Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club for Men

When the news broke that Oprah Winfrey’s book club was following up Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom with a double shot of Dickens (Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities), it got me to reflecting once again: Does it matter that Oprah’s Book Club hasn’t read a novel by a woman writer since Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, and that they haven’t read a contemporary novel by a woman since Ann-Marie McDonald’s Fall on Your Knees? I got a lot of feedback when I raised this issue on Twitter; a few people took the “it’s her club and she can pick what she wants” tack, and others rightly pointed out that it’s not as if Winfrey hadn’t had any women writers on the show, but most were disappointed at the imbalance. As Washington Post book critic Ron Charles pointed out, it’s hard to imagine putting together a lineup of the most significant contemporary fiction writers that isn’t predominantly female.

So I had another look yesterday afternoon at a book I’d read earlier this year, Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture, to focus my thoughts on the Book Club issue. (Full disclosure: Jim Collins was my college mentor.) I’m particularly interested in the way, as Collins puts it, “Oprah functions as an authority on reading for an imagined community of self-cultivators that numbers in the hundreds of thousands and who come to her expertise within the heart of consumer culture.” With so many books to choose from, how does a reader who aspires to be “literary,” or at least “well-read,” decide where to start? That’s where Winfrey comes in—and the particular genius of the Book Club’s 21st-century incarnation is that it combines the original (pre-Corrections) emphasis on the emotionally sublime power of “great books” with an emphasis on the symbolic credibility of “Great Books.”

And that leads directly to why I feel the absence of women writers in the Book Club matters.

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7 December 2010 | theory |

Come to the Lady Jane’s Holiday Salon!

On the first Monday of every month, I emcee Lady Jane’s Salon, an evening of readings by romance writers in the upstairs bar at Madame X (94 W. Houston St.), and tonight’s event is fraught with holiday significance. Our guest authors will include Lauren Willig, the bestselling author of the “Pink Carnation” series of historical romance/espionage novels, who’s just published The Mischief of the Mistletoe, a Christmas-themed romantic comedy which draws upon both Jane Austen and P.G. Wodehouse for its charms. She’ll be joined by two of the contributors to the A Harlequin Christmas Carol anthology, Jacquie D’Alessandro and Hope Tarr.

(Hope is also one of the three novelists with whom I co-founded Lady Jane’s in early 2009; Maya Rodale and Leanna Renee Hieber will also be on hand to wish you holiday cheer—and you might want to ask Leanna about her own seasonally-themed contribution to the e-only A Midwinter Fantasy.)

You don’t need to RSVP to attend, but if you are on Facebook, you can certainly check in so we have a rough idea of the audience. If you’re in the New York City area, and you like romance fiction, this is always a fun opportunity to get together with fellow fans, and I’m sure tonight’s salon will be especially festive. I’m looking forward to celebrating with several of Lady Jane’s long-time friends, and to making new acquaintances as well. See you there?

6 December 2010 | events, lady jane's salon |