'Oprah' Gaffe By Franzen
Draws Ire And Sales
By DAVID
D. KIRKPATRICK
In 1996 Jonathan Franzen
wrote an essay in Harper's magazine about his frustrations as a novelist in a
culture dominated by ''the banal ascendancy of television,'' and empathized
with a character named Otto Bentwood in Paula Fox's 1970 novel ''Desperate
Characters.''
''As an unashamed elitist,
an avatar of the printed word and a genuinely solitary man, he belongs to a species
so endangered as to be all but irrelevant in an age of electronic democracy,''
Mr. Franzen wrote, and went on to imagine Bentwood retaliating by kicking in
the screen of his bedroom television.
Last week the television
struck back. Mr. Franzen's book ''The Corrections,'' one of the most critically
acclaimed and best-selling novels of the year, earned him a selection by Oprah
Winfrey's book club. But after Mr. Franzen publicly disparaged Oprah Winfrey's
literary taste -- suggesting at one point that appearing on her show was out of
keeping with his place in ''the high-art literary tradition'' and might turn
off some readers -- he found that he may have inadvertently damaged his own
reputation in the literary world. Ms. Winfrey did not revoke her selection but
politely withdrew the invitation to appear on her show. And instead of rallying
to Mr. Franzen, most of the literary world took her side, deriding him as
arrogant and ungrateful.
In a sense, the episode
underscored how right Mr. Franzen was about the power of television and its
transformation of literary culture. But the aftermath also showed that if there
was ever a time in the book business when authors wrote to impress critics and
their peers without regard to book sales, getting caught in that posture is now
almost embarrassing.
Mr. Franzen ''is a guy from
the country who shows up at court wearing the wrong shoes,'' said Lewis Lapham,
editor of Harper's magazine. He added: ''It was part of the avant-garde
literary tradition that came out of the 20's -- that the writer was this genius
in whose presence one behaved oneself, that a hush fell over the room. It still
had some force through the 1960's, but now the garret is a thing of the past. A
good writer is a rich writer, and a rich writer is a good writer.''
Even some defenders of that
high-art literary tradition took Mr. Franzen to task. The critic Harold Bloom
said he would be ''honored'' to be invited by Ms. Winfrey. ''It does seem a
little invidious of him to want to have it both ways, to want the benefits of
it and not jeopardize his high aesthetic standing,'' he said.
Ms. Winfrey's selection
helped prompt Mr. Franzen's publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, to print an
additional 500,000 copies. Authors typically earn more than $3 a copy toward
their advance and royalties, so Ms. Winfrey's selection may have been worth
more than $1.5 million to Mr. Franzen.
The high-profile spat also
adds new stakes to the upcoming National Book Awards, to be announced on Nov.
14. ''The Corrections'' is the most high-profile literary novel of the year and
a favorite among the fiction nominees. But just two years ago the National Book
Awards honored Ms. Winfrey for her contribution to reading and literature, and
an award for Mr. Franzen may now seem inconsistent. What's more, one of Mr.
Franzen's qualms about Ms. Winfrey's book club was his publisher's edition of a
special seal printed on the cover of his books proclaiming her endorsement,
which he saw as an advertisement for her program and a compromise of his independence.
Publishers customarily add a similar seal for winners of the National Book
Award, as well.
In a telephone interview on
Friday, Mr. Franzen said he drew a distinction between the logo for Ms.
Winfrey's book club and others that might be added to the jacket of later
editions. ''When a book is first published in hardcover in America the
tradition is no advertising on the front of the dust jacket -- that is the one
moment to have your name and the title of your book on the cover,'' he said. He
said he had no problem with any number of alterations -- including logos and
pictures of actors on paperbacks editions reissued after the book becomes a
movie.
During the interview, Mr.
Franzen was full of abashed apologies. ''You can't talk to reporters you don't
know the same way you talk to family and friends -- you really only learn by
burning your hand on the stove,'' he said. He especially regretted appearing to
draw a distinction between high and low literary culture. ''Mistake, mistake,
mistake to use the word 'high,' '' Mr. Franzen said. ''Both Oprah and I want
the same thing and believe the same thing, that the distinction between high
and low is meaningless.''
Backing away from that
distinction has been difficult partly because of Mr. Franzen's 1996 essay. He
not only disparaged television's baleful influence, but also went on to put
down book clubs for ''treating literature like a cruciferous vegetable that
could be choked down only with a spoonful of socializing.'' He criticized the
idea of judging books by their sales and said his work was ''simply better''
than Michael Crichton's. Last week, however, Mr. Franzen said the essay's
conclusion reflected his embrace of the idea that literature could be
entertaining.
Still, he added, the notion
that he might be selling out by crossing over to the more popular mainstream
seemed common with some people outside the book industry. At readings at
bookstores, people in his audience saw selection for Ms. Winfrey's book club as
a hallmark of the mainstream and even something to avoid. ''I was bombarded
with questions, mostly from the anti-Oprah camp,'' Mr. Franzen said.
Other writers and editors,
however, were unsympathetic. ''It is so elitist it offends me deeply,'' said
Andre Dubus III, himself a former selection of Oprah's book club and a National
Book Award winner. ''The assumption that high art is not for the masses, that
they won't understand it and they don't deserve it -- I find that
reprehensible. Is that a judgment on the audience? Or on the books in whose
company his would be?'' Ms. Winfey's selections have included serious writers
like Toni Morrison, Ernest J. Gaines, Bernard Schlinck and Joyce Carol Oates.
Robert Gottlieb, the former
editor of Knopf and The New Yorker, said, ''They all seem to me to be very solid,
honorable books, with feeling and some kind of substance.''
Of course, some novelists
categorically refuse to appear on television, including Don DeLillo, one of the
writers Mr. Franzen most admires. David Foster Wallace, a friend and
contemporary of Mr. Franzen, has done television appearances only reluctantly,
once insisting that Mr. Franzen appear by his side for an interview with the
television host Charlie Rose.
The novelist Rick Moody,
another writer often grouped with Mr. Wallace and Mr. Franzen as acolytes of
Mr. DeLillo, said many writers are ambivalent about television. ''Literature
wants what television has,'' he said. ''But if you could say what you needed to
say in that medium, you wouldn't need to write a book.'' Still, he added,
''it's contradictory to say I would do Charlie Rose but I am uncomfortable with
Oprah.''
Mr. Moody said he would
happily appear on her show, if asked. ''If you want to sell 700,000 copies,''
he said, ''then you have to play ball with the 700,000-copy vehicles, and then
you are in Oprah-land.'' He said it was hypocritical to object to Ms. Winfrey's
logo. ''I am published by the AOL Time Warner empire,'' he said. ''If you are
being published by one of the big houses, you can't object that you are not
commercial in some way: what book doesn't have the publisher's logo on the
spine?''
Jonathan Galassi, Mr.
Franzen's editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, concurred. ''The logo never
bothered me, but it is not my book,'' he said. ''The jacket itself is
advertising.''
Mr. Galassi said he
welcomed Ms. Winfrey's endorsement. He also noted a silver lining to her
cancellation of the guest appearance on television. '' 'The Corrections' is
selling like crazy,'' and publicity over the spat is helping, he said
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