Franzen hardly needs my support, but...

Jonathan Franzen hardly needs my support (or anyone's) but still - what's with that takedown by B.R. Myers, or however he or she spells his or her name, in the Atlantic? Seriously, I would expect Franzen to come under assault by idiots like the ones who write for Exiled Online, but why The Atlantic? There's probably no serious magazine in America that has turned its back on fiction more deliberately than The Atlantic, pushing all fiction into the ghetto of an annual supplement and essnetially never reviewing fiction or commenting on it in any serious way, and then the Myers attack on one of the few serious and readable novels to come out in years. Myers earned his or her stripes with an Atlantic articles years back that became a book, The Reader's Manifesto, or something like that, and argued cogently against various trends in contemporary fiction and criticism - quite rightly criticizing those who judged novels on the basis of beautiful sentences - something critics and reviewers might do (they have to quote the sentences) but readers seldom or never do, readers, as one of the smart members of PAWs once noted in a writers' session, like plot. But this takedown of Freedom was ridiculous - begins by stating that you sometimes start a book and meet the uninteresting minor characters and then realize they are the main characters. Okay, ha ha. But why does he consider Franzen's characters uninteresting? Or unexplored? I think they are very much real and credible people going through the struggles in their lives to find love and success and recognition, making the mistakes so many make, paying the price, suffering, growing, moving on - very much real people, and he explores them in fullness and over time. And why compare Franzen with Delillo, or all writers? Totally random - their styles and interests are 180 degrees different, Delillo supercool and laced with paranoia and drawn to celebrity and fame, Franzen loose and observational and dour and drawn to social issues. Seems like the whole piece was an example of trophy hunting.