Edited by author 06-07-2005 11:58 PM
"Best book" is a contestable thing, Zack, but my point is that even if you disapprove of the prize winners, the imprints of the GG, Giller, Griffin, IMPAC etc. all classify the books as "literature" with all of the snobbery that may or may not entail. Depending on your attitude toward snobbery, they'll attract or repel. The big O makes you think, aesthetically, thematically, of daytime television. So - whether they accurately represent the book's achievement isn't really the issue I was addressing - the perception of the buying public and the so-labelled author is.

Sure they are, Chris. Do you really think that the Giller or the GG (or the Griffin or the Dublin Impac or the Booker or ...) goes to the best book of the year? Very bloody rarely. They often go to books that aren't very good at all. As empty a sign as any big fat 0.

britwrit, without doing anything other than answering your question, I'd say that perception differs. If, say, Oliver Stone adapts your book, you know people will quickly distinguish between the authentic thing (your book) and the Hollywood version. New media, new 'version'. The big 'O' doesn't create a new version. Instead, it invokes preconceived notions of 'Opraholism' that readers will bring to the book.

I think you can make the distinction between the Giller or GG stamps and the big O on similar grounds. These aren't empty signs.

Still, what's the difference between slapping a big "O" on your novel and selling it to Hollywood? Is Oprah asking for rewrites? Is she handing the manuscript off to a bunch of braindead producers and a parade of multiple screenwriters? How's her money so much more compromising than, say, Scott Rudin?

In the end, I think Oprah is the much softer, much easier target. No, it's easier to look down at her viewers but you sure don't want to anger Paramount...

I believe it's Sanctuary, G.

Oprah's back! Meedly meedly meedly nnneeeeowwowowow! (That's the sound of publishers doing excellent air guitar solos while kneeling on their desks - with whammy bar at end)

And she's picking more saccharine mental pablum for the... wait. Faulkner? As I Lay Dying? The Sound and the Fury? Light in August? (Or, shamelessly, the Willie Loves Opie Boxed Set - for the reader who doesn't care how their bookshelf looks.) There should be an emoticon for the sound a cartoon dog's cheeks make as he shakes his head in a triple take of disbelief. This should be interesting. Refresh my memory, it's been years since I read them... which one has the corn cob rape in it again? (Whew! And here I thought we were a month late with our Oprah discussion... relevancy is half timing, half luck on timing.)


Home

I was hoping for Sanctuary. Now that would have puffed a few beehives up.

G

Holy crap! Have you seen this?

(from the Amazon.com front page)

***

Oprah's Book ClubŪ Is Back!
Oprah has announced her next big pick, A Summer of Faulkner. Oprah's love of the classics continues with this three-book collection of William Faulkner's early works, including As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and a special reader's guide.

***

You can imagine the looks on the faces of the couch-pertaters as they crack As I Lay Dying. Yowza!

"High priests and trainspotters"

McCrum looks the "fanaticism" of the English literary society.


Home

Could someone please give me some information about the Afro Puff Girls Book Club? I just read an article about them in the Final Call Newspaper!! I, too, have established a book club and would like to get some ideas from the coordinators. Thanks.

Edited by author 04-26-2005 10:21 AM
Move over, Oprah

The Afro Puff Girls Book Club is way cool.

Home

Examining the Oprah backlist

Here's an interesting piece in which someone reads all 43 Oprah-blessed titles and does some analysis on why there's such disdain for the bookclub.

Rooney notes the vast majority of the titles won favorable reviews when they were released. Of the 43 fiction titles, 31 received reviews in the New York Times Book Review - all but six positive. It was only after Oprah chose them that they came under attack.

And hand it to Rooney for not being willing to take the books' quality on faith. She read all 43, except for five she pronounces "unreadable." Five more she found "plain awful" but compelling enough to complete. The rest were good, she writes, even great.

So why did the books come under so much criticism? The question goes to the core of our perceptions about culture and art. Oprah, Rooney posits, found herself caught in an ongoing unease in America between highbrow and lowbrow culture generally summed up as: If a huge number of people appreciate something, can it really be art?

As much as I use Oprah as a rubber chicken around here, I've coincidentally read several of the titles on her list and loved every one I've read.


Home

The likes of Aimee Bender are doing fine. I met her, she gave a craft talk to my MFA program. She has a kickass job at a well regarded California university's MFA program. She publishes short stories left and right, she's got a well-regarded novel out there, she gets paid to go around and talk about writing. Does she really want her books being read by the sycophants who watch Oprah? I hope not.
And on Susan McRae's notion that "most men don't read," well, this is true, but most people don't read, men and women, and I would wager that the breakdown of LITERARY readers is about 50/50. Yeah there are a lot of guys who read Grisham and such, but there are just as many women who read those awful "chick lit" books like The Devil Wears Prada and the Sex in the City rip-offs and Werner and Bushnell and all those other hacks with their teal and hot pink book jackets providing "beach reading" to a bunch of upper class lily white schoolteachers and aimless college grads driving around in the convertibles that their daddys bought them as graduation presents.
You are right that there are too many programs offering MFAs these days, though.
And, yes, of course I would take a free car, but I'd much rather have the cash equivalent. I can't afford the insurance on a high end brand new car, but I would do the logical, practical thing and sell the new car and pocket about half the cash, then use the other half to buy a reliable used car or less expensive new car.
As for the "vulgarity quotient" of my post, it's there to show the extent of my disdain and disappointment in the pitiful actions of the so-called "women" who signed that petition to Oprah.

Sincrely,
Sean Hooks

Yep. If you know anything about the book industry, you know it is in free-fall at the moment. No publishers ='s no one to pay the kick-ass likes of Aimee Bender et al to write their fine books. I suppose we could all reassure ourselves with the fiction that many a fine novel would be written without the financial and editorial support of a major publisher. And that is probably what many of us will do. (Maybe *one* fine book can be written that way, but after 10 exhausting years and 0 return on your time and effort . . . it's off to the management program at Arby's we go.) The fact of the matter is, these people are desperate to keep writing, and that ability depends on their ability to publish. Oprah, whatever you may think of her, had people reading fiction again. Not just fiction, by gob. Literature. It made a real difference. A huge difference. It gave a lot of people the much-needed faith to go on.

And, hell. . .who's gonna turn down a free car? You? You?! I don't think so.

wow -- they sure hand out those MFAs like paper cups these days, don't they?

As far as the estrogen to testoterone ratio is concerned, that's easy. Most men don't read. And if they do read something, it is either non-fiction, or something that is written by a man (ie John Grisham, Clive something or other).

More women read than men. Women are more open to reading titles if they are suggested. Both Oprah and the female authors know who their audience is: women. It has very little to do with men, believe it or not. (that might be hard to take for some people)

Why is knowing who your audience is trading in your self-respect? Personally I think that is smart and good business.

After all, Jane Smiley (after five husbands and owning a ranch with several horses) ought to know how to make a buck from writing.