Literary neophytes read "The Modern American Classic." Or something.
Get your hands on a copy of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. Read it greedily, over a few days. Reflect all the while on love, family, and fidelity, the tense modern dialectic of community and individualism-that Arendtian distinction between public and private spheres—and how private principles translate into public policy. Ask yourself what constitutes a modern classic. And how it comes to be that some writers can be so candidly spot-on about the human condition. And also what emulating Tolstoy has to do with Pierre Menard. Or not. But really, this book more than any other in the past couple years has reminded me how much I love novels. One of the best Christmas presents ever.
