultimate irresponsible medium") and the proliferation of e-books ("just not permanent enough") to the disintegration of Europe ("The people making the decisions in Europe are bankers. The Corrections soon became one of the decade's best-selling works of literary fiction.

His most recent novel Freedom (2010) led to a controversial appearance on the cover of Time magazine alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". Jonathan Earl Franzen (born August 17 1959) is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel The Corrections a sprawling satirical family drama drew widespread critical acclaim earned Franzen a National Book Award was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist a James Tait Black Memorial Prize and a shortlisting for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.