Make of it what you will, but the Twitter-born fracas over Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom proves one thing without a doubt: the American literary establishment are size queens.

Their collective pulse races at the sight of muscular doorstopper filled with realism. (Especially following a ten-year dry spell.) They can’t agree on large sales versus long shelf life. They’re critical heavy-breathers: witness New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus fervently laud Freedom’s “capacious but intricately ordered narrative that in its majestic sweep seems to gather up every fresh datum of our shared millennial life.”

Wherein I speak of “Freedom” at The Daily Beast.