Critical Reception
Reception to the book was mostly positive, with critics applauding its style, ambition, and riskiness; the New York Times described it as "the stuff of several books crammed into one long, dense narrative about contemporary urban America". Negative criticism focused on a perceived lack of focus, and an attempt to interweave too many plot threads—the LA Times noted that "Franzen writes beautifully for the most part, though sometimes to excess".
Read more about this topic: Strong Motion
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybodys face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (16671745)