by Dennis Abrams
I wasn’t going to post again until Monday, but I’ve been thinking and thinking about this piece since I read it earlier this week, and the more I think about it, the angrier I get. Please read — I’ll have comments at the other end.
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Bad Expectations
- Hillary Kelly
- December 14, 2010 | 12:00 am
On December 2, as Oprah Winfrey stood on the stage of her TV show, tightly clutching her newest Book Club selection to her chest so that no one could see its title, she proclaimed in her singular, scale-climbing voice, “Dickeeeens for the hooolidaaaays!” Oprah declared that she has “always wanted to read Dickens over the holidays,” and “now [she] can.” Never mind that she could have read Dickens whenever she wanted, seeing as his books have been popular for more than a century. Never mind that Oprah hadn’t chosen A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, or any of Dickens’s other Christmas tales. Never mind that neither Great Expectations nor A Tale of Two Cities, the books she did choose, have anything to do with the holidays. Our shepherd has spoken, and we must blindly follow.
Billed as “A Date with Dickens,” Oprah’s sentimentalized pitch for consuming the author’s work—it’s “cup of hot chocolate” reading—is sure to inspire a frightening number of purchases. Just as they have for the past 14 years, cadres of women around the globe will flock to bookstores to nab covers with a small circular “O” sticker on the top right corner. Oprah has proven that she can catapult a contemporary author from obscurity to fame; but, more interestingly, she’s shown she can also revivify the great novels. Dubbed the “Oprah Effect,” Winfrey’s seal of approval and magnanimous praise has bolstered the sales of dozens of novels and, in turn, annoyed bitter English teachers everywhere. After all, Oprah is doing the impossible—she is convincing the masses to purchase and read classics.
In recent years, Oprah’s contemporary choices have wavered wildly, between new classics and “one-dimensional” heart-wrenchers (as Jonathan Franzen so aptly put it back in 2001). The Road (also a Pulitzer-Prize winner) introduced the world to the menacingly minimal prose of Cormac McCarthy, but Fall on Your Knees (Anne-Marie MacDonald) left me wishing for … wait, I hardly even remember finishing that one. The most galling of Oprah’s selections, however, aren’t the terrible new ones; they are magna opera of literary history. Indeed, Winfrey has seen fit to dip into the annals of literary history, pull out ringers like Anna Karenina and As I Lay Dying, and tell us why she, Oprah, thinks we should read them.
Her current choices, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, are perfect examples of this phenomenon. Surely both belong to the realm of classics and should, no must be read—and Oprah’s fans will inevitably dive in, not only because Winfrey has told them to but also out of a desire to assuage old guilt about required reading in high school that was left untouched. But what can Oprah really bring to the table with these books? Oprah has said that, together, the novels will “double your reading pleasure.” But is that even true? And do the novels even complement each other? Can you connect Miss Havisham’s treatment of time to Carton’s misuse of his “youthful promise”? Well, don’t ask Oprah herself, as she “shamefully” admits she has “never read Dickens.”
Now imagine this scenario somewhat differently. Your 16 year old announces that her English class will be reading Great Expectations. Fabulous, you think. A real piece of literature, a break from the Twilight nonsense and the watering down of education. “What will you discuss?” you ask your child. “Oh, we don’t know yet,” she says. “My teacher has never read it before. In fact, she’s never read any Dickens. She just thought it would be fun to read this with a cup of tea in hand!” My guess is that you would be annoyed.
And yet, Oprah does just that, only it’s worse: She has asked millions of people to follow her into some of the more difficult prose to come out of the nineteenth century—prose she knows nothing about. Put simply, a TV host whose maxim is to “live your best life” is not an adequate guide through the complicated syntax of Dickens, not because she lacks the intelligence—she is quite clearly a woman of savvy—but because her readings of the texts are so one-dimensional.
Oprah’s approach to her Book Club is all about herself. Her recent announcement contained not a word of reasoning or insightfulness about Dickens’s work; instead, she explained her reason for picking two of his novels by shouting, in a lame attempt at literary humor, “Cause it’s the best of times!” Just as she deems her “favorite things” worthy of an annual consumer-fest, she happily pushes to her audience of millions whatever books she herself wants to read.
Making the situation all the more appalling, Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities could not be more different. Focusing on wildly different themes and set in two distinct historical periods, scholars do not even regard the books as being of the same caliber—Great Expectations is often considered the far superior work.Reading them in conjunction imparts no nutritional value. This whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.
Even more confusingly, Oprah’s comments about Dickens making for cozy reading in front of a winter fire misinterprets the large-scale social realism of his work. It stands to reason that her sentimentalized view of Dickens might stem from A Christmas Carol—probably his most family-friendly read and one of his most frequently recounted tales. But her quaint view of Victoriana, as she’s expressed it, belies an ignorance of Dickens’s authorial intentions. Indeed, both A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are dark and disturbing, with elaborate ventures into the seedy underbelly of London and the bloody streets of Paris. How can we trust a literary guide who, ignorant of the terrain ahead, promises us it will be light and easy?
Since its inception in 1996, the Book Club has carved its niche among readers by telling them that the novel is a chance to learn more about themselves. It’s not about literature or writing; it’s about looking into a mirror and deciding what type of person you are, and how you can be better. While a generally wrongheaded view of novels, this notion is all the more frustrating when the club delves into the true classics, with their vast knottiness, glorious language, breathtaking characters, and multi-faceted, mind-twisting prose. None of that matters in Oprah’s view of books, since reading is yet another exercise in self-gratification. “If you have read him, what do you think Dickens might have to share and teach those of us who live in this digital age?” the Book Club’s producer, Jill, asks on Oprah’s website. This is the Eat, Pray, Love school of reading.
Indeed, Oprah’s readers have been left in the dark. They must now scramble about to decipher Dickens’s obscure dialectical styling and his long-lost euphemisms—and the sad truth is that, with no real guidance, readers cannot grow into lovers of the canon. Instead, they can only mimic their high-school selves with calls of, “It’s too hard!” Or, else, they can put aside any notions of reading to become a better reader and instead immerse themselves in the nonsense of “discovering their true selves” in novels.
A glance at the discussion boards on Oprah’s website confirms my worst fears. “I have read all the print-outs and character materials and the first two pages,” said one reader, referring to supplementary reading guides produced by the Book Club. “The first two pages are laden with political snips and I am trying to grasp what it is saying. I was able to look up cock-lane and figure that out, but where do I go to figure out the innuendos?” And the response: “SparkNotes provides an excellent summary of the context of the book as well as chapter summaries and analysis.”
Despite Oprah’s joyous yelling and shepherding, despite her character guides and suggestions of cups of hot cocoa, despite the gorgeously crafted Penguin edition of two Dickens novels and the soon-to-come chats on Winfrey’s couch about how readers can find themselves in these books, the battle has been fought and the victor already decided: Oprah 1, Literature, 0.
Hillary Kelly is assistant editor of THE BOOK.
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I see her point that perhaps A Tale of T wo Cities and Great Expectations are not the most natural wedding of Dickens’ classics. And I see her point (to a degree) that Oprah’s literary criticism can, at time, be slightly one-dimensional.
BUT…to say that
“Indeed, Oprah’s readers have been left in the dark. They must now scramble about to decipher Dickens’s obscure dialectical styling and his long-lost euphemisms—and the sad truth is that, with no real guidance, readers cannot grow into lovers of the canon.”
strikes me as so breathtakingly condescending towards whatever it is she imagines Oprah’s readers to be, such ivory-tower-lit-crit nonsense as to be beneath contempt. Without “real guidance” readers can not grow into lovers of the canon? Meaning, I suppose, without the books being “taught,” and taught by whatever literary theory is in favor at time, those poor poor readers without degrees in English and Semiotics or whatever are incapable of understanding what Dickens was saying? Is she serious?
Doesn’t she realize that Dickens, Tolstoy, Austin, all the writers (I’ll exempt Joyce from this, among others) enshrined in the “canon” wrote their books to be read not taught? That Dickens is one of the most insanely readable of all the “great” authors?
What is it that goes into this kind of thinking?
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Back to coping with Proust withdrawal tomorrow.
What a snob. A reading snob. A snob of literature. And a snob worse than a social snob. Proust would be tickled – this woman would make a great character, I think.
Before I move into “how dare she” mode (I mean Hillary Kelly), let’s just thank Oprah for bringing books to a lot of people – we can pass on the issue of whether they are “deserving of literature” or not.
Thank you, Dennis, for these ongoing readings, am appreciating this extended time to soak in the richness of this experience, and realize the process continues. I particularly noted de Botton’s comment on what books might do for readers, “namely bring back to life, from the deadness caused by habit and inattention, valuable yet neglected aspects of experience.” This 13 months of reading brings back deep reading encouraged by good company.
Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had a short essay by Alain de Botton prescribing Tolstoy, musing on what the humanities are for (“They should help us live.”) and offering the syllabus for different classes taught at London’s The School of Life,” a bookshop and cultural center where he has offered a course on love. The School of Life is on line and fun to browse. I do find de Botton’s therapeutic notion of reading a bit pious, do you think he might have missed the point of Proust’s remark on Ruskin, that ‘there is no better way of coming to be aware of what one feels oneself than by trying to recreate in oneself what a master has felt’. De Botton italicizes “what one feels oneself” – I would italicize “what a master has felt.”
Every reading of Proust suffers from anachronism and displacement, we are not Proust, we read through different layers of time from a different position about a place and time that is outside our experience. Thinking of Virginia Woolf’s reading of Proust, how different her reading in 1922 would be than ours, the whole work not yet published, she is reading a contemporary author who draws on time nearly parallel to her own (she is 11 years younger than Proust). This reminded me of Woolf’s famous remark written in 1924, “On or about December 1910, human character changed. I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless; and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910.” Peter Stansky wrote about the emergence of Bloomsbury using this remark as the foundation and title of his book On or About December 1910 which I was browsing thinking of Virginia Woolf gestating her material as did Proust at this same time, (think of Virginia’s mother Julia, of the boat out to the lighthouse, of Proust’s mother, of the steeples of Combray…) Stansky concludes his look at 1910 and Bloomsbury with Roger Fry’s extraordinary and then-shocking exhibition of Post-Impressionist paintings noting the names of those luminaries supporting the exhibit some of whom were honorary names on the masthead – and among them Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, “the famous French Dandy and model for Proust.” Doesn’t that just bowl you over?
In Bookforum’s end of year notes, this from Anne Carson: “This was the year I finished Proust!! Decided to read it in French, started in winter 2003, read it every morning with breakfast until last May, when I closed the final volume. Withdrawal is harsh, but those pages are worth it.” I just bought an old Modern Library Moncrieff set, 1932, the two big 1000 page volumes feel so different from the stack of 6 paperbacks I just read. I look forward to reading in it, as marchhare suggests, a few minutes, a few pages. This edition has an introduction by Joseph Wood Krutch, whom I most associate with desert natural history but who is in the great generation of humanists, a man of letters. His is a fine and satisfying introduction to read at last, discerning and wise, suggesting a reader who has read and reread Remembrance of Things Past with a deep respect. Krutch’s most anthologized quotation, “Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude,” expresses my feeling toward Proust.
May I just throw in, as we have delighted in Proust, we will relish Dostoevsky, we would find Dickens marvelous. Oprah’s community of readers will be happy and grateful to read Dickens again or for the first time. The New Republic essay is pitiful is its presumption that readers might not be up to 19th century prose, impoverished in its low expectations, rude in its restriction about who might read Dickens and with what guidance as if Great Expectations required a classroom. And how, exactly, is Oprah not adequate to the task of reading deeply, of cheering on her readers? Hillary seems particularly unhappy about an accompanying beverage, reading Dickens with that hot cup of chocolate. It’s a really repellent article. As you say, the more you think about it, the more it rankles. lxp is just dead-on here.
Kelly’s condescension rankles but it’s not unusual in the literary world. In this era of change, the literary establishment often lashes out at the newcomers in an effort to shore up its crumbling authority. Oprah is an easy target. One good word from her about a book, and millions will rush to buy it. At the end of the day, people like Kelly are just jealous that their opinions don’t have the same effect as a few words from Oprah. What good are the literary establishment’s PhDs and MFAs when someone who has never read Dickens has more effect on the literary market every single day then they will have in an entire lifetime? There are other examples of this kind of defensiveness. Bloggers who write book reviews are looked down upon as unqualified and irresponsible. People who self-publish their books are characterized as vain and self-important. It’s sour grapes, I think. Kudos to Oprah for accomplishing what many have never been able to do: getting people excited about reading the classics.
Interesting comments posted by Alan Jacobs on his blog Text Patterns on the New Republic article on Dickens and Oprah – here is the link http://text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com/2010/12/oprahs-dickens.html#comments
It really goes without saying that reading creates readers. I read _David Copperfield_ as a child, in a non-reading household with no one to help me and that is what truly turned me into a reader. Up to that point in time I read just anything, Dr. Seuss, the dictionary, cereal boxes, comic books, nature texts…just anything. But reading Dickens, all alone, not knowing what everything meant, made me a lover of reading and of books. This has outlasted and will outlast everything else that I do. So, bunk on this lit crit person.
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Ah, gatekeepers. Well, perhaps we could delight in this real time vignette of professional envy, and reach for passages in ISOLT that spike it beautifully.