Last night, while shopping for mittens at Target, I nearly dropped my basket to see Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth on the shelves next to the chick lit. And then I saw the "Oprah" sticker and laughed, thinking, "Well, good! Now I'll finally have some decent help in my efforts to rescue Buck from literary neglect."
But Oprah should have chosen Of Men and Women if she really wanted to get people talking.
I'm not saying The Good Earth is irrelevant by any means. I remember the day after I finished the novel, back in July, I was suddenly riveted to a story on the front page of The New York Times about the son of Chinese farmers who committed suicide when he was barred from taking a college entrance examination because he didn't have the money to pay the proper fees. Because of Buck's effect on my imagination, suddenly this young man's plight seemed that much more vivid and real . I had just visited his world. The newspaper story confirmed that not much has changed for the Chinese peasants, for those who remain on their tiny farms, since the early part of this century--except, as confirmed in a later story, that now they might not even have clean water to drink thanks to the MSG factories contaminating the rivers.
The tandem effect of fiction and journalism really bumped my global social consciousness up a few notches. I thought, "If this young man's death appears on the cover of The New York Times then I must not forget about him or the reason he died. And I should seek out some way to help."
Maybe I should alert Oprah to the connection.
9:28:56 AM 
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