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Talk is no longer cheap. Moreover, according to most major book publishers and retailers it's been downright difficult to find in most communities across the country-that was, at least, until the recent rise in the popularity of book clubs. Although the origins of this renewed popularity are difficult to trace fully, book publishers have responded to this growing interest among readers with various forms of promotional support. Demonstrating that talk, like text, "has its price," publishers and book retailers are peddling the "fine art of conversation" through hundreds of "Reading Group Discussion Guides" similar to the one composed for Margaret Atwood's novel The Robber Bride which begins with the following excerpt:
Remember the days when you could spend hours talking with friends over coffee about an idea- before the numbing effect of too much television, and too little time, when the excitement of discovering a new writer was something you just couldn't wait to share? ... The discussions went on over lunch, between meetings, and in the elevators. Great, lively talk about men, women, war, sex, childhood, lies, truth; it was all there, just waiting to be explored.... These pleasures are returning for thousands of Americans, as the fine art of conversation makes a comeback in living rooms and bookstores across America. The evidence is the near explosive growth of book groups and salons from coast to coast. (1)
As forecasted in the above excerpt, the "fine art of conversation" has certainly made a comeback of sorts in communities across the country where growing numbers of men and women gather regularly in homes and bookstores with fellow community members to talk with one another about the books they have read. As Elizabeth Long tells us in "Women, Reading, and Cultural Authority," these community-based book club gatherings provide insight into how at least one segment of the reading public "responds to the economic power of the modern book industry and to the cultural authority of the critical establishment" (591). Elsewhere, Long has argued for the need to recognize some of the ways that such cultural and institutional authorities shape "popular" reading practices by officially outlining what books are worth reading as well as how to read them:
[T]his authoritative framing has effects on what kinds of...