Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America

“Reading With Oprah ….The Book Club That Changed America was published in 2005.
Its fascinating and revealing on so many levels: everyone seems to have an opinion about the OBC, which first launched in 1996…….and ended its ‘televised’ book club 2002.

Anyone reading ‘this book’…..will have opinions — making it a great choice for book clubs around the world today. Its certainly loaded with hot topics for discussion:
….thoughts about the televised book club — the pros and cons it had — plus readers could include discussions about the OBC, non-televised Book Club today.
….Why the TV book club ended as it did — only to reemerge fourteen months later with its new focus on ‘great books’.
….myths and presuppositions surrounding the club.
….cultural authority and literary taste.
….cultural influences exploring heated discord between ‘high’ and ‘low’ literary taste.
….Authors input …. and personal interviews.
“I believe Oprah’s Book Club is probably one of the best possible uses of a television set”….. said Barbara Kingsolver.
….Other authors input:
…..Jonathan Franzen, Sven Birkerts, Sue Miller, Wally Lamb, Anna Quindlen, Toni Morrison, Rohinton Mistry, etc. etc.
….Selection choices…. their literary value, possible manipulation influences, cultural hierarchy, and social phenomena…..etc.
….Oprah fans….what they mostly want…(mostly richly drawn, fully realized characters)

Oprah’s Book Club is still going strong today. Her most recent pick, “Hello Beautiful”, by Ann Napolitano is a book I read before Oprah made her monthly announcement….but as Kathleen Rooney shared in this book ….. she had been working at a bookstore….(Andersons bookstore in Naperville at the time), when every time a new Oprah book was announced, customers flocked to her store to buy the book. Rooney turned her Curiosity inquiry into this book.
THE GUTS I THOUGHT! Lol but — ROONEY is brilliant in her own right — an intellectual- as she claimed Oprah as well. Rooney had no trouble holding her own.

Kathleen Rooney wrote this IMPRESSIVE WELL RESEARCHED …..(along with her personal opinions), DEBUT* when she herself was only in her 30’s.
I can’t imagine the challenge it was to write about Oprah and her book club. I couldn’t help but admire the incredible amount of work, research, interviews, even confidence that Kathleen had to have had to take on a project of this size at anytime in her writing career, let alone a debut.
I was floored! It’s packed filled to the brim with contemplating thought.

Rooney wrote:
….”Winfrey has proven yet again that there exists more than one appropriate way to deal with literature; she has set out to further the sense of community that is one of the secrets to the OBC’s success by joining the community herself, as an almost-equal”.
“In doing so, Winfrey has exhibited a shrewd understanding of how to manage and master one of the most fundamental predagogical issues of higher education: there’s sometimes daunting balance of power between teacher and student.

Kathleen Rooney then goes on to say …. about herself:
“In my own Teaching Freshman Writing class in graduate school—and, I’m sure, and many such classes across the nation—this delicate equilibrium was boiled down to a cheesy but apt saying about the need to know when to be ‘a guide on the side’ as opposed to a ‘sage on the stage’. Winfrey has certainly been both a guide and a sage at various points in her book-recommending career, but it seems a particular stroke of book-clubbing genius for her to have realized the benefits of presenting herself as both a model and a colleague in order to persuade hundreds of thousands of Americans to haul their way eagerly through what amounts to a highly atypical beach read”.

I wanted to read Rooney’s debut … because I realized recently after having read an arc of her latest novel …..”From Dust to Stardust”…..due out in September 2023….
that ‘every’ book she writes is intelligent, informative, and enjoyable. I’ve read every novel she’s written, one collection of poetry, and a memoir.
Kathleen Rooney is a marvelous writer…..
be it…..homing pigeons in “Cher Ami and the Major Whittlesey”,
or
…..an 85 year old about to take a walk in “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk”,
or
…..an inspired unexplored true story about a Hollywood actress— Colleen Moore — the original flapper of silent films …. and the incredible creation of her miniature Fairy Castle — which can be seen at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago….
in “From Dust to Stardust”….
or…..
…… A look at the profession of artistic nude modeling in “Live Nude Girl”….
or….
…..her collections of poetry….

Fact is Kathleen Rooney is a wonderful enlightening author …..
“Reading With Oprah”…. was a very ambitious debut …. I’m glad I read it. Most readers would find value from reading this book …. ….weather you agree or disagree with points addressed.

And….
…..as in every book Kathleen writes….readers will recognize her funny bone ….she has this charming - adorable - subtle humorous side that shines in every book she writes.

If you can’t tell ….I’m a big Kathleen Rooney fan.

I'm torn when it comes to rating this book because I mostly agreed with the author and that makes me like her because I'm a compulsive narcissist. So I should give her at least a four. However I didn't think that the different pieces of the book fit together very well (especially the epilogue) and I was frankly bored by her tangents about television, politics, and blogs. She would start off with a good point and then beat it to death with her earnestness. Of course the biggest problem could be that I really don't have an opinion about Oprah's Book Club or Oprah herself. I suppose I like her but I don't really think about her at all. The most passion I've ever felt was towards A New Earth, her pseudo-Buddhist pick in 2008, and that passion was largely irritation directed at the publishers for not meeting the huge demand the selection generated. I got really tired of people asking about it.

I used to pooh-pooh Oprah's Reading Club like so many others, and now I think it's great that she promotes books and reading. Though after reading this balanced and critical examination of this TV book club, I still think it's positive since Oprah stirs up many dormant readers to read again, but the club has much room for improvement.

This book brings up the issue of highbrow vs. lowbrow culture, the problem of discussing literature through the medium of television, and the Oprah vs. Jonathan Franzen deal.

The author looks at the disturbing way that Oprah projects her own story onto every narrative presented--though she thinks Oprah's selections are generally worthwhile, she is concerned by how Oprah seems to publicly read each book as a self-help guide, and which serves as a poor and one-dimensional model for other readers.

What distinguishes humans from animals? Some say it’s a sense of humour. But I saw two squirrels the other day telling each other jokes and laughing fit to burst. And only yesterday my neighbour told me his dog Claude is getting pretty big on the stand-up circuit. So I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that some humans would rather die than be caught reading the latest novel by Jodi Picoult. That’s what makes us essentially human.

Kathleen Rooney writes in a very captivating manner, stepping neatly from egg-head observations* into excited girl-fan admissions and from academic rigour to the conversational** . Mostly she’s brisk and witty and negotiates huge cultural controversies with an adroitness I wish I had a quarter of. I was sorry to take my leave of her.

What this book is about is giant issues of sex, class, education and taste all rammed through the concentrating lens of the thing called Oprah’s Book Club – in KR’s words “the reasons behind the cultural unrest surrounding this mother of all book groups”. And what a fascinating knot of complication it is, too.

KR : “it behooves us to try to understand why we, as individuals, experience such powerful inclinations to embrace certain artistic and cultural phenomena while rejecting others.”

Well, let’s see.

PB’S ANATOMY OF ALL THE BOOKS THERE EVER WERE

1)There are highbrow books (which may be good or bad) - Example : Ulysses, good; Finnegans Wake, bad)

2) There are middlebrow books (which may be good or bad) - Example : The Poisonwood Bible, good; The Cider House Rules, bad)

3) There are lowbrow books (which may be good or bad) – example : The Killer Inside me (good); Flesh Gothic (bad)

But hold on…. can those words good and bad be applied to books at all? There’s no such thing as “taste”, the republic of books is democratic – if anyone tells me this or that book is essentially good or bad and I must – must! – agree with them I say fie! Fie! I fling your opinion back in your pink startled craw – monster! I reject this outrageous imposition of arbitrary value on a book!

And yet … speaking personally, I think I have perfect taste. Here’s what I think :

1) there are books I think are good which most people also think are good (which reinforces my opinion and makes me sure I’m right) Example : The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

2) there are books I think are good which most people think are actually bad ( but I know what’s what and they’re all idiots) Example : A Canticle for Leibowitz

3) there are books I think are good which are actually bad (but when I say good, I don’t mean good good, I mean many things, such as so-bad-it’s-good, or so sleazy it’s good – I realise that Pringles and Galaxy Caramel isn’t haute cuisine) Example : Interview with the Vampire

Corollary of this is :

there are books I think are bad which most people also think are bad, and ditto ditto as above, ending with

there are books I think are bad which are actually good (which fills me with anxiety – am I not as smart as I thought I was? this too-clever stuff makes my brain hurt) Example : Darconville’s Cat or Wittgenstein’s Mistress

And behind this kind of interrogation of personal taste there is a conviction that:

there are good books

and

there are bad books

or more explicitly

there are intrinsically good books – also known as great literature

there are intrinsically bad books – also known as worthless rubbish

Can all that be true? The very idea of literary “taste” implies that your judgement is subjective, and yet those who think they have “taste” (meaning “good taste”) don’t think their idea of a good book is subjective at all, they think that the books they think are good really ARE good, no arguments allowed.



THE OBC : THE CASE FOR

Oprah has never figured in my world but I knew she was a phenomenon. When I bought We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates it came with an OBC sticker on the cover. I did not realise the significance of the sticker. Here are the facts.

The first phase of OBC ran between September 1996 and April 2002. One book was chosen more or less each month “and in an industry in which only a few novels sell more than 30,000 copies, those recommended by Winfrey routinely sold a million or more…Oprah’s endorsement of any title meant a minimum of 500,000 extra sales.”

As the OBC became the mightiest power in the land of American literature, it also became “a crucible for the heated clash between high and low literary taste”.

Disclosure : Of the 45 novels chosen in this first phase of OBC I have read six (She’s Come Undone, A Virtuous Woman, The Poisonwood Bible, We were the Mulvaneys, The Corrections and A Fine Balance) and they were all good or great except Wally Lamb, which wasn’t.

Kathleen Rooney read the whole lot and concluded that there were 5 unreadable ones, 5 dreadful ones, and the rest were good or great. So in her opinion (which is worth having) Oprah was directing her vast, vast army of fans towards good stuff, mainly. The OBC was a terrific force for good. It got millions reading who hadn’t touched a book for 15 years (i.e. since they had to). So… that’s agood thing, right? What was the problem?

RAINING DOWN ON OPRAH

“the club’s selections were too depressing, too woman-orientated, too bourgeois, too middle-brow, too self-helpy”

“Winfrey, then, via her simplistic How did this book make you feel? approach, habitually represented genuinely good novels as little more than self-help texts to be consulted in her ongoing treatment of all that ails America”

it was thought to be “a cheesy, sentimental, middlebrow institution”

“if you’re that popular, the thinking goes, if you speak to the masses, you can’t possibly be saying anything too intelligent”

Jonathan Franzen : “she’s picked some good books, but she’s picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself”

Jonathan Franzen: “ Beginning the next night in Chicago I’ll encounter two kinds of readers in signing lines. One kind will say to me, essentially, ‘I liked your book and I think it’s wonderful oprah picked it’ and the other kind will say ‘I liked your book and I’m so sorry Oprah picked it’”

KR : “Franzen left a trail of anti-Oprah comments like a swimmer bleeding carelessly in the ocean”

Some writers “feel that their books are being read by the wrong people, i.e. housewives from Oklahoma who don’t know SoHo from TriBeCa and worse, don’t care” (Jonathan Yardley)

Description of Oprah’s choices ; “penny dreadfuls for the Therapy Age”

“the Oprah list offers us that rather ominous thing : not a world without pity but a world composed of nothing but” (Tom Shone)

“you just can’t bear another inspiring yet oh-so-depressing tale of a single mother whose daughter is kidnapped or worse but who works through her pain and finds strength in the midst of tragedy” (Bill Ott)

Title of Wall Street Journal article on OBC : “Read them And Weep – Misery, Pain, Catastrophe, Despair… and that’s Just the First chapter”


IN CONCLUSION OR THIS REVIEW WILL JUST GO ON AND ON

Kathleen Rooney says in effect that the OBC did a great thing in the worst possible way.

“Winfrey consistently interpreted the books of the OBC not as literary novels but as so many self-help texts. Winfrey damaged these complex, sophisticated narratives of her own choosing by treating them as corollaries to her program’s doctrine of mindless American optimism… such a reductive and sentimentalizing approach – one which told people only that it’s good to read, not necessarily that it’s even better to be thoughtful about it – could hardly be expected to teach people to be careful, contemplative, discriminating readers. And indeed it didn’t.”


MORAL OF THE STORY

Yes it’s true – we live in a world where no good deed goes unpunished.



* There’s a chapter where she uses the words “othering” and “positionality” and I had to look those up.

** e.g. “if I may flog this OBC as recently deceased loved one metaphor just one final time…”

Honestly, I read the first two chapters and skimmed most of the rest. This read like a college research paper that had a requirement of a certain number of words. There is so much repetitiveness in the analysis, with numerous supporting quotes about the same point. I also didn't find the book very enlightening about the primary subject.

Interesting study of the OBC phenomenon.
There was more to it than what tv viewers saw.
Of value to those on either side of the high low art argument

This sounds like it could be a good companion piece to Reading Oprah: How Oprah's Book Club Changed the Way America Reads.

Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America by Kathleen Rooney

An important disclosure, Kathleen Rooney is a friend of mine.

Part 1

And she is one of my many favorite authors because she is brilliant, intelligent, witty, erudite, knowledgeable and passionate about every topic she addresses. Reading RWO was like charring with Rooney over Fish Ginger and Pad Thai while she expands upon the rags-to-riches billionaire who got America to read again. And I always learn something from a Rooney book and not that antiseptic school-book sort of learning. Instead I'm.earned that Oprah didn't make any money off the books she promoted. That she couldn't be bought. That she required her audience to look for the positive in the books they read. That would have left me out. Anyway I'm a big fan of Kathleen Rooney's and I would recommend all the poems, memoirs, insightful nonfictions and novels that she writes.

Part 2

I'm guilty. I never watched an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show and, in the beginning, I criticized her book selections for representing a sort of Oprah genre, one in which a woman with the odds stacked against her used her considerable spunk and grit to make something of herself: The Oprah Story. In the ear.y days of her book club, I read a few books I didn't like. I'm looking at you Midwives. I see you hiding in the jello pudding, Bill. Then I read The Poisonwood Bible. One of my favorite books. Since then I've also read The Bluest Eye, One Hundred Year of Solitude and Paradise, all among my favorite books. And I think if is inarguable that Oprah Winfrey galvanized a multitude of Americans to read. Who cares if the books she chose aren't whatever it was The Pale King was? I would disagree with Oprah's requirement that all of the audience had to speak to the positive elements about the book of the month. The dissent encourages brain growth.

Part 3

Oprah was criticized for selecting books that tended to tell a certain story. It might that anyone selecting 50 books would nominate a roster that says something about one's personal narrative.