University of Arkansas Press Releases First In-Depth History of Oprah’s Book Club

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.- Adored by its fans, deplored by its critics, the Oprah Book Club has been at the center of arguments about cultural authority and literary taste since its inception in 1996. Virtually everyone seems to have an opinion about this monumental institution with its revolutionary and controversial fusion of the literary, the televisual, and the commercial. “Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America” by Kathleen Rooney, published by the University of Arkansas Press (cloth, $24.95, ISBN 1-55728-7821) is the first in-depth look at the phenomenon that is the OBC.

Rooney combines extensive research with a lively personal voice and engaging narrative style to untangle the myths and presuppositions surrounding the club and to reveal its complex and far-reaching cultural influence, confronting head-on how the club became a crucible for the heated clash between “high” and “low” literary taste.

Comprehensive and up-to-date, “Reading with Oprah” features a wide survey of recent commentary and describes why the club closed in 2002, as well as why it resumed almost a year later in 2003 with a new focus on “great books.” Rooney also provides the most extensive analysis yet of the Oprah Winfrey-Jonathan Franzen contretemps.

Through her close examination of each of the club’s selected novels, as well as extensive personal interviews and correspondence with OBC authors, including Barbara Kingsolver, Wally Lamb, Jacquelyn Mitchard and Sue Miller, Rooney demonstrates that in its tumultuous eight-year history the OBC has occupied a place of prominence unique in the culture for which neither its supporters nor detractors have previously given it credit.

Sven Birkerts, author of “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age,” describes the book as “a steady, smart look at a situation that is both fascinating in its own right and deeply revealing about 'how it is’ in our cultural life these days.”

Kathleen Rooney is a writing instructor at Emerson College. Winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize in 2004 and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry Magazine, she is editor of Redivider, and has published a number of poems, articles, and reviews in The Nation, The Harvard Review, The Boston Review, Puerto Del Sol and Cimarron Review. This book grew out of an article she wrote for The Nation about her visit to the show where Winfrey announced the end of the book club.