Oprah -- Faulkner

This Nation essay analyzing Oprah's choice to do a summer of Faulkner is just great. Seriously, it says some very intelligent things on Oprah's choice, including:

This refusal to look away from pain is both what joins Faulkner and Oprah, and what most strikingly divides them. In Faulkner the world is gone wrong, and everything in it is hopelessly broken, whereas Oprah, who is similarly bold in confronting the cruelties of the past, offers the mild remedy of "inspiration," a perpetual procession of heartwarming or heartbreaking personal stories of overcoming fear. Her show is not likely to shift to a Faulknerian perspective on the unmasterable past anytime soon. But she has gone beyond the intellectual limits of the acceptably middlebrow--and of her own show--in openly embracing a writer who is not only highly experimental in his prose but utterly despairing in outlook. And that is little short of astonishing.

Not only that, but it gets in a wicked, but wholly deserved, Franzen slap.

But now, in an improbable turnabout worthy of one of Henry James's hourglass plots, the characters have changed places. While Oprah's Book Club has turned its back on therapeutic contemporary fiction and sprinted directly toward the highest hurdle in American literature, Franzen has been publishing New Yorker essays plumbing the depths of Charlie Brown and slaying his literary father, William Gaddis, for being too difficult to read.

Thank you J.M. Tyree for saying what we've all been thinking. What is up with those Franzen essays in The New Yorker? Listen, I like Franz, I think he's a brilliant writer, but these essays aren't doing much for me. The Gaddis essay (which completely shortchanged Gaddis regarding his stylistic innovations and complexity of thought) was at least literary in basis, but these other two have been about Franzen's childhood. Really, no matter how well it's written, I don't want to read about what it was like growing up J-Franz.

I don't care, and, more importantly, shouldn't Franz be working on his next novel? It's been close to four years now. Sure, Franz is a pretty slow worker (previous three novels: 1988 -- 1992 -- 2001), but these New Yorker essays can't be helping anything.

Regardless, Tyree's essay has convinced me to have a little faith in what Oprah is doing. Apparently, she is providing "weekly online video lectures and web Q&As . . . [while] Faulkner authority Robert Hamblin covers a range of subjects from stream of consciousness to Monet's influence on Faulkner's use of multiple perspectives, [and] Thadious Davis of the University of Pennsylvania relates him not only to Pound, Joyce and Woolf, but also to Desperate Housewives." There are message boards that even provide some indication that Oprah's audience is keeping up on their Faulkner.

Let's not forget that to most people, reading Fualkner is a pretty big leap, and even if Oprah asks you to do it you're going to balk. Sure, a Faulkner debacle wouldn't knock Oprah off her perch, but she is kinda putting herself out there by asking her fans to read Faulkner, even moreso than with Steinbeck or Garcia Marquez.

Comments

[patricia]

Poor Franzie, just can't get a break. Oh well, I really enjoy his writings in the New Yorker.

Cynic that I am, I'm waiting for that show in which Oprah offers a brand new car and total makeover for the first person who can relate an inspirational personal life story similar to any of the themes in Faulkner. Can you imagine the ratings?

[Alexandra von Maltzan]

I don't know, having grown up in a very elitist literary household, I am very cautious when elitism creeps into the subject of who should read what. I spent the first part of my early childhood in a country where the government was intent on dictating what people should and should not read. My parents and their friends in turn were (although they would fervently deny it) alienating all who were not exceptionally versed in the works of literary geniuses of our time. I am somewhere in the middle, with the perhaps not so politically correct view that the brighter viewers of Oprah, who by the way are more varied in background than might be initially perceived, and someone like Faulkner albeit a tough start on the literary ladder, together might just raise the literary bar of the program. It's an encouragement to the perhaps not so often intellectually challenged readers who may be looking for that extra push required to engage, but still expect someone else to provide it for them. Oprah is all about pulling the emotional heartstrings, and Faulkner will definitely provide the inspirational material for that.
P.S. I have moved my All Things Beautiful blog to typepad, in case you ever feel the need to digress a little? I am still compiling my list of favorites, and you are definitely on it!