Today’s Gusher Award for Literary Hype Goes to …

Jonathan Franzen says that when he first read  Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters, it seemed to him ”obviously superior to any novel by Fox’s contemporaries John Updike, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellow.” — From Franzen’s introduction to Desperate Characters: A Novel (Norton, 1999, paperback).

Comment: I admire Fox and think her books are underrated, but Franzen’s hype tests the patience even of a champion of her Borrowed Finery and The Coldest Winter. Click here to read other Gusher-Award winners.