Who says the social novel is an endangered species? Well, Jonathan Franzen says it, and even though he’s a smartypants in most other ways, we think he’s a little deluded on this point. Consider Jane Smiley—maybe not the hippest ribbon on the May pole, but certainly an unparalleled novelist and social critic (this is her 12th book, Jon). Good Faith is set in the go-go 80s and charts the rise and fall of a regular Joe in small-town USA getting in way over his head in various get-rich-quick schemes—certainly a stand-in for the same type of good intentions that eventually played out in Enron and WorldCom.
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