The novel received generally good reviews both upon its release and in subsequent printings. Howe, in his afterword to the 1980 reissue, placed it within "a major American tradition, the line of the short novel exemplified by Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts and Seize the Day": a tradition in which "everything—action, form, language—is fiercely compressed, and often enough, dark-grained as well."[8] In his preface to the new edition, Franzen called it the greatest realist novel of the postwar era.
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