Oprah Winfrey picks Franzen; 'feud' over

Oprah Winfrey - who as you know is the most important book seller on the planet - will select Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" as her book club selection tomorrow. Under normal circumstances - no big deal. Franzen's  novel has been well-reviewed, and it seems like the sort of thing O's audience would be into.

But ... Franzen was also "disinvited" from the club about 10 years ago when he had the temerity to reflect on the wisdom of her selecting "The Corrections" for the Club. The controversy was absurdly overblown, and the world was left with some sort of impression of Franzen as an obnoxious elitist, while O - as always - came out smellin' like a rose because all she was doing was promoting his book. In fact, all Franzen did, best I can tell, is muse about the value of being in Oprah's club. He later told a U.K. paper, the Telegraph: "I was particularly dismayed by the ridiculous media image of me as some raging ivory tower elitist. You had to quote very, very selectively to make me into that. In fact, The Corrections was a good Oprah choice because I have low taste myself, to use terminology in which we're stuck..."