OK, so maybe its plain t silly to bestow the title 'America's Greatest' in any category where subjectivity is involved. And yes, its always dangerous to mistake a fictional character's beliefs for those of the author.

But the book world is all atwitter about the latest tome from Jonathan Franzen, author whose unease with having his novel The Corrections appear as an Oprah Book Club pick spawned a media frenzy and that helped make it one of the best-selling novels of the decade.

His latest tome, Freedom, features a character named Walter Berglund. A bird lover, Berglund calls cats "the sociopaths of the pet world" and part of the plot concerns Berglund abducting one of his neighbors' felines.

So how much of the anti-feline posturing is Franzen, and how much just a fictional creation? Well, it may be worth noting that Jonathan Franzen is an avid bird watcher -- particularly as Berglund tells us that cats are responsible for the deaths of a million songbirds per year.

Interestingly, one of Berglund's foils in the novel is named Richard Katz. He's a former rock star...is it too big a stretch to say former songbird?

The book comes out next Tuesday.

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