Fool-proofing the Oprah Book Club
Credit’s due the Oprah Book Club for choosing Elie Wiesel as their next Club Laureate. Night is a wonderful book deserving of continued support for a writer who still writes and has long brought gravitas to my cross-river neighbors at Boston University. A great source of pride, that.
But, while picking Wiesel certainly happened long ago, the credit of good luck goes to the Book Club for picking a fool-proof writer after yet another book clubbee became the center of controversy. James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, after several weeks now remains the source of many a reader’s vapors-suffering ever since reports showed items from his memoir to be entirely made up. Eh, whatever. I’ve been through a writing program and can vouch in Frey’s defense that there aren’t many unembellished lives worth reading about.
Unless it’s Elie Wiesel’s, and thus the luck in the Wiesel appointment. What’s a critic gonna do, accuse him of not being in Europe in the 1940′s?
I’m interested to see the new translation of Night, which was made by Wiesel and his wife from the original Yiddish. Good translation takes such intimacy. One would assume Marion Wiesel would have that advantage.
