Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost; Photos: Amazon/Getty

Farewell To... is an end-of-decade series that explores some of the biggest cultural trends of the last 10 years. HuffPosts culture team says bye to the celebrity feminist litmus test, so long to some of our favorite internet-famous animals, RIP to the movie star and looks ahead for whats to come.

At the dawn of this decade Aug. 31, 2010, to be precise Jonathan Franzens sprawling novel Freedom was published to the orgasmic applause of the literary establishment. His face, veiled in chiaroscuro, appeared on the cover of Time Magazine next to the words Great American Novelist. The New York Times published multiple rave reviews.

Then the wave of adulation crashed on a rocky shore. Before the book itself had even gone on sale, technically speaking, best-selling but critically little-regarded authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner tweeted their exhaustion with white men like Franzen being celebrated as literary darlings by institutions like the Times. Weiner even coined a hashtag more catchy than it was translatable: Franzenfreude, she tweeted, is taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen.

Though Franzens book was a bestseller and one of the most acclaimed novels of the year, his coronation as the American bard was squelched by the backlash.

2010, it seemed, was the year the whole book world strapped in for a serious debate about whether the most illustrious literary publications had a misogyny problem. Endless blogs and essays were published on Franzenfreude, many grappling sincerely with the evidence that female authors were harmed by sexism in review coverage.