I've been seeing some comments from people who are taken aback by Oprah's latest book club pick, Cormac McCarthy's The Road (presumably because it has such a bleak style and masculine focus). I'm not surprised at all. Here's the editor's description:

"Ask any literary critic*--and most discerning readers--to name the greatest living American novelist, and Cormac McCarthy is sure to surface as a major contender. Best known for his powerful regional fiction (Sutree, the Border Trilogy, Blood Meridian, et al), this dazzling prose stylist crafts tragic, unforgettable stories suffused with violence, alienation, and an undeniably apocalyptic vision. Now, in what we consider McCarthy's best novel to date, the apocalypse itself becomes a set piece. Unfolding in a terrifying future where Armageddon has been waged and lost, The Road traces the odyssey of a father and his young son through a desolate landscape of devastation and danger. Powerful, moving, and extraordinary by any standard, this is McCarthy at his greatest and gravest."

See, when I see words like "powerful", "tragic", "alienation", and "devastation", I think: Wow, this book is right up Oprah's alley. I'm convinced that she chooses these titles strictly so that her followers give up on reading altogether and watch TV instead, and I'm sticking to this theory until she chooses a book that's actually halfway readable. (If you're looking for suggestions, Oprah, try Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me.)

*Not this one.