Man, Jonathan Franzen is a critically acclaimed author.

It is like a bad joke, who is a well-known author with no self-awareness? You almost feel bad for the guy. Well, that passed. Let me begin by saying I like books, and I even like some of Franzen’s books. But he isn’t worth all the hype. Much like a lot of male authors, they’re good, better than me, but not super original or groundbreaking. I mean take The Corrections, a book that can be boiled down to a tale of a middle class family with a declining patriarch and the disappointment you find in others, and he’s not experimenting with form or language here. John Green’s Papertowns is about a young man projecting onto a girl something she can’t possibly be and thus being forced to grow up. You’ve read these stories before; we all have. This is the Western canon: man + decline or conflict (literal or metaphorical) / personal growth = Great American Novel. Man, I’m a genus. I have one story about a white male lead, and it deals with the ideas we hold about ourselves and others, and how you determine the truth if everyone is telling you different versions of the truth and no one is lying. Literally, a white guy learning about different people’s perspectives and recognizing their value. This will never be a great American novel.

But today is a day of Franzen. As reported by the Guardian, Franzen was considering adopting an Iraqi orphan to understand young people. Thankfully, his editor pointed out the problems with this. Which I imagine was just his editor writing colonialism and fetishism over and over again at Franzen in an aggressive manner. No, sir, you don’t adopt a child from a country your country has destroyed for research. YOU DON’T GET TO USE PEOPLE THAT WAY. Franzen is the Joe Biden of literature. He talks and talks, sometimes he does something right, but most of the time you’re yelling “FRANZEN!” at the top of your lungs shaking your fist in the air. I give Franzen a lot of room most of the time because he’s a writer, and they’re all weirdos with a lot of insecurities and usually self-loathing. However, there comes a point, and for me it was his terrible views on women writers (read about them here). Any man who says that about Edith should know they are on my shit list.

See Franzen is finding himself in that scary place a lot of men go when they think they are the victims:

“I’m not a sexist. I’m not somebody who goes around saying men are superior, or that male writers are superior. In fact, I really go out of my way to champion women’s work that I think is not getting enough attention. None of that is ever enough. Because a villain is needed. It’s like there’s no way to make myself not male.”

Ok, but for Franzen the canon is representative of the best work. It doesn’t matter it was determined by men for men in a time when women and people of color didn’t get attention they deserved. He is unable to see this. A great example of this is the novel itself, which was largely considered to be a feminine form, largely until the 18^th century, which is when things change. Men began giving up the epic and moved into this form. On top of it all, he’s releasing a book called Purity which has a man hating feminist in it who emasculates her husband so much she makes him sit down to piss.

This is the best response to that:

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS WE FINALLY GET TO READ A MAN'S TAKE ON FEMINISM BLESS YOU AND THE HARD WORK YOU DO, MR FRANZEN pic.twitter.com/2bK0okClFA

— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) August 11, 2015

I truly do think he lacks any self-awareness. That or he’s a master troll and this is all one big social experiment.