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On September 24th, when Oprah announced that her next book pick was Jonathan Franzen's THE CORRECTIONS, I laughed long and hard as I pictured Franzen sitting in his sensory deprivation chamber cum writing room, thumbing through his favorite passages in DeLillo's WHITE NOISE while chatting with David Foster Wallace about the obsolescence of the omniscient narrator in these memoir obsessed times or some similarly serious literary topic, when all of the sudden, click. "Dave, someone is on the other line. Call you back?" Click. "Hello?" "Hello, Jonathan, this is Oprah Winfrey…"
But The Call did not leave Franzen in the throws of elation or gratitude. It left him "conflicted." Must my child be adulterated by that insignia emblazoned across the cover, like a beacon on aisle 3 at Walmart? Will I be alienating those potential readers that feel alienated by the Oprah stigma? Will I ever get over cringing when they mention my name alongside that TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE guy? Will I be shunned from the self-important literary set when they see the discussion of THE CORRECTIONS capped off by a segment called "Remembering Your Spirit"?
In the end, Franzen's fear of being "misunderstood" as an artist left him being understood as a big old snob with the social adeptness of a guy whose been holed-up in a squalid room for eight years furiously composing a doorstop of a novel. If he was genuinely "uncomfortable" about the situation, he should have done the proper punk rock thing and said on September 23rd, "I don't want that 'logo of corporate ownership' on my book. Thank you, but no thank you." That would have spared Oprah, her countless legions of adoring fans, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux unnecessary embarrassment and insult. But instead Franzen dropped thinly veiled comments about his conflict and concern in interview after interview until, finally, Oprah had no choice but to disinvite him to the show.
To suggest that Franzen should have handled things differently is a massive understatement. But by vilifying him for having reservations over the Oprahification of his book, we fall prey to the same kind of one-sidedness that continues to divide the literary and popular fiction establishments. Contrary to what wounded Oprah acolytes and militant anti-Oprahites think, the implicit message in Franzen's resistance to THE CORRECTIONS becoming and "Official Oprah Book Club Selection" is not, as Chris Bohjalian, an Oprah author in 1998 for his novel MIDWIVES, suggests in an interview with USA Today, "that every reader in mainstream America who doesn't live in a loft in Soho is a moron." Now, Franzen may secretly believe that, but I highly doubt it was the fear that his book might fall into the befuddled hands of Joe-American that caused his worry over the Oprah endorsement --- point of fact, his book was a bestseller even before Oprah came along.
Franzen simply didn't want his book or his name corporatized by the Oprah seal of approval. He didn't want Oprah appropriating his work, specifically the book's cover, so that it reflected something so wholly antithetical to what he intended as its writer --- a book that everyone could read if they wanted or no one could read if they wanted, not a brilliantly marketed product. Just a book. And what's wrong with that?
--- by Sarah Brennan
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