Tuesday, 06.17.08
A Club For Liberals
Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Elitism for Everyone
November 2001
Scott Stossel considers two very different book clubs to shed light on the Franzen Affair.
Exit Gutenberg
November 2000
Formed to imitate the highly-successful Conservative Book Club, the left-wing group will offer books chosen by a panel that includes novelists Michael Chabon, Erica Jong and Barbara Kingsolver and activists-cum-journalists like Todd Gitlin and the Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel. (Like any good information-age startup, it will likewise offer a social-networking component.) Whether it will succeed in an age when most book clubs -- the conservative one included -- are stagnating or taking losses is one question. Whether it will be good for liberals is another.
The announcement prompted David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon and Schuster, to crack: "One might say the entire book industry is largely a progressive book group." It's a line that hints at both the promise and the peril that ventures like this one hold out for the American Left.
For a long time, liberals have enjoyed the advantages that flow from dominating the commanding heights of culture, and the disadvantages as well. On the one hand, the near-universal dominance of left-of-center ideas in the publishing houses and TV networks, universities and Hollywood studios has given liberals tremendous power to set the terms of national debate. On the other, the establishmentarian spirit that comes with this sort of dominance has tended to breed cocooning, sclerosis, and the inability of many liberals to take their own side in an argument, which has often left them at the mercy of the tight-knit and pugilistic insurgents of the modern Right.
Enter the Bush-era progressive movement, which has set out to copy the tactics and institutions that paved conservatism's road out of the political wilderness -- the think tanks and political action committees, the media watchdog groups and talk radio shows, and yes, now a book club. This insurgent mentality holds out the promise that the liberalism of the future might have the best of both words: The power of an unchallenged establishment and the spirit of an embattled movement. But it holds out a danger as well: Namely, that left-wing activists might be copying conservatism just as it has entered its decadent phase, and they'll be stuck with a host of hyper-partisan, echo-chambering institutions that eventually leave them more cocooned and out-of-touch than ever.
So a word of advice: If liberals want to avoid the mistakes that have led the conservative movement to its present pass, perhaps they should consider joining not only the Progressive Book Club, but the Conservative Book Club as well.
The Reading MindCaleb Crain probes the reader's psyche and explores the decline of serious reading. |
No market for old mediaThe Economist ponders the fate of the book club in the Amazon age. |
A new endeavorKatrina vanden Heuvel announces the creation of the Progressive Blook Club and explains its functioning. |
Members onlyA Salon reporter takes readers behind the scenes at a conservative book club forum. |
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As the CEO of Progressive Book Club, I appreciate the comment above (as well as Ross's cautionary post). Fiction provides an elemental connection to the human story and struggle that non-fiction can rarely match. We are committed to finding illuminating, transporting fiction for our members. We have a number of strong titles on the list so far, but we always need more. The Junot Diaz will be listed shortly.
We welcome any and all suggestions from people whose lives have been moved by books. We want this to be fun and inspiring- not didactic and insular.
I haven't subscribed to The Atlantic since it tilted towards the right, and Mr. Douthat's comments seem to me an example of why I am unlikely to re-subscribe. There is virtually no rigid ideologically-driven left-wing in American politics. The Democrats are much less "left" than any European Social Democratic party, and "progressives" are a wildly disparate lot. Precisely for that reason, they do not breed many Ann Coulters and Bill O'Reillys, and such left-wing ideologues as exist have no following whatsoever in the United States. As a putative "progressive," I care about honest, fair argumentation and politics. I think most "progressives" do. Unlike the devotees of the right, progressives do not seek what Hannah Arendt refers to as "the victory of ideology over reality." The "unchallenged" liberal establishment to which Mr. Douthat refers is essentially centrist (the New York Times, for example) and its "radical" arguments are such things as advocating the separation of powers specified in the Constitution and condemning the immorality and uselessness of torture. That such arguments are seen as controversial and radical merely indicates the extent to which right-wing ideology has corrupted the United States. A progressive book club won't save the United States, but its chances of wreaking the smallest fraction of the devastation right-wing ideologues have wrought is nil.
Isn't it more progressive to buy from your local independent bookstore?
Greetings,
I came across your blog post regarding book clubs. I’m Jason Pfeifer, and some friends and I started an online service called Booksprouts, that allows people to create book clubs, choose books, invite friends, and read and discuss online. We are currently seeking people who might be interested in trying the site out, and giving us feedback on the service. We also welcome people who have blogs to write reviews of the site (good or bad) as a means of feedback. We’re really excited to hear what people think, and on how we can improve the site. It’s 100% free, by the way. Please feel free to check it out.
regards,
Jason Pfeifer Community Manager Booksprouts.com
By using this Service you agree not to post material that is obscene, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable. Although The Current does not monitor comments posted to this site (and has no obligation to), it reserves the right to delete, edit, or move any material that it deems to be in violation of this rule.
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I know the world needs intense, dedicated lefties who read lots of nonfiction that talks about all the things wrong but me, I prefer to take my medicine with a spoon full of sugar. Me, I like to read progressive fictions. I don't know the work of all the writers in the panel of folks who get to suggest books for this new book club. . . but out of the writers whose fiction I know, virtually all of them have written exceptional, progressive fiction that has the power to educate and inform, while imbuing the reader with the warmth of humanity that is always revealed in good storytelling.
Me, I am way burned out on hard lefty thinking. I think our culture is in trouble and if you want me in a book club, suggest fiction.
The 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to Junot Diaz for his first novel, "The Brief, Wandrous Life of Oscar Wao". This would make a great book club selection.
Barbara Kingsolver's first novel, The Bean Trees introduced this liberal babyboomer to the idea of contemporary Native Americans. I am ashamed to reveal that when I first read that book, I still thought of "Indians" in a very outdated way. With her novel, many issues related to Native Americans, as well as immigration, social class, economics. . . all kinds of great themes.
Michael Chabon has written a whole lot of awesome fiction, including his Pulitzer-winner, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. That book introduced me, in a deeply meaningful way, to anti-semitism during Hitler's rise in Nazi Germany, the life of impoverished Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side of NYC, the rise of the culture of comics and the rise of super heros, some of the tensions that became WWII. all kinds of progressive themes.
Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying" made a very importanta contribution to the dialogue of women's rights when it was published.
I think out literary culture is in danger but I don't exactly understand why. Nothing is more central to the human experience than story but we have drifted away from story, confusing to me.
I wish this book club well . . . but I feel burned out just thinking about it.
Posted by TreeFitz | June 17, 2008 7:26 PM