In the wake of Oprah Winfrey choosing three books by William Faulkner for her Oprah’s Book Club, and thereby creating yet another massive media stir, novelist Marianne Apostolides says, “What I want to know is why we can’t let it go—why this need, within the literary community, to focus on the lady?” In an animated discussion at Bookninja, Apostolides and novelist Heather Birrell debate the significance of the Oprah phenomenon. Apostoolides says that “what’s really wrong” with the phenomenon is: “1. The concentration of power over what gets read. 2. The homogenization of literary culture (i.e. what gets published). 3. The cooptation of literature by electronic media-movies, TV, computers, video games, and other gadgets that fit snugly into palms or other body parts, I’m sure. 4. The cult of personality.” Replies Birrell, “I like Oprah because even though she reads it, she’s not Literature.”