CFP: Oprah Winfrey and Reading (10/1/04; collection)
Oprah Winfrey is arguably the most important influence on reading and
literacy in the past fifty years. She devotes considerable time on her
talk show to reading and talking about books, and every book she asks
her TV audience to read immediately becomes a bestseller. Furthermore,
Oprah's book club continues an ongoing literary debate in America. Its
middle-class women's readership provokes critical anxiety about the
state of American letters, and the ability of a commercialized American
culture to sustain artistic production, that has been a recurring theme
in American cultural debates since at least Van Wyck Brooks' "America's
Coming of Age." Given Oprah's importance in this long-standing culture