NP Franzen on "The Today Show"

[Doug Millison]

from:
Holt Uncensored #340
Wednesday, July 31, 2002

[...] 

FRANZEN ON 'THE TODAY SHOW' CHANGES HIS MIND OR IMAGE
(SAME THING)

Did it seem strange to you that novelist Jonathan
Franzen appeared on 
"The Today Show" Monday morning as sole official judge
of the next title 
for the program's book club?

Host Matt Laurer wondered about this, recalling that
Franzen got 
"disinvited" from the Oprah Winfrey show after Winfrey
picked Franzen's 
book, "The Corrections," for The Oprah Book Club.  

The reason Winfrey cancelled her invitation, Laurer
said, was that "you 
started to have misgivings about the segment" in which
she was going to 
televise a dinner party in which Franzen, Winfrey and
readers from the 
Oprah Book Club  would be discussing the book. 

If Franzen had misgivings about that segment, "why be
involved in 
*this* segment [on the 'Today Show']?" asked Laurer.

"Well, I don't really think I had misgivings about the
[Oprah] segment," 
Franzen replied. "I have nothing against book clubs
per se - quite the 
contrary.  They're an opportunity to bring attention
to books that might 
not get the attention [otherwise]."

Huh. Perhaps it was just a short-term memory lapse,
but Franzen had said 
pretty much the opposite on several occasions. He
mentioned to Terry 
Gross of "Fresh Air," for example, that the Winfrey
dinner party was 
little more than a "coffee klatsch" and that he was
worried about 
alienating male readers because men had told him they
ordinarily would 
have been "put off by the fact that ['The
Corrections'] is an Oprah 
pick" because "those [Oprah] books are for women."

This was quite a slap to Franzen, who considers
himself "solidly in the 
high-art literary tradition," while Winfrey and her
viewers are low, low 
to the ground. Because of them, America has become a
country, Franzen 
has said, where "so much of the reading is sustained
by the fact that 
women read while men are off golfing or watching
football on TV or 
playing with their flight simulator or whatever."

So articulate, but never mind. In the case of "The
Today Show's" need 
for a book club title, art seems to have won out after
all. The book 
Franzen has chosen - "You Are Not a Stranger Here" by
Adam Haslett (Nan 
Talese/Doubleday; 224 pages; $21) - is, judging by the
excerpted story 
on "The Today Show" website, every bit as wise, funny
and dire as 
Franzen indicated. If you don't like the condensed
format of short 
stories, just start reading this one, "Notes to My
Biographer,"  and see 
if you're not chuckling and wondering and unable to
stop within 5 
minutes at 
http://www.msnbc.com/news/789229.asp .

At the same time, Franzen's method of choice seems
awfully rag-tag. 
You'd think that an acclaimed author who's asked to
make a selection 
like this would read as many new books as possible.  

But no. Franzen said he taught a writing workshop 10
years ago, and Adam 
Haslett was his student. Having watched Haslett
develop as a writer for 
the next decade, Franzen decided Haslett's book seemed
a good choice. 

The process smacks of the kind of the old boys' club
that Dale Peck 
mentions in his New Republic article about Rick Moody
(see #338) - but 
oh, well. Sales are already soaring for Haslett's
book, so perhaps women 
are reading it while men watch golf on TV anyway.

Meanwhile, what intrigues many publishing observers
about book club 
selections on the national level is that almost every
one of these 
selections has first appeared on Book Sense 76, the
list of upcoming 
titles that independent booksellers are excited about
and recommend to 
customers each season. 

That's quite a track record for the next Jonathan
Franzen or anybody in 
a future judging position: Instead of picking an
author with whom you 
share connections, read the titles on the latest Book
Sense 76 for a 
wider range and a fairer list of candidates. [...]


=====
<www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com>

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