That's some swerve

"It is, in other words, classic Precambrian Franzen: a ready-made literary fossil. It’s hard not to be at least a little preemptively bored. And, indeed, the book would probably be insufferably dull if it weren’t for the fact that it also happens to be a work of total genius." — Sam Anderson, New York magazine

Perhaps not "total" then? It reminds me of when I worked at The Sunday Times; they were always running stories with headlines like "Picasso: Genius or Fraud?" as if those were the only two options, and nothing in between. Damien Hirst: Fantastic or a Fantastic Waste of Time? Or, Art: Transcendent or Total Bollocks?