The Corrections

The Corrections (or how to bring down Oprah's Book Club with what would seem like a simple refusal, but could in fact be a kind of literary or academic snub...aw, who are we kidding, that's what it is, but then again... is it? )
by Jonathan Franzen
Featured on the Time Magazine Top 100
           In October of last year, I told all of my classes about a book that was coming out soon. It was a book I was sort of thrilled about, not so much because of the actual reading experience itself, but because of the nature of the hype that was beginning to swirl around it. Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom had been given a release date, and it had been selected for Oprah's Book Club. This, in and of itself, was not the news. I doubted that any of my students knew who Jonathan Franzen was, and while they live on the planet Earth and so, naturally, know who Oprah is, I also doubted that they paid even the slightest little bit of attention to her book club. But what made this interesting, newsworthy stuff is that Franzen had been an Oprah selection before, and he had turned her down. His reasoning was a concern that an Oprah logo would dissuade male readers from picking up the book. He also said that while Oprah had picked some good books, she had picked enough bad ones that he did not want to be on that list. Winfrey uninvited him, and stopped her book club for a fairly significant period of time.
            I am of two minds here. To take Franzen's side to begin with, I can imagine it would be hard to see a novel, something that he had obviously worked very hard on, repurposed as a vehicle for a daytime talk show host. It was not as if the Oprah selection was just a passing mention that was done on the air once. Rather it is a logo that would be emblazoned on the cover of every copy sold. If Franzen doesn't want that, his saying no should not be cause for a misunderstanding. But because he had spurned the good graces of a beloved public figure, he was called a misogynist and an elitist. Okay. But I think there is something to what he is saying, though. I like book clubs, and have enjoyed every single one I have been a part of, but I have read some pretty awful books because of them (Apparently time traveling is rough on a marriage. Who knew?), and Franzen seemed more interested in being in a part of an artistic conversation than he was with selling books to people he was afraid would not fully appreciate his work.
           On the other hand, praise to Oprah for taking Franzen's bad behavior (and it is hard to see his spurning of her as anything more than an artistic temper tantrum, which, okay, I tried to empathize with him in the above paragraph, but really, Mr. Franzen, the people who would pick up your book, look it over, think about it, and put it down because of a daytime talk show host's logo, are not readers you need anyway. They would find some other reason to reject you. You won the National Book Award for this book. Are Oprah fans not allowed to like it too? C'mon!) as constructive criticism. The first book that Oprah put on her list after her book club returned was East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Granted, it was a safe call since Steinbeck was dead and couldn't say no, but it is an unquestionably good book. The books that followed, as far as I know, were a departure from the chick lit (okay, so chick lit is a sort of pejorative term, and nowhere near every book that was selected could be called that, but this was Franzen's case) that she had been putting on her list. For years (until she stopped the book club just recently) the Oprah Book Club logo was a sign of quality, and not just mass appeal. Indeed, Oprah really was a major force in book publishing, and hopefully someone will step up and fill that space before too long (before everyone has to depend on this blog to tell them what to read, which I guess would be all right).
             The book itself is fine. It wasn't my favorite book I read that month, it wasn't my least favorite. The novel was about a family that had grown up and apart. The children had all rebelled against the midwestern values they had been raised with, and were all going through a crisis of some sort. The father was also dealing with dementia. What I remember being intrigued by was the sense that Franzen did not necessarily like his characters, nor did he hate them. He also didn't really care if the readers liked them. Thinking about this now, I have to say this is a risky choice, and may have been one of the reasons I wasn't thrilled with the book. Since I didn't care that much about the characters, there did not seem to be much at stake. That was not Franzen's fault. It was mine. I think when I read this book, I was a bad reader. Franzen's thesis was one I did not comprehend at the time. His characters were definitely not bad people, they were simply self-serving. Even in nice or altruistic acts, they were self-serving.
           This observation made me uncomfortable, since I know that on some level every good act that I do has a degree of selfishness. I don't mean to suggest that Franzen should be compared with Ayn Rand, and that he looks down on altruism, but what Franzen excels at is stripping away the reasons why one would be altruistic, and for his characters, those reasons tend to be deep-seeded  longings that come from ancient slights, inadequacies, and personal tragedies.
          At one point I would like to go back and read this book again. I got a copy of Freedom for Christmas, and while it wasn't the Earth-shattering literary event that the hype would have suggested (Franzen was on the cover of Time Magazine! Do you know how many fiction writers have been on the cover of Time Magazine? Like, none.), it was still fairly amazing (when he publishes his next novel he will ride on a winged horse through Manhattan, carrying a copy of the book over his head. Or something like that. He has to do something ridiculous to top himself). You know what's on the cover of Freedom? An Oprah logo.

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