Weighing in on the Marcus - Franzen debate is Cynthia Ozick, who argues that what is really missing from contemporary literature is an insightful, creative and vibrant body of legitimate Literary Criticism.

One thing she notes is that: "At Marcus's end of the alley, though, something smells stale, like old heavy breading. 'Expressive rather than figurative,' 'enigmatic rather than earthly,' 'free of coherence,' and all the rest: it has already been accomplished. The avant-garde's overused envelope was pushed long ago, and nothing is more exhaustedly old hat than the so-called experimental."



See Cynthia Ozick, "Literary Entrails" Harper's Magazine (April 2007), p.67.