There’s an extended scene in Freedom, the 2010 novel that landed Jonathan Franzen on the cover of Time, in which an aging indie rocker finds himself at a show in Washington, DC. He’s there to see “the suddenly hot band Bright Eyes, fronted by a gifted youngster named Conor Oberst.” The scene takes place in the early ’00s, and all around him, the character Richard Katz sees evidence of a younger generation that’s lost touch with rage. The “kiddies” at this show — “the flat-haired boys and fashionably unskinny babes” — have “gathered not in anger but in celebration of their having found, as a generation, a gentler and more respectful way of being. A way, not incidentally, more in harmony with consuming.” Here’s how Franzen — or, fine, Franzen’s character — describes young Mr. Oberst: