THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

The most striking feature of Jonathan Franzen's new book, Crossroads, is its sexual conservatism. The novel is an ambitious, almost six-hundred-page first installment of a family trilogy which has an equally ambitious title, A Key to All Mythologies. Yet for all the statements it makes--about altruism, about the dangers of over-indulgence in navel-gazing individualism, about the inefficacy of social justice, about mental illness, about faith in God and redemption, about liberalism and religion--it's sex where Franzen seems to have the most to say.

Crossroads is both formulaic and moralistic, and it's not very de­manding from a literary perspective. I remarked to a friend while read­ing it, without any irony, that it reminded me of Harry Potter. Or maybe, more generously, A Christmas Carol. Yet I don't mean to sug­gest that it's a bad book.

Crossroads is a great book. It's well-written, cinematic, and entertaining. And its clear, unambiguous lessons are lessons that readers need to be reminded of--in some cases, long to be reminded of. In a world filled with uncritical messages about the importance of introspection, self-expression, and sexual liberation, Crossroads calls into question whether all this freedom to look inward has done us all that much good.

The conclusion it comes to is clearly no.

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