XPost: rec.arts.sf.written   
   From: acwheele@optonline.net   
      
   Mike Schilling  wrote:   
      
   > Andrew Wheeler wrote:   
   > > Mike Schilling  wrote:   
   > >   
   > >> Andrew Wheeler wrote:   
   > >>> Mike Schilling  wrote:   
   > >>>   
   > >>>> Andrew Wheeler wrote:   
   > >>>>   
   > >>>>>   
   > >>>>> Oprah's seal of approval generally depresses the perceived   
   > >>>>> literary   
   > >>>>> worth of a book, by adding the stink of the unwashed hordes. See   
   > >>>>> Jonathan Franzen for the full flowering of this midnset.   
   > >>>>>   
   > >>>>> This is because Oprah's recommendations are followed by   
   > >>>>> middle-class,   
   > >>>>> middled-aged women who generally read for pleasure, and we all   
   > >>>>> know   
   > >>>>> that such bourgeois people can't be trusted to know *real*   
   > >>>>> literature.   
   > >>>>   
   > >>>> At least we've found one author who writes for art and cares   
   > >>>> nothing   
   > >>>> for money.  What a nitwit!   
   > >>>   
   > >>> You mean Franzen? No, he wanted money -- he wrote professionally.   
   > >>> He   
   > >>> just wanted to be able to specify his audience, which doesn't   
   > >>> work --   
   > >>> the audience chooses the writer, not vice versa.   
   > >>   
   > >> Are you saying that he was unaware of the size of the audience   
   > >> Oprah   
   > >> was about to bring him, before he went and insulted all of them?   
   > >   
   > > He was aware of it, certainly, but he didn't have a whole lot of   
   > > respect for it -- and he thought that their interest in his book   
   > > would kill the interest of those audiences he *did* respect.   
   >   
   > Assuming he was capable of  comparing the sizes of the two, he knew   
   > how much cash he was throwing away.   
      
   Cash isn't everything. It's quite possible to write one book, have it be   
   a huge success, and then be unable to ever write anything different.   
   (Look at Robert James Waller, who aparrently thought of himself *really*   
   as a tough, he-man kind of writer, but was saddled with a soppy female   
   romance-y audience after _Bridges of Madison Country_ and wasn't able to   
   do anything else.)   
      
   The world is steeped in irony; quite often we are deeply unfortunate in   
   our successes.   
      
   That's what Franzen was worried about: that he'd be typecast as a writer   
   of soppy books for housewives, and end up, ten years later, unable to   
   publish the books he really wanted to write. Even a *really* massively   
   selling book is a slim thing to hang an entire career on.   
      
   --   
   Andrew Wheeler   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)