Anna Karenina and Oprah

[Cole M. Crittenden]

It is worth remembering Tolstoy's own opinions of those who would professionally mediate the artistic experience.  As he writes in "What is Art?": "The second condition [for the spread of counterfeit, false art] is the recently emerged art critism - that is, the evaluation of art, not by everyone, and above all not by ordinary people, but by learned, and therefore perverted and at the same time self-assured, individuals."  Whatever our opinions of Oprah's recommending (and talking about) a novel we claim as our own, we can be sure that it was precisely this type of mass readership for whom Tolstoy wrote.

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