Chekhov’s Mistess

O is for Opinion

Mr. Champion speaks.

Oprah listens!

More O.

Sorry folks, but I beg (do you see me begging) to differ with some of you:

This guy says this:

Can’t read without Oprah? Get a life. Think about it: If you don’t care enough, or aren’t interested enough, to freely pick out a book you want to read and enjoy, then you might as well not be reading at all. Go do something else. You’re obviously not that interested in books anyway.(via Bookslut)

That’s just plain condescension and it’s prompted me to add my thoughts:

The writer above attacks those that can’t seem to pick out a book on their own. First of course, he’s assuming that these people only read what she says and never anything else. That’s a pretty big assumption, but I don’t know this Mr. Supercilious, so I’ll allow that maybe he understands the inner lives of all those millions of people that he stands above. The fact is that not every single person in this country has the benefit of good education or the opportunity to have read well or know what’s good to read or even just has the time between jobs and family.

I imagine that many of those viewers-cum-readers don’t spend their time obsessing over books, they don’t know what to choose from the 175,000 annual output of titles and Oprah is a conversation starter. She has built trust with millions of people over the years; she’s smart and talented and has chosen some wonderful authors. Many of her viewers have little more than their local paper and the chain-store display table to give them a clue as to what’s good.

So let’s stand down from our soap-blog. All this lamentation over people not reading in this country ignores the fact that so many people just struggle to keep up with life and many people read/view in other formats. I’m not saying it’s good or right or that it doesn’t need to be fixed – just don’t blame Oprah for doing too little or too much or not doing it just so.

I thought Scott’s opinions on the matter were thoughtful (as opposed to the person I quoted above), but I disagree with him too.

Scott states that “A novelist who needed Oprah to enable him or her is not worth reading,” and of authors “If they weren’t writing from sheer love, and if they only started writing because Oprah opened a 1 in a million shot that they would make it huge, then they’re probably not doing interesting work.”

I can’t say too much about the value of any of these books specifically because I don’t read very much in the realm of contemporary fiction. I am a snobbish reader, at least in the sense that I won’t and don’t read books that aren’t serious – but that’s me; I stay up until midnight writing long posts about prose poetry – I’m a freak like that. But I know some very intelligent, well educated, avid readers that do just like to read enjoyable books and they don’t concern themselves with the stature of an author in the world of lit-tra-churrrre, or if a book has lasting value. They just want to read.

Besides the fact that Oprah has promoted some very serious authors, it is impossible to question an author’s motivations because they want to sell books. Not every author wants to be James Joyce (although he was quite a self-promoter), some may just want to tell stories. Most of the great literature in the world began with people telling stories to one another. Even Dicken’s and Austen are, when it comes down to it, just good story tellers. Nabokov referred to many books that we think of as great literature as “fairy tales.” In the long-run, whether or not a writer experimented or stretched the limits of the novel is largely irrelevant except to a handful of people who spend their time thinking about it.

comments

Of all the reactions, I think yours is closest to mine. If I had to pick a world with Oprah’s book club or one without - I can’t think of a persuasive reason to not have it, where the negatives (what are they?) outweigh possible positives. The main arguments against as far as I can tell are: “I don’t like the books she picked / too ‘mainstream’ / sellouts”. booooooooring.

And since generalizations seem admissable here, I wouldn’t be surprised if these aren’t the same types who stopped listening to The Shins after they showed up in Garden State, or even The Flaming Lips after appearing on 90210, and so on.

How else for to distinguish them as somebody in the know?

    – tito (04/26  at  12:40 PM)

Bud,

I think you should post a version of this over on the LBC, you make several excellent points about why book recommendations can make a difference.  Wendi

    – The Happy Booker (04/26  at  02:59 PM)

Ditto both Tito and Wendi.  I can’t say if I’ve even read any of the Oprah picks.  But I can’t condemn people for reading something she recommends. After all, there’s the hope that they will like it and pick up another book.  And that’s all we want, isn’t it?  I think Tito is right on the money about how once things get popular, some people automatically dismiss them.

    – bookdwarf (04/26  at  04:47 PM)

I have mixed feelings about this--enough so that I fear what I’ll write here--mostly in enthusiastic approbation of your comments, Bud--contradicts the comments I posted over at Scott’s. Hmm…

I plunge in nevertheless. While I sometimes feel exhilirated when I read comments that call most Oprah books “drek,” I can’t agree. Besides, even though I am often a snobbish reader, I am occasionally an avid consumer of trash. I believe fervently in Woolf’s dictum to read what one likes without apology.

Whatever I’m reading, I’m happy to have a recommendation. Recommendations, whatever their source, are part of the conversation and we all hear them critically, interestedly, assessing what it means to hear high praise from Oprah, or Kakutani, or Bookslut, or Chekhov’s Mistress or a friend.

    – Anne (04/26  at  09:21 PM)

Whenever I do read contemporary fiction I usually enjoy it (or I put it down), so there is, what we call in economics, survivorship bias. So it would be biased for me to say that it was all good - some of it could be drek, but I wouldn’t know. But one person’s drek is another’s great read - my wife and brother-in-choice both loved the Kite Runner, for instance and both of them are discerning readers. So, I’m an unlikely candidate to write about this stuff. The funny thing about this post is that I didn’t intend to write it until I saw that quote - it was part of another post until I saw that I couldn’t seem to help myself. It is convenient to have your own op-ed page.

At the risk of sound self-righteous, I wouldn’t write anything on this site that I wouldn’t be able to defend if I were speaking/writing directly to the person involved - that’s my test. And I don’t mean being nice, I just mean being able to prove or stand up for my point. This is a long way of saying that I’m not comfortable editorializing on book buying in USA - most of it is just opinions - this was a reaction, and I hope not too far from what is right.

    – Bud (04/27  at  09:11 AM)

Bravo to you for your extremely sound remarks re: Champion’s Oprah letter. While he is often entertaining and smart, this time I thought he was being very short-sighted and classist. And sort of dumb, in a way. The “either they are high-class, motivated readers like myself or they are worth nothing” attitude is repugnant on a human level, and also untenable for anyone who actually tries to make at least part of their living writing books. Anyway..... thank you for your thoughtful and well-felt-out posting.

    – Tom Piazza (04/27  at  04:40 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: April 26, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

• Comments:6
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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