I have no problem with him turning down Oprah. I think was very bad form for him to discuss his misgivings about the subject publicly without telling her his feelings first. It is really rude to embarass someone who is essentially doing you a favor.
It seems to be almost a lose-lose situation for Oprah. If she chooses the same type of books that are(or assumed to be) on her list now - then the people who rely on her choices start to stagnate.
If she picks more “high-art literature” then she runs the risk of being snubbed and embarrased by the authors-and not being able to promote the books in a way that would reach the people she is trying to help.
I wonder if now Oprah will require future authors to sign a statement agreeing to not back out if they consent to having one of their books placed on her list.
The “big deal” is that it reveals him to be a hypocrite and a boor. It is hypocritical to on the one hand accept placement on Oprah’s book list and on the other hand criticize that very book list as something somehow beneath you. If it’s so far beneath your august self, have the courage of your convictions and decline to be on it. It is boorish to accept what is a huge favor from someone and then criticize both them and the favor.
In short, this is a man who clearly wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants the money and exposure that being an Oprah pick would bring (or he wouldn’t have said yes in the first place), but he simultaneously wants to be seen as “high art,” somehow better than those “one-dimensional, schmaltzy” books – by hacks like Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates – that also appear on the list.
Again, IMO you can accept the honor and be gracious about it, whatever your own personal reservations might be, or you can decline and stand by your convictions. But to accept the honor and then dis Oprah and her list makes him a hypocrite and a boor.
He didn’t “back out.” The book is still on her list. He merely accepted the honor and then gave several interviews – interviews he probably only got because his book was made an Oprah book – in which he bad-mouthed the concept of being an “Oprah book” – the very thing he had just signed up for.
Most authors whose books are chosen for Oprah’s book list are then interviewed on her show, and his appearance was scheduled. After getting wind of his comments – books on the list are “one-dimensional,” the logo is a symbol of “corporate ownership” – Oprah decided not to have him on the show, on the grounds that his stated misgivings about the list would indicate that an appearance would make him feel uncomfortable. But he didn’t back out of anything. Personally, I’m sure he’d have been willing to ride that gravy train as far as it would go, complaining the whole way about how de classe it was.
*Dave: I had recommended The Corrections to a friend. A few days later, Oprah announced that it would be her new Book Club pick. My friend soon emailed me to ask if I really thought he should read it.
Franzen: Now I’ve signed a big label deal and I’m playing stadiums, how good can I be?
Dave: Exactly. But this is someone I very much respect, and I don’t think his asking that question can be considered at all unusual. I’m sure thousands of people won’t read this book for no other reason than the fact that Oprah recommended it. If you’re that popular, the thinking goes, if you speak to the masses, you can’t possibly be saying anything too intelligent.
Franzen: That’s one of the perverse, not to say fetishistic responses to the obliteratively ubiquitous presence of buying in our lives: to say, “I don’t buy the popular stuff, I buy the small label stuff,” as if that makes you any less of a consumer. But I’m somewhat guilty of it myself, and it follows a pattern. Certainly in music, suddenly the band you like because it was not produced goes to a major label and becomes heavily produced. It’s hard to think of a major label Mekons recording, for example. It’s impossible because they would never do it.
But I’m with you, I don’t think the same applies to fiction. The problem in this case is some of Oprah’s picks. She’s picked some good books, but she’s picked enough schmaltzy, one dimensional ones that I cringe, myself, even though I think she’s really smart and she’s really fighting the good fight. And she’s an easy target.*
I add this to give some context to the discussion of Franzen’s boorishness and elitism. Basically, the interview was set up in such a way that he was responding to someone who is wary of Oprah’s choices–someone who has read Franzen’s previous work, and also wonders how The Corrections fits into Oprah’s literary canon. Again, I don’t think Franzen set out to “dis” Oprah. Until now, the guy was just another literary fiction writer noodling around in literary fictionland and was caught unawares by his sudden celebrity status. If he could go back, I’m sure he would strike some of the comments from his record now that he knows people actually read what he says. That’s why he apologized.
I’ve actually been waiting for someone to say this. It’s not a matter of having one’s cake and eating it too, which would imply a conradiction. Franzen is able to want both of those things (money and prestige) at the same time. If you disagree, please explain why. If, on the other hand, you’re upset because he expressed his concerns, why are you unwilling to accept his apology at face value?
The way that Franzen comes off implies that money and prestige are mutually exclusive. He doesn’t want the great unwashed masses to read his book, therefore, he doesn’t get money. He can’t have it both ways. Either he steps off his pedestal and takes the money, or he continues to look his literary nose down on the rest of us slobs…the slobs who have the disposable income to buy his books.
Jodi, I don’t know if I would be so quick to call him a hypocrite. I don’t think he intended to mislead Oprah and his audiences deliberately by accepting the honor but rejecting the trappings. I would sooner write this escapade off to human weakness, which, if nothing else, makes Franzen interesting.
Seneca, whose examples I am fond of referencing, spent most of his life trying to live the vita contemplativa. Yet he somehow amassed downright enormous wealth and became one of the two most powerful men in the early reign of Nero.
Was he a hypocrite? Contemporary critics certainly thought he was.
I just think he knew what was right but couldn’t escape wordliness and power. Likewise with Franzen. I don’t mean to be pretentious in the slightest, but I root myself in the ancient, if not particularly high, literary tradition. I may be meant to read and write, but let me tell you, I am not meant to be famous. If all of a sudden millions of people started reading my pen-scratchings, I would be a fish out of water and probably behave very, very poorly. I would want to remember my roots. I would want to remember my philosophical and political principles about which I am relatively outspoken.
Metternich astutely commented on Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria’s state of mind in the First Partition of Poland in 1772:
Likewise Seneca, likewise Franzen, likewise me.
Does that make us hypocrites? Shit, I hope not. I try to be as virtuous and true to my principles as I possibly can, but sudden wealth and fame must be downright dizzying. The whole world changes.
I think I was the one who first lobbed this into the Pit thread, with the attitude of “Go Franzen!” I’ve thought about it a bit more since then and since reading the posts here.
I, like others in this thread, do not think Franzen was prepared for the glare of celebrity that followed his selection. And here he is, interviewed by fellow snobs at small newspapers who say 'Yech. Oprah’s book club?" and he feels compelled to be honest about how he feels about the book club and the books she chooses. He wasn’t thinking about whether he owed Oprah any gratitude for selecting his book (he doesn’t, IMHO), he wasn’t thinking about the potential gravy train, he wasn’t thinking about anything except answering the question honestly. “She picks some good books, she picks some crap. I hope you, the elite literary snobs who bought my last 2 books do not suddenly lump me in with the crap now that Oprah’s seal is on my books.”
So yeah, he could have handled it WAY better. I like to think if I were in his shoes I would have said something incredibly neutral about the whole thing. Or something like “She chooses some good books, and some incredibly schmaltzy books that obviously appeal to her audience. I too wonder how The Corrections will be received by her viewers and by the public after this announcement.”
But he doesn’t have to like Oprah. He didn’t lobby to be selected by her. Before he was selected he might not have given the book club a second thought. Suddenly he’s getting interviewed everywhere, and people at book signings were telling him they were uncomfortable buying the books with her seal on the cover. He doesn’t have to think like a P.R. strategist. I’m sure his publishers are ready to KILL him at this point.
I will definitely read the book now . I hope it’s good. If anyone else wants to read it we can discuss it in Cafe Society, hopefully on its own merits and without all this drama crap. I do confess that I hope to find a non-Yellow-O emblazoned copy - it will clash with my black turtleneck.
And isn’t he up for the National Book Award or something? Has Oprah’s seal of approval become more important than that honor?
Of course it is. He wishes to have the prestige and money that goes along with having mass appeal, but he wishes to denigrate the having of mass appeal as being something other than “high art.”
Sure, he wants both of them, but he also thinks you can’t really have both. (This is his belief, based upon what he has said, not mine.) That’s his whole problem. He took the money and now he’s worried he’ll lose the prestige, which is why he has tried to distance himself (and his book) from the very source giving him the money. To him prestige comes from writing books that no one reads, i.e. “high art,” whereas money comes from mass appeal, i.e. “low art.” He wishes to have “low art” money but “high art” prestige. He does that by taking the money and then dissing the source, and that’s why he is a hypocrite. As PEPPER said, either take the money and accept that your book is being marketed to have mass appeal – that’s where the money comes from – or refuse the mass marketing so that only appropriately high-brow people read your work, and do without the money.
As to his apology – what apology? The one where he acknowledged that Oprah is a hero – not to him of course, must keep distancing self from her – and that he nevertheless “felt bad,” but of course only “in a public-spirited way”? Please. The guy comes off as an arrogant schmuck, and everytime he opens his mouth he makes that impression worse.
MAEGLIN –
Make no mistake: He did not reject the trappings. He signed up for the entire three-hour tour of being an Oprah author, including having the Oprah sticker put on his book and, not unimportantly, a new printing of nearly 700,000 books. He has done his level best to take all the trappings and yet denigrate the person bestowing them upon him. That’s the whole problem. That’s why he is, in fact, a hypocrite. Whether or not his hypocricy is a product of “human failing” is another question. I’m willing to grant that it probably is; most hypocricy is. Whether it makes him “interesting” is a matter of opinion.
I am not saying the guy did not make a mistake. He certainly did. I’m just not sure if he himself could tell you where that mistake was. For myself, as I have already said, either take the gift and be gracious about it or decline it and stick to your scruples. But to accept and then be mean-spirited about it – Oprah’s choices make him “cringe,” what a thing to say after she’s just chosen your book! – that indicates to me that he is a hypocrite and a boor.
If you’re going to fall off the wagon of high-art pretentions to wallow in the trough of middle-class money – because you’re weak, may the literary gods forgive you! – then at least have the class to not insult those who live in the trough.
And let me also say this: I find the idea of “high art” as being incompatible with “what lots of people enjoy” to be ridiculous and insulting. If it’s good then it’s good on it’s own merits; it doesn’t become less good just because many people enjoy it. So I’m not sure what “principle” one abandons if one finds one’s work to have a suprisingly broad appeal – or if one finds a way to market one’s work more broadly. The whole “I wouldn’t read a book with an Oprah sticker on it” mentality makes me impatient. If the book is good, read it. If it ain’t, don’t. Oprah’s opinion can hardly change the merit of books already written. If for some reason a person truly believes that mass appeal means a book cannot be “good” or “high art” – the logic fallacy of that notwithstanding, this does appear to be Franzen’s belief – then such a person should not embrace the very thing likely to lead to mass appeal and to his book being perceived as “bad” or “low art.”
If he had deep reservations about being an Oprah pick – for whatever reasons – he should not have agreed to it. If he agreed to it despite those reservations, he should have kept them to himself to avoid looking like the hypocrite he apparently is. If he put his foot in his mouth anyway – as he inarguably has – he should apologize for his bad behavior in a way that at least seems sincere and not half-assed.
IMO, the man has behaved badly from start to finish. The fact that he might have been caught by surprise by fame and fortune does not IMO excuse that bad behavior. I would certainly give an apology great consideration, but I give the only “apology” I have seen as much credit as I think it deserves, which is not much.
Does Oprah pay the authors directly to be included in her book club? Or is her choice an endorsement, with some financial arrangments about printing of the logo on the books, etc.
It’s my understanding that Franzen will receive no cash from Oprah. His book may (or may not) experience increased sales as a result of her endorsement. How is he “taking Oprah’s money”? What I gleaned from the Pit thread is that her book club is just a list of recommendations, not a cult canon. :p. If Franzen gets any money from the endorsement it will because Oprah viewers choose to buy the book based on her recommendation. He will not get that money if the readers snub him after the media controversy.
How is he being a hypocrite? "Some famous person liked my book. I’m not a fan of many of said famous person’s book recommendations. I hope it doesn’t hurt my sales among my core readers. "
That’s correct. He did, however, recieve her endorsement, which, love Oprah or hate her, amounts to the same thing.
Except that there is no “may not” about it. Oprah books are generally guaranteed best-sellers. In Franzen’s case, his publisher ordered another printing of 700,00 books – a huge printing – on the strength of Oprah’s endorsement alone. Having your book chosen as an Oprah book is the literary equivalent of winning the lottery.
It’s not a “cult cannon,” but the number of readers who will buy a book based solely upon her recommendation cannot be overestimated. We’re talking hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of sales, to people who otherwise very likely would never had read your book.
Correct. Since he gets the money only because of the endorsement, his snobbish criticism of that very endorsement is hypocritical and boorish.
See above, but to clarify: This is not a throw-your-hands in the air situation where an author can react with total dismay to inclusion in the list without his or her permission. Not author’s work is included without the author’s okay. So if Franzen thought Oprah, her list, and her readers are so beneath him, he could have and should have declined to participate. But he didn’t. To agree to participate and then be a snobbish whiner about it – it just shows a lack of class. To the extent that any of this is a “big deal,” that’s why.
He deserves the National Book Award. I don’t mean to reduce his book to silliness with the talking turd, because it really is an amazing book, and upon finishing it last night I got a little teary-eyed, which is very rare for me. Despite it’s over the top writing style and ridiculous situations–stolen salmon thawing in a character’s pants, aforementioned turd–the book is incredibly honest. Franzen took a lot of risks by writing a book this honest; I’m sure you’ll see what I mean when you read some of his characters’ guilt-ridden sexual permutations. I’ve read Pulitzer, PEN, and National prize-winning books that have had substantially less to offer than The Corrections. My hope is that people won’t skip it because of Oprah or perceived snobbery.
It seems that the greater part of the vitriol here is being leveled at the distinction between so-called “high” and “low” culture.
So what if some elitist author prefers to be associated with a “high” tradition, which only exists in the minds of its participants? Wherefore the animosity?
TARMAC – Don’t get me wrong. I’ve heard the book is very good. I certainly hope to read it. I just don’t intend to buy it.
MAEGLIN –
Not in my case. The “vitriol,” which my position hardly rises to the level of [sub]the sentence structure police writhe in pain[/sub], is that Franzen himself makes this distinction, obviously views the “low” with disdain, but is nevertheless not above (or beneath) taking their money. That’s why he’s a big ol’ honkin’ hypocrite. Personally, I find the distinction of “high” versus “low” art to be a silly one. Indeed, as the New York Times pointed out in its piece on this issue, to the true literary snob, a strong argument may be made that all novels (and “the novel” as a literary vehicle) are “low art.” As you no doubt know, it was not uncommon in the 19th century to disparage a flighty or less-than-smart person as being “the sort who reads novels.” Therefore, if one wants to take the argument from the extreme other perspective, there is a whiff of pot-kettle-black to the whole low-art/high-art distinction (silly as it is) vis-a-vis novelists.
If they prefer to be associated with a “high” tradition – which I fully agree is their perogative – then they should not agree to be marketing vehicle they personally feel is geared to the “low,” and which they are not above (or beneath) disparaging for it’s “lowness.”
