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Summary
Summary
Adored by its fans, deplored by its critics, the Oprah Book Club has been at the center of arguments about cultural authority and literary taste since its inception in 1996. Virtually everyone seems to have an opinion about this monumental institution with its revolutionary and controversial fusion of the literary, the televisual, and the commercial. Reading with Oprah by Kathleen Rooney is the first in-depth look at the phenomenon that is the OBC. Rooney combines extensive research with a lively personal voice and engaging narrative style to untangle the myths and presuppositions surrounding the club, to reveal its complex and far-reaching cultural influence, confronting head-on how the club became a crucible for the heated clash between "high" and "low" literary taste. Comprehensive and up-to-date, the book features a wide survey of recent commentary, and describes why the club closed in 2002, as well as why it resumed almost a year later in 2003, with a new focus on "great books." Rooney also provides the most extensive analysis yet of the Oprah Winfrey-Jonathan Franzen contretemps. Through her close examination of each of the club's selected novels, as well as personal interviews and correspondence with OBC authors, Rooney demonstrates that in its tumultuous eight-year history the OBC has occupied a place of prominence unique in the culture that neither its supporters nor detractors have previously given it credit for.
Author Notes
Kathleen Rooney is a writing instructor at Emerson College.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The impact of Oprah Winfrey's television book club is well known to everyone in the book business. Yet many among the literati assumed Oprah's picks were mediocre and resented the star's posturing as a tastemaker. In her lively, information-filled account of the club's history, Rooney, an award-winning poet and a writing instructor at Emerson College, defends Oprah as a genuine "intellectual force" who "promoted the bridging of the high-low chasm" in American literary life. Although Rooney confesses she found many picks unreadable for reasons she eloquently explains she points out the literary worth of selected novels by Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen, Rohinton Mistry and others. Rooney relates theoretical ideas on taste, literary value and cultural hierarchy to the social phenomenon of Oprah's club and focuses on every up and down in the face-off between Oprah and Franzen, saying each was disingenuous at times, and both missed an opportunity to look at larger questions of our literary culture. On the negative side, Rooney finds Oprah manipulative and inclined to interpret literary fiction in the reductive terms of autobiography and self-help. Ultimately, Rooney sees Oprah's Book Club (including its latest incarnation) as a positive effort. Although Rooney's sometimes awkward prose can get bogged down in anecdotal evidence and personal asides, she accurately captures the cultural unrest surrounding the Oprah Book Club and raises numerous thoughtful points about its significance. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Choice Review
As the titles of these two books suggest, they are remarkably similar. Published almost simultaneously, both describe the huge cultural phenomenon that was Oprah Winfrey's Book Club. Both assess the effects of the club on American culture in general and American readers in particular. Both begin at the same point, Oprah's announcement on April 4, 2002, that she was canceling the club; both take refuge in her June 2003 announcement that she was resurrecting OBC with a new focus on classic novels by authors no longer living. Both explore the impact of the book club on America's "culture wars"--the debate over culture and capitalism. An oversimplified version of this debate: highbrows disdain anything that sells well and assume that it must be artistically inferior and appropriate only for lowbrows. On this last point, both books discuss at length Oprah's choice of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections (2001) as an OBC selection, a choice she reversed a few weeks later after Franzen publicly expressed concern that his selection might compromise his place in "the high-art literary tradition." In spite of their similarities, the books are different enough to make each worthwhile and rewarding on its own. Whereas Farr (College of St. Catherine) is almost exclusively positive in her evaluation of OBC, Rooney (Emerson College) is more critical and devotes significant attention to the club's weaknesses. Rooney explores at length the effects of the television format on the whole experience of reading and the concomitant attempts of Winfrey herself to reduce complex novels to self-help manuals. Moreover, Rooney focuses on OBC as a media phenomenon. Farr concentrates on the club's readers; for her, Winfrey's reductionism is not a problem because individual readers respond so positively to it. Finally, Rooney's vocabulary and academic references make her book the more scholarly of the two. Though Farr's study is more personal, she does a better job of establishing criteria by which to evaluate the novels of the book club. Thus she offers a more effective demonstration of the huge role that the club has played in breaking down readers' reliance on cultural authorities to tell them what is good. The books are equally valuable. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels. J. L. Culross Eastern Kentucky University
Library Journal Review
Rooney (writing, Emerson Coll.) approaches the cultural significance Oprah's Book Club by first examining the popular arguments for and against this literary phenomenon. Rooney does not take the common intellectual stance, which condemns the club's commodification and celebration of "popular" contemporary literature. Instead, the study aims to explore the complexities of the phenomenon and demonstrate how it has called into question the rigid high-brow to low-brow hierarchy traditionally used to measure the literary merit of fiction. Rooney does concede the "flattening" effects of presenting literature through television and the unacknowledged power Winfrey gave herself as the selector of novels. However, the book highlights how the concept democratized literature and encouraged both social interaction through reading and literacy in the United States. Rooney finishes by looking at the reincarnation of the club, which has moved toward more literary texts, such as Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Although academic in its rigor and depth of research, this is a highly readable book suitable for both academic and public library collections.-Rebecca Bollen Manalac, Sydney, Australia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
