SOURCE: Yardley, Jonathan. “Whole Lot of Shakin'.” Washington Post Book World 22, no. 2 (12 January 1992): 3.

In the following mixed review of Strong Motion, Yardley commends Franzen's talent while arguing that the author's determination to create a message dilutes the plot.

Jonathan Franzen's second novel [Strong Motion] is populous, ambitious, expansive and long—important and admirable characteristics, all of which are sharply unlike what's to be found in most works of fiction now being published by Franzen's American contemporaries. At a time when too many young writers of “literary” fiction hide away in the tiny nests of their own psyches, too daunted by the real world to venture out into it, Franzen takes on all comers; this was true of his first novel, The Twenty-Seventh City, and it is true as well of Strong Motion.

So one cheer for that: Franzen has courage. But what Strong Motion demonstrates is that courage...