Cynthia Ozick, my literary superhero, once penned an essay titled “Highbrow Blues.” The essay is about another favorite author of mine, Jonathan Franzen, whose mega-novel, The Corrections, was chosen for the famed Oprah Book Club. Franzen turned down the opportunity. To be chosen by Oprah was an embarrassment; he wanted people to understand that his novel was serious literature, or, as he put it, “in the high-art literary tradition.” Ozick writes, “He was scolded for elitism. He was scolded for chutzpah...
