Jonathan Franzen, having seen off the menace of ebooks earlier this year, has directed his ire this week against social media, reportedly saying:

Jonathan Franzen's homily on the trouble with ebooks and the superiority of print has zapped its way around the world from the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia (the Telegraph’s showbusiness editor has the full story):

Sam Tanenhaus, reviewing Jonathan Franzen's Freedom in the New York Times Book Review, writes: Liberals, no less than conservatives — and for that matter revolutionaries and reactionaries; in other words, all of us — believe some modes of existence are superior to others. But only the liberal, committed to a vision of harmonious communal pluralism, is unsettled by this truth. This is why a Ramsey Hill pioneer like Patty Berglund [one of Franzen's characters] will suffer torments of indecision when thinking how best to “respond when a poor person of color accused you of destroying her neighborhood.” If Tanenhaus weren't the editor of the Book Review, you'd wonder how this got past the editor.