This artist friend of mine and I argue back and forth a lot about the validity of convention versus experimentation in writing and in art. In general, we agree that people, or more specifically, readers, are comfortable with a certain kind of story and expect not to be challenged too much when they sit down. For most people, reading is a hobby, they see it as little different than going to the movies, and as with any hobby, their commitment to it is limited by the amount of free time and extra energy they have to spend on it. We agree that readers don't want their time wasted.

On the other side of this is the argument that most readers are far too lazy, too used to mediocrity, to accepting of the average and the banal, and that this is the result of, among other things, lazy writers. One of the reasons, the argument goes, that readers don't like to be challenged is because not enough writers do it, or do it effectively, to make it worth their time. And why not, really? The attitude seems to be that if a writer can be paid the same to put less energy and effort into something they write, why bother experimenting? Why bother risking the alienation of your audience when you can be safe and make money?

Literature is not the only place that this is occurring. Mediocrity runs just as rampant through the music industry, the film industry, even professional sports suffer, placing the same boring, simplistic, conventional fluff into the hands of millions of consumers, playing the same boring matches over and over for every increasing salaries. The performers, authors and athletes are afraid to really excel, to achieve true and lasting greatness, trading heroism in favor of fleeting celebrity. Encouraging them with every dollar are the millions of readers, audiences, and fans who, fearing something bigger, better, greater than their own average lives, continue to wallow in the middle-ness of it all.

I want to focus in here on fighting mediocrity in literature, since good books are something I love beyond a mere hobby, and it's something I am genuinely worried about the future of. A lot of this has to do with who I perceive to be the evil overlord of comfortable and conventional fiction, the champion of mediocre literature in America: Oprah, and her now defunct Oprah's Book Club list.

I should clarify that I don't really hate Oprah, I mean that's like hating an image in a photograph or cartoon. I don't know her and have rarely watched her show, so what's for me to hate? My despising her book club is another matter. It is built on a distaste for both a corporate marketing scheme, as much as for a dislike for the style and scope of the recommended books themselves.

Below, you'll find my own list, a list to counter six years of Oprah's club, to challenge the lazy, the boring, and the bored. I benefited a lot from reading all four of the books I have recommended, and recommend them in turn with this in mind, hoping that other readers will similarly benefit. All of this is done knowing full well that the majority of leisure readers out there have been (in some cases repeatedly) exposed to an Oprah club book but conversely, may never stumble upon the strange islands of thought found in these other places.

But before I give you the list I should clarify more specifically my opposition to Oprah's club which may justify, to some extent, the highly strange works on my own list. Part of it is the idea that her books are presented on a talk show, even or especially one like hers. If you've seen an episode recently what you witness is considered a "high class" talk show, Oprah is so famous and popular because she has veiled the normal parade of human suffering with all this garbage about spirituality and self-reliance. It saddens me that there are enough lonely, confused, discouraged people out there that are so desperately searching for fulfillment from entertainment that whatever Oprah provides them they are willing to cling to without question. I agree with Oprah: we need inspiration from someplace. We need spirituality from some place. We are all somehow, seeking meaning and fulfillment as we wander through our days and intake the culture sprayed at our senses from every direction like a neon fire hose. Yet, it seems to me that talk shows, as a dominant and widely accessible media form, even high class talk shows like Oprah, are a part of the problem, a cause of the very alienation and cultural ridicule that it's viewers feel. And the hosts of talk shows, including Oprah, continue to mine human suffering and smelt it down for conspicuous consumption like so many buckets of fried chicken or designer athletic shoes.

In the end, at least where the book club is concerned, Oprah's best intentions were corrupted by greed. Not necessarily her personal greed, but certainly the omnipresent corporate greed that quickly devolved the club into just another product tie-in, just another way to market a subculture to a populace that has none of their own.

Oprah announced the end of the club in April this year and now the task of spreading mediocre reading has been taken up by an even more vacuous and dimwitted talk show host, Kelly Rippa, Kathy Lee Gifford's replacement at Regis Philbin's side. Still, there is not a single mainstream bookstore I can walk into without slamming into a display of Oprah's books, the little "O" logo glaring at me from the corner of the dust jackets.

What really infuriates me, in the end, is that for it's six-year span, the club selections, the writing marketed to millions of readers as "literature," was the same conventional, emotionally anguishing character studies that can be witnessed nightly as the made-for-tv movie re-runs on the Lifetime network. Indeed, the majority of these books are grist for the very talk show mill Oprah runs: women recovering from sexual or physical abuse, ethnic or socioeconomic struggles, unrequited romance, historical drama, and none of it, not a single word, is at least presented in a fashion that challenges, illuminates, or validates the content. Why bother reading at all? Why not just watch more TV?

To counter this I am presenting below a list of books that are not only challenging and unconventional, but have benefited me as a reader, and as a thinking person. My desire here is to present a list that will encourage readers to step outside their comfortable bounds of convention as readers, but are still entertaining enough to be worth reading in and of themselves. I should clarify that none of these books are easy reads, they are strange, they are puzzling, they stretch expectations and even in some circumstances, patience. On the other hand, I consider myself an average guy, so if I was able to complete and indeed enjoy them, I know that my experience is not exceptional.

In terms of why these books are better than the one's on Oprah's list, I could name names. I could dissect Toni Morrison and Wally Lamb and so forth, and tell you why these writers are writing not literature, but intellectual entertainment. I could disassemble their narrative styles, their plot structures, even the effectiveness of their imagery and metaphor. Why waste that energy (and you, the reader's, valuable time) when I can just as easily tell you what books you could be reading, what works are worth your time, what novels would never have made it onto Oprah's list?

I feel this need to conclude my list with some words of encouragement. As consumers, as audience members, as readers, and especially, as money spenders, we are the motivating factor behind any industry-without us, no movie studio, record company, or publishing house has a reason to exist. If we can learn as consumers and to differentiate between things that merely entertain us and things that inspire us, and demand that inspiration, if we can realize that it is better to be filled than subdued, there a huge potential for change, for discovery, for the spread of greatness.

So here is my book club list, the 2002 Anti-Oprah Book Club: A Challenge to Mediocrity and Short-Attention Spans. Enjoy these books.

	Jesus' Son Denis Johnson		Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace		House of Leaves Mark Danielewski		The Wind-up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami

(Matthew Scrivner is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine)