As a literary critic, he focuses on modernism, especially such genres as the closet drama, the literary manifesto, and modern drama.
Franzen finds these developments sharply in contrast to the circumstances and rewards of lasting attention promised in Tom Wolfe's literary manifesto, Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast.
This is a reference to the putative literary manifesto "What Are We Writing For", which became the final work in the Coleman canon.
The memorandum has also been described as a literary manifesto, by virtue of the fact that it contains a classification.
Their initial publication was the Manifiesto Crack (Crack Manifesto, 1996) published a month earlier than the McOndo (1996) short-story anthology; the literary manifestos proved ideologically sympathetic.
Euphorion, Negoiţescu's failed project for a literary magazine, was also his stated attempt at producing a modernist literary manifesto.
Notable online-only features have included Lars Iyer's essay Nude in your hot tub, facing the abyss (A literary manifesto after the end of Literature and Manifestos).
August being a month when few serious books are published, it's a good time for a literary manifesto.
Some Russian writers even publish their would-be Nobel Prize lectures as a literary manifesto.
In 1996, while still working on The Corrections, Franzen published a literary manifesto in Harper's Magazine entitled Perchance to Dream.