Anyone that encourages anyone to read should be respected. Does it matter WHO, also she chose a classic and your stereotyping of the age base it reaches is ridiculous I have read this since I was a teen and I'm 39. My daughter loves the book and is 20?????? Have you read it or just going by something you've read.
Sheila, it seems you don't read carefully. I was talking about the activities of Oprah's book club, the swinging camera shots of her audience, which consists mostly of women about your age, waving the books over their heads, thrilling to the hype of ... Steinbeck? This is a curious cultural phenomenon. I'm not content to say "all reading is good" and complacently leave it at that.
Anyway, that phenomenon is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about your teenage years. I'm not talking about your daughter. I never said that only middle-aged women read Steinbeck.
I am talking about the intersection of commerce and art. And one the one hand, Sheila, I agree with you. I want to live in a world where people read literature. And when millions of people are reading Steinbeck, that's good.
On the other hand, I don't want to live in a world where a single media mogul can so pervasively influence literary trends, nor in a world where an entire demographic does what one person tells it to do. I also don't want to live in a world where art is bowdlerized in shallow TV "discussions" ("It's a page turner!"; "It's like a movie!") with merchandise tie-ins (even if this raises money for charity, there's still something creepy about it, and it's that "something" I'm trying to understand).
I have similar reservations about Harry Potter. It's a franchise, but is it literature? If the excerpts I've read are any indication, these books simply are not the stellar masterworks they're made out to be. Yet adults beat their chests with pride for having read them, as if this is a worthy achievement, as if they've done something "literary." Harold Bloom, portentous/pretentious ass that he is, might be asking the right questions. Are people reading for the right reasons? Are they even reading for the reasons they think they're reading?
On the other hand, I've been to my share of graduate seminars, and I've seen great books disemboweled by the harsh scalpel of theory, in the hallowed name of "criticism." And I felt that was a disservice to art as well. Academia, with its descent into the exceedingly esoteric world of theory, isn't always doing what it should with literature, and in the wake of that failure, perhaps an Oprah-messiah is needed? As you can see, Sheila, I haven't reached firm conclusions all around.
One thing that has encouraged me on this thread is the "take it or leave it" attitude some Oprah watchers have about her club.
Anyway, if you can stay in the context of these remarks, Sheila, you might have something useful to say in this discussion. I'd love for you to disagree with me, but I'd prefer the disagreement to be relevant.
Dedalus