Apr 29 2002
"Light up the sky like a flame..."
Look Ma, I'm in the Detroit News!
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Hey. I was interviewed on Slack Street Radio about books and the web, the demise of Oprah's Book Club, and, eh, broccoli.
AlterNet
The news of the Big O closing down her book club left me vaguely melancholy, like the death of someone famous you'd never heard of when they were alive. I remember when the book club began, a few highbrow versus middlebrow editorials and the big Franzen fracas of last fall. Other than that, Oprah's selections were to me a bit like the Grammys: a barometer of a what a wide swath of the culture bought but I wasn't much interested in myself.
For, you see, my province was contemporary literature, land of the "important book" and the MFA from Columbia. In this success-smells-bad-unless-its-mine world of "bold new voices," Oprah's choices were something we readers pushed against -- albeit with grudging respect. Liking an "Oprah Book" meant allying yourself with the most obvious, least cool demographic in publishing: over 30, female, someone who thinks "Friends" is a bit racy. Outwardly, we smirked and claimed we wanted our books supported by Guggenheim Fellowships, thank you, not commercials for Palmolive. Yet as the evidence mounted, it became harder to ignore how Oprah vigorously promoted literary mainstays like Toni Morrison and Ernest Gaines, and how demographic slam dunks like Danielle Steel and Mary Higgins Clark were curiously absent from her list.
Moreover, how could we argue with the numbers Oprah put up on the board? Forty seven books have been chosen for the club, and each has become an instant bestseller. Bookstores -- chain and independent alike -- dedicated whole sections to her choices. No-profile authors like Wally Lamb became brand names. Publishers campaigned for titles to be chosen nearly as heavily as film studios do for Oscar nominations, and compared (too often) an Oprah nod to winning the lottery. And while mourning a cash cow put out to pasture is inherently self-serving, its influence on publishing has been unmistakable. When Oprah talks, the industry listens -- something you can't always even say about the New York Review of Books.
While the Industry and the Talk Show Host were in the first years of their love affair, several grumbling critics claimed that the golden wave of Oprah's hand was actually leading us all like lambs to the literary slaughter. Since Oprah's audience slavishly tuned in each afternoon for another dose of comfort and self-affirmation, would they recoil at books that challenged them? Would publishers follow along, focusing even more intently on Oprah-friendly novels of Determined Mothers Overcoming Traumatic Childhoods, and leave "real literature" out in the cold? Or, as the counterpoint went, was it good news that the masses were excited by reading instead of just more television?
The "should read" versus "want to read" question that had danced just behind Oprah threw itself at her feet last fall when Jonathan Franzen declined to have his third novel, The Corrections, become a book club pick. In several interviews, he stated that the Big Golden O on the cover of his book would dissuade both readers looking for serious literature (instead of a good coddle) and men, who in his mind, would have no more use for an Oprah book than they would for a bra. Oprah retaliated quickly by uninviting Franzen from her show -- a "so there!" gesture that didn't make her look much better. Again, the question became whether literature had rightfully stood up to publishing's immovable force, or whether the rebellion was merely another marketing gesture.
The debate, as Michael Korda points out in his new book Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller, is as old as American publishing itself, and in the case of Oprah, mostly misses the point. We can neither blame Oprah for sinking literary standards, nor exalt her for bringing a nation back to reading. Instead, the legacy of Oprah's book club seems almost counterintuitive: books build audiences when someone who feels like a close friend recommends them -- even when that "close friend" has a viewership of 22 million.
The success of Oprah's Book Club was predicated on the essential mystery of publishing -- how to successfully match books and readers? Oprah solved the riddle for anyone who trusted her, and there were lots of them. Me, I'm crazy enough about books to want several Oprahs on call at all times, from reviewers in my favorite publications and on NPR, to fellow bibliophiles at the online community I run, to, most importantly, my friends and family. Recommendations lined up at the door means I never have to stop reading.
It's going to be a long time before there's another force like Oprah in publishing. No other public figure has her kind of intimate connection with the audience. But that doesn't mean book marketers should sit around and wait. There's a mini-Oprah in every town in America, someone who is not only well read and loves books, but has an intuitive way of discerning who would enjoy what.
I say find those mini-Oprahs. They're out there, asking intelligent questions at author readings, weighing in at online forums, talking with strangers at bookstores. In their own lives, they've already answered the question "What do I read next?" and are doing so for others. Serve them well and they will do the same.
San Francisco is playing host to Herb Caen Days until the end of the week, a series of events, presentations, and general meriment to honor the late-columnist of the San Francisco Chronicle. A Pulitizer Prize-winner, Caen wrote nearly 16,000 columns over from just before World War II to just after the explosion of the Internet, when he died of cancer in 1997. Somewhere in there he managed to add the word "beatnik" to the English language.
Though the official celebrations focus on Tourist San Francisco (which I guess were Caen's favorite parts. Maybe?), hearing about it all has prompted me to find out a little bit more about the man. Sadly, almost all the collected anthologies of his work are out of print, (a crime in a publishing happy town like this one) which just means a trip to the library. And reading the solid week of rememberences his colleagues and friends penned immediately following his death.
Dean, my insurance agent and a lifelong San Franciscan told me when his father first imigrated to the city from East Asia, he learned to speak English by reading Herb Caen's column. He later tought his young son that the best way to express one's self in a new language was clearly, simply and honestly, as Herb Caen had always done. I don't think you can pay a writer a higher compliment than that.
New York Times Magazine did a really neat feature for its music issue two weeks ago. They called it "Beck's 198-Track Mind" and it featured a full page outline of Beck's face wearing earbud-style earphones. Filling in the face are 198 of the song's the singer had on his iPod on Feb 27, 2002, my dad's birthday but probably a coincidence. My descriptive powers really do not do it justice do you may just want to see for yourself. Apparently Beck's got over 8,000 tunes stored digitally, a mammoth list that he updates daily. Though I own none of his albums, I admire his kitchen-sink style of composition which, if nothing else, indicate that the man has fantastically electic listening habbits.
So I'm following his lead. I'm going to randomly pick a track from Beck's list, download it and listen. Then give a report. I'm calling it The BeckWorthy Project because it's late, I'm naked, and haven't thought of a better name.
Downloads via Audiogalaxy
Listening via Winamp
Interpretation via Kevin
And away we go...
If being hooked on Cher's new tune "Song for the Lonely" is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
Apparently the thing to do on April Fool's Day is to dress up your blog to look like someone elses. Had I but known...
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
