The Oprah Book Club, Jonathan Franzen and a lesson the L.A. poetry community won't learn.

Here's an op-ed article by Julia Keller which appeared in THE LOS ANGELES TIMES today re the Oprah Winfrey Book Club: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-book-club30-2009dec30,0,6657148.story

A salient passage (with highlighting by me):
So forget Kindle. What transformed literary culture in 2000-09 was "The Corrections" (2001) by Jonathan Franzen -- not only the book, which is a big, gorgeous, strapping 19th century novel smuggled into the 21st, and a Midwestern novel to boot, but also the story behind the story. It was selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. Franzen was less than thrilled about the honor -- previous Winfrey books struck him as dreadfully down-market and plebeian -- which led to a mini-dust-up with Winfrey and a sudden spotlight on a dirty little truth: Literature is the last refuge of the snob. Most of us thought, in our infinite ignorance, that readers are readers, and the more readers, the better. But not Franzen: He wanted only certain kinds of readers.Winfrey's book club began in 1996, but it was the Franzen episode that put it on the map. Yes, her imprimatur made a huge difference in a book's sales from the get-go, but "The Corrections" -- the intricate, beautifully written story of the slow, tottering fall of a Midwestern family -- made her book club controversial, and in the United States, nothing is truly important until it has started a few arguments.The first decade of the 21st century revealed two things to the literary world: the power of a TV talk-show host to shape our collective taste in books, and the rudeness of a self-important author when that taste happened to include his work. (Never mind that Winfrey also favored William Faulkner, Toni Morrison and John Steinbeck; she was still too lowbrow for Franzen.)

Oprah Winfrey will end THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW after 25 years in 2011.

Read Nikki Finke's blow-by-blow account of Oprah's decisionmaking, plus a comment Oprah allegedly made regarding Southern California vs. Chicago:
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood

THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW started out as an imitation of the interviews-plus-let-audience-ask-some-questions format which made Phil Donahue a success. And, in the early seasons, Oprah exuded an Everywoman appeal (at one point, the show used the song "I'm Every Woman" for its theme) which made it easy for audiences to identify with her.

As the years went on, Oprah became super-rich and the self-important, lording-it-over-everyone aspects of newfound superwealth permeated the show (with a low point being her on-air scolding of the Paris department store Hermes for apparently not knowing who she was). Also there was her tendency to lapse into a sort of vocalese (JUUUUULIIIIIA ROOOBBEEEERRRTTTSSS!)--with her delivery of the line "I'm having a Martha Moment!" (prior to Martha Stewart's jail time and her Mark Burnett-assisted comeback as a rival daytime host) being particularly memorable in the wrong way.

Having said that, the show had its moments of insight/watchable guests-and-experts over its two-plus decades. And, through the Book Club, viewers were exposed to both writers they weren't familiar with plus great novels they may not have read otherwise.

So let's see what the Discovery-affiliated Oprah Winfrey Network will offer longtime fans/newcomers in 2011.