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Silence the snobs! | page 1, 2
More threatening to her critics still, Oprah has made the world of books and ideas less intimidating. Until just a few decades ago, literary success and merit were not mutually exclusive goals, and heavyweights like Steinbeck and Hemingway could enjoy a mass appeal. But somewhere along the way a schism grew, and the world divided into sophisticated quoters of Pynchon and glazed slaves to "The Price is Right." Also Today Reaching to the converted Oprah changed all that. She shocks those who prefer literature to be the province of genteel, understated tea-drinkers. So what if she brings a show-biz glitz to a traditionally dusty province, or if she's found a cozily social hook to an otherwise solitary pursuit? Good for her. She makes this stuff look fun. Smartly choosing books that are challenging but not cryptic, easy to relate to but diverse, she pushes her audience to become not just readers but thinkers and talkers. She makes it harder for the rest of us to feel quite so smug in our ivory towers, and she offers proof of the victory of encouragement and opportunity. What a satisfyingly populist blow to those with a lot invested in the notion of us and them. If the unwashed masses are able to appreciate Ursula Hegi, too, then maybe a few people need to rethink their own imagined innate cleverness. It seems a revealing irony that so many of the most contemptuous critics of Oprah and her audience posit themselves as "real" readers, successful products of a liberal education. They're the intellectual equivalent of those fundamentalist Christians who bang the intolerance drum the loudest. They wear their learning like armor, a thing that keeps the riff-raff out rather than inviting the world in. They've lost touch with the infectious joy of reading, the humanity and universality of it. What a waste to hoard literature like misers, when, as Oprah proves, it's so powerful when it's shared. In the rush to condemn Oprah for her hold over the publishing industry and the reading public, for her perceived and imagined egotism as a leader, her detractors have neglected not just the talented authors whose livelihoods have been enriched by the book club, but the scores of television viewers who never knew that they could also be passionate readers. It's the people who can now walk into a bookstore or library and not feel overwhelmed, who can choose to turn pages when they might otherwise surf channels, that Oprah started her club for, and it is they who know best how to judge her merits. But if some of them can now say that they don't need Oprah to tell them what to read, she deserves whatever accolades the book world can heap on her. Because she's accomplished something pretty great indeed.
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