if a bard were formed of scraps and paste he would sing such amazing collage as this

Ben Marcus made my week.

As I was shuffling around JFK airport at six in the morning last Thursday I thought I might buy a magazine. I went to the store, I frowned over my choices and then I saw the cover of Harper's exclaiming:

Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It

Fourteen (14!) pages later, I was alight. Not because Ben Marcus put Franzen and realist fiction "in its place," but because it refused to do anything limiting, because it was so celebratory, because it was infused with so much mirth and joy -- the very things "experimental" fiction are accused of being void of. It was such a pretty pretty thing. I haven't heard such a call to intellectual arms in quite some time and never so tender a one made for "postmodern" lit. I made a phone call as soon as we landed, to report the publishing of this essay. I have reread it since. The excerpts and extended breakdown are pending.

Till then there's coverage at :
gawker
publisher's weekly
galley cat
and you can read the angry traditionalists by doing a blogsearch.