Earlier this month, someone in Oprah Winfrey's office advised the big O to pick Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections as the next selection of the Oprah Book Club. Oprah did, instantly bestowing wealth and a vastly-increased readership upon Franzen.

Like most people, Franzen wondered what lay down the road after his short stint as a literary megastar. Problem is, he did it publicly, declaring that he wasn't sure he should accept Oprah's offering. That such largesse just might annoy his "serious" readers, who would now consider his work declasse and unworthy. His other big concern was the big "Oprah" sticker that his book would have to carry as an official selection of the book club.

Franzen is, in a word, a weenie. He thinks too much. Does he think his hero Don DeLillo (author of White Noise and Underworld, among many other books) would turn down a chance to appear on Oprah and wax avuncular for an hour? Hell no. He'd have fun. And buy himself a swank new bomb shelter with the proceeds.

I have a friend who used to work at a prestigious book publishing company. This publisher specialized in voluminous works of scholarly abstraction written by authors who hold chairs at renowned universities. Books that have limited (though certainly influential) audiences. If there are any authors anywhere who could (and should) be immune from the transitory (albeit lucrative) charms of being anointed by Oprah, these folks are they.

You know the punchline. Whenever my friend and his coworkers spoke to their authors, often the first question from the writer was "Can you get me on Oprah?"

And if you've been paying any attention to the "books news" section in your newspaper (if you have one, of course), you know that Oprah officially disinvited Franzen. His book is still a selection of her club (which means lots of people will still buy it), but he won't be appearing on the show.

Win-win, if you ask me.

I heard an interview with Franzen on NPR's Fresh Air program a couple of weeks ago. Some of the comments he made in that interview were the grist for Oprah's dismissal of him, but there was one part of the interview in particular that bothered me, a short tangent that I haven't heard anyone discuss at all. Franzen fretted that his selection by Oprah would pigeonhole him as a "chick author."

Franzen has this theory that male writers are among the most disenfranchised folks in the literary world. Because women buy and read more books than men, Franzen thinks this means that lots of good male authors just aren't getting a fair shake while lots of mediocre female authors are raking in the dough. Then he cited Jane Smiley and others as examples of female authors who will always have an audience just because they're women.

That's like saying Philip Roth or T.C. Boyle will always audiences because they're men. Jane Smiley will always have an audience because she can write well and generally tells a good yarn. Philip Roth will always have an audience because he's brilliant and uses the English language in smashingly creative ways. T.C. Boyle will always have an audience because he writes black comedy better than almost anyone around. Gender just doesn't enter into it.

Yes, most books are bought by women. And yes, women sell more books than men. But what kind of books? Can you name the best-selling author in the world? No, you can't, because she doesn't put her name on her books. She writes one or two romances a month and they sell like crazy. None of her books hit the bestseller list, but she writes so many (and they do sell very well) that her total is staggering.

Cheap romances and mysteries and the like aren't the kind of books that Franzen is talking about, of course. But those are the kinds of books most people buy. In general, I don't like to make distinctions between "high" and "low" literature (every year I write a few letters trying to get Elmore Leonard the Nobel Prize), but only certain people are likely to bite into a Franzen book without a little encouragement. Among the relatively small crowd of folks who might pick up The Corrections without any of the attendant O and non-O hype (this would include me and most of my friends), men are as likely to read as women. In my circle, the guys are just as likely to have read something interesting as the women. And I bet the same is true for Franzen's cozy coterie as well.

Franzen, one of those insular New York literary circle types (did I mention he was a weenie?), can't have it both ways. If he wants to style himself as a "serious" writer, then all this carping about audiences and the like is absurd. The reason most writers write is, well, the cathartic act of writing itself. Publishing is a bonus. I've written more than 5,000 record reviews over the last 10 years. I've written more than 250 of these LCN columns over the last five years. Not unlike Calvin Trillin's old contract with the Nation, my remuneration for all that work runs into the mid two figures. But I still write. And despite his weenie ways, Franzen would write even if he didn't have a sweet contract for his next book. Indeed, even if he was a woman guaranteed one of those massive paydays he envisions reserved for those of the female gender, he would write.

And if he would quit whining so much, maybe he'd write better books. But that's just my opinion.

Jon Worley has written three novels which have failed to find publishers despite their decidedly mediocre quality. He's writing a fourth one anyway.