Literary celebrities as counterpublics: A comparative study of Gao Xingjian and Toni Morrison

Despite its universal importance, the Nobel Prize in literature, which is based in Sweden and administered by the Swedish Academy, is a central European literary prize. And the prestige which the Nobel Prize bestows upon its winners is fuelled by a central-European type of fetishization of intellectual achievement, in which Nobel laureates are more known than they are read. Rather than being publicly recognized for their literary achievements, Nobel Prize-winning authors become literary celebrities who represent various kinds of Nobel-related capitals, including political capital, cultural capital and economic capital. In this article, I investigate on two non-European, Nobel Prize-winning authors, Gao Xingjian (the first Chinese-language Nobel author, 2000) and Toni Morrison (the first African American female Nobel author, 1993), and how they represent different conceptions of literary celebrities, and by extension different types of counterpublics. In order to study the relationship between Nobel literary laureates, storytelling and the representation of marginalized groups in the public domain, I examine and compare how Gao Xingjian’s and Toni Morrison’s Nobel lectures give voice to the Sinophone community and the African American community respectively. For Gao’s case, I study his Nobel lecture against the backdrop of the Chinese ‘Nobel complex’. In Morrison’s case, I examine her Nobel lecture as being re-presented in her appearances on Oprah’s Book Club, a reading initiative launched by the popular American television talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Sentimental Frauds

The 2006 class action against James Frey, concerning his fabrications in A Million Little Pieces, was the first suit of its kind in the United States. There is nothing new about false memoirs, so what can explain the lawsuit? When the book was promoted on “Oprah's Book Club,” viewers were invited to respond emotionally, and saw their responses as a form of testimony. Those responses produced a sense of betrayal and inauthenticity when Frey's falsehoods were revealed. This view finds support in the eighteenth‐century sentimental novel, which similarly linked readers' reactions to the author's emotional authenticity. Fraud was an ongoing concern for sentimental novelists, some of whom used elaborate editorial to ploys to disavow responsibility for the text, while others populated their novels with fraudulent characters, intended as foils for the protagonist. An investigation of these novels helps to reveal the implications of the Frey case for future claims of literary fraud.

The dispute between Jonathan Franzen and Oprah Winfrey

Following the publication of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections in September 2001, the novel was selected by Oprah's Book Club. Afterwards, Franzen commented negatively on the club's previ­ ous selections, upon which the invitation was withdrawn. The objective of this paper is to investigate the reasons behind Franzen's negative response, the proceeding media fall-out and the effects of the Winfrey - Franzen dispute.