When is franzen on oprah

American novelist Jonathan Franzen has reflected on the impact of his book The Corrections, as it reaches its 20th anniversary. The novel received critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as winning the National Book Award for Fiction.

However, speaking to The Guardian , Franzen recalled the uproar he sparked after snubbing Oprah Winfrey when she selected The Corrections for her book club. The internet domain ciswhitemale. What was so impressive about The Corrections for many readers was the way Franzen managed to marry pyrotechnic literary ambitions to an immersive, highly readable family saga. TV had made the big novel of social consciousness redundant, Franzen said, and the serious post-modern novelists like Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo were rapidly becoming irrelevant.

There are basically two opposing models of the novel, Franzen would later elaborate in a much-celebrated essay for the New Yorker. Franzen, nervously, could not seem to quite decide which model he aligned with. He sort of seemed to want to do both.

With The Corrections , the critical consensus was that Franzen had pulled it off. Put very simply, The Corrections was both smart and fun. Gates either spoke too soon or was a time traveler with a morbid sense of irony. With icy politeness, Oprah extended Franzen a disinvitation. When she made Anna Karenina an Oprah book, publishers announced that they were printing , additional copies.

So the book world responded to the Franzen-Oprah affair with mingled scorn and delight. Franzen was such a snob that he was going to tell anyone who asked how uncomfortable he was putting the Oprah seal on his book, but he was enough of a hypocrite that he was willing to use her name for publicity even so?

What a jerk. Generally, only men were believed capable of uniting the two. Franzen aims to bring these traditions together. I figure those books are for women and I would never touch it. Franzen would later apologize profusely and repeatedly for offending Oprah. He would be, for the next 20 years, the man who represented the straight white male establishment of literary culture and all its most snobbish excesses. Just like The Corrections , Freedom was greeted with critical jubilation.

Time magazine put Franzen on the cover under the headline Great American Novelist. But as Jennie Yabroff pointed out in Newsweek , while readers were willing to welcome Freedom with open arms, Franzen the public person had come to seem more than a little tiresome. The success of The Corrections had given him a platform, and Franzen had not held off on using his to espouse some fairly controversial takes. The hashtag began with a conversation about the outsize coverage Freedom was enjoying from outlets like the New York Times, and how they compared to the coverage that women authors received.

Aug 16, Avid consumer of books, media, and general nerdery. Ready to dig deep into a story and match the right books with the right readers. About this blog How can I identify a first edition? Where do I learn about caring for books?

How should I start collecting? Hear from librarians about amazing collections, learn about historic bindings or printing techniques, get to know other collectors. Case closed? Perhaps not. So, did he have fun on the show? There were no disasters. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword.