Good God, Sozobe. I've spent the last two day... no three days reading through that and I'm sure I ought to read it again to get it clear in my mind. I was astounded that they'd pick up on the poor expression right at the start... that/is, that/is. Acck.
Quote:It's a bad thing that happened here, and people don't seem to realize how bad.
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On 24 September came the announcement of the ultimate stamp of approval:...
...500,000 of which Jeff Seroy, FSG's publicist, attributes directly to Oprah." (Other sources give slightly different numbers....)
...Franzen apparently also expressed reservations and ambivalence about his book being chosen for Oprah's Book Club elsewhere.
...On 22 October Oprah Winfrey apparently disinvited...
On 14 November The Corrections won the National Book Award for Fiction. There was no appreciable increase (or decrease) of sales ...
I wondered here how his sales were. Still looking but thought this was interesting:
Quote:Stephanie Levitz wrote a paper about it:
Columbia News Service
When Jonathan Franzen's novel "The Corrections" was selected by Oprah Winfrey's prestigious book club, he cut a deal with the talk show host. He would go along with the selection of his book -- but not the Oprah sticker.
"It's not a sticker, it's part of the cover," Franzen told a newspaper, "The Oregonian." "You can't take it off. I know it says Oprah's Book Club, but it's an implied endorsement, both for me and for her. The reason I got into this business is because I'm an independent writer, and I didn't want that corporate logo on my book."
To keep Franzen and Oprah happy, Farrar Straus Giroux, Franzen's publisher, agreed to affix the seal only to future editions of the book, and not immediately reissue hard covers with the bright orange "O," the tradition with an Oprah pick.
It was a choice that cost Franzen thousands of sales. According to Bookscan, a company that tracks book sales, one month after the Oprah hoopla, 26,000 labeled copies had been sold, compared with only 3,100 unlabeled ones. <large snip>
... "Everyone is an armchair jacket critic," said Meyer. "Trying to choose a jacket design for an author's book is like trying to pick a husband for their daughter. No one is ever good enough." <'nother snip>
... 1999 study from the Book Industry Study Group shows that cover art prompts the largest number of book purchases, proving what Meyer, Brenner and Gregory already knew.
People do judge books by their covers.
I vote the a2k book club (isn't there one somewhere?) reads the book. I'll bet there are a lot of copies floating around somewhere.
satirizes society's absurdities through the utterly dysfunctional, self-absorbed Lambert family.
Gary... grapples with manic depression and blames his problems on his controlling wife, who wants nothing more than to be a best friend ... spirals out of control when he gives up his dream ... to execute an Internet scam ... heads down a slippery slope in a destructive relationship.
... Franzen found himself in hot water after declining to appear on a book club segment of Oprah. He criticized her wildly popular club as lowbrow, forgetting that selection by Oprah virtually guarantees a sales increase of about a half-million copies. He also seemed ignorant to the fact that The Corrections is a perfect fit for Oprah's book club, which often features family sagas.
She still says nice stuff about the book here...
http://www.oprah.com/obc/pastbooks/jonathan_franzen/obc_20010914_about.jhtml
and here:
http://www.oprah.com/obc/omag/obc_omag_200109_c_books.jhtml
I see she's announcing a new book in a couple of days... if she were as real as she ought to be, she'd forgive Franzen and ask him if he'd like to appear again. I wonder if he'd agree to it? He's drop-dead gorgeous, btw:
