Oprah (44 page)

“Perhaps in claiming
The Color Purple
in this way she was healing a wound she had acquired when Steven [Spielberg] refused to put her name on the marquee for the movie,” Walker suggested. “I know that hurt Oprah very deeply, and I think that she was trying to get back at him and gain some ground that she felt was lost. So she took over the whole thing, the whole marquee, without really thinking about me, or about whether it was fair….It was not particularly graceful on her part or Scott’s [Scott Sanders, the producer] part. I don’t know how they could do it, but since they did, I expect that they will live with it. You know I can.”

Neither Alice Walker nor Gloria Naylor could explain being omitted from Oprah’s Book Club, which from 1996 until she temporarily
discontinued it in 2002 concentrated on fiction by living authors, mostly female. She would announce her pick and then give viewers a month to read it. In the interim, her producers filmed the author at home, and over dinner with Oprah and a few fans discussing the book, scenes that were later woven into the show that was done about the book. Her first book club choice was
The Deep End of the Ocean,
by Jacquelyn Mitchard, a story about a mother whose child is kidnapped. Mitchard’s publicity director at Viking Penguin remembered Oprah calling her to say, “We’re gonna create the biggest book club in the world,” which was no exaggeration since
The Oprah Winfrey Show
was then broadcast in 130 countries. Oprah knew enough from previous book promotions to warn the publicist to print thousands of extra copies and then to get out of the way of the stampede. Mitchard’s book, which had a first run of sixty-eight thousand copies, sold more than four million copies after being chosen by Oprah’s Book Club.

“I want to get the country reading,” said Oprah, who recognized her power as a cultural force. For the next six years she chose books that mirrored her own interests, which some critics called “middle brow,” “sentimental,” and “commercial.” Mostly she chose sad stories written by women about women who survived misery and pain to find redemption. They were women like her, who triumphed over sexual abuse, careless mothering, racism, poverty, unrequited love, weak men, unwanted pregnancy, drugs, even obesity. “Reading is like everything else,” Oprah said. “You’re drawn to people who are like yourself.”

Oprah may have seen herself in Wally Lamb’s debut novel,
She’s Come Undone,
about an obese teenager overcoming rape and self-hatred, which became a 1997 book club choice. Twelve years later she joined forces with Tyler Perry to coproduce
Precious,
a film about an obese, pregnant Harlem teenage mother who overcomes rape, illiteracy, and an evil mother to make a new life for herself. The film was based on the novel
Push,
by Sapphire. For the most part, Oprah’s book club choices featured women who had been raped, molested, or murdered by men who committed adultery or acted abusively toward their families. In several of the novels, the men were threatening and the women nurturing. The
New York Times
literary critic Tom Shone said, “The Oprah
list offers us that rather ominous thing: not a world without pity, but a world composed of nothing but.”

Within the first year, Oprah’s Book Club had sold almost twelve million copies of contemporary fiction, a genre that typically sold no more than a few thousand copies per title per year, and according to
Publishing Trends,
an industry newsletter, she was responsible for $130 million in book sales. Consequently, she became known as “The Midas of the Midlist” for her ability to turn modestly successful novels into raging bestsellers. “This is a revolution,” said Toni Morrison, the first black writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Oprah introduced Morrison to her audience in 1996 as “the greatest living American writer, male or female, white or black.” Over the next six years she selected Morrison for the book club four times, even hosting a master class so the erudite writer could instruct Oprah’s audience on how to read a novel. Oprah began that show by reassuring viewers that she, too, had difficulty reading Toni Morrison, and revealed her conversation with the writer.

“Do people tell you they have to keep going over the words sometimes?” Oprah said.

“That, my dear,” said Toni Morrison, “is called reading.”

By the end of the first year of Oprah’s Book Club, publishers were reeling. “It’s like waking up in the morning and finding your husband has changed into Kevin Costner,” said one female publisher. They turned themselves inside out to accommodate Oprah, signing confidentiality agreements to keep secret her selection until she announced it on her show. They agreed to contribute five hundred free copies of the book for her to distribute to her audience, and to donate ten thousand copies to libraries. They dispatched sales reps to sell blindly: “There will be an Oprah Book Club selection in two months. I don’t know what it is. How many copies do you want to order?” In turn, booksellers had to sign confidentiality agreements not to open the boxes shipped with the Oprah stencil until the minute she announced her selection on the air. The anointed authors also signed affidavits swearing not to reveal their good fortune until Oprah had announced their books. They were permitted to tell their spouses but no one else, including parents, siblings, and children. In addition, publishers had to cede Oprah cover approval of the placement of the book club logo (a big yellow
O
with a white center) and agree to stop stamping books with the logo once the month was up. After that time, they could not even mention her book club in advertisements.

It’s hard to believe that Oprah’s crusade for literacy would trigger any criticism, but within months she had drilled into the raw nerves of literary elites. “Yes, her book club is a societal boon,” stated
The New Republic,
“but her taste for the soap-operatically uplifting is not.” The New York literary critic Alfred Kazin dismissed her book club as a “carpet bombing of the American mind.” But culture critic Camille Paglia defended Oprah: “I think the reaction against her is sheer intellectual snobbery. The idea that a black woman with a devoted audience could have this kind of impact jeopardizes [her critics’] role as tastemakers.” The carping reached a crescendo in 2001, when Oprah selected
The Corrections,
by Jonathan Franzen, for book club beatification. Franzen, whose first two novels combined sold a total of fifty thousand copies, seemed poised for gigantic commercial success as an Oprah pick, but he did not leap at the opportunity.

“The first weekend after I heard, I considered turning it down,” he said later. “Yes, I was very serious. I see this as my book, my creation,
and I didn’t want that logo of corporate ownership on it….It’s not [just] a sticker. It’s part of the cover. They redo the whole cover. You can’t take it off. I know it says Oprah’s Book Club, but it’s an implied endorsement, both for me and for her. The reason I got into this business is because I’m an independent writer, and I didn’t want that corporate logo on my book.”

He went on to say that being selected for Oprah’s Book Club did as much for her as it did for him. “[My book with three hundred thousand copies in print] was already on the best-seller list and the reviews were pretty much all in. What this means for us is that she’s bumped the sales up to another level and gotten the book into Walmart and Costco and places like that. It means a lot more money for me and my publisher, [and] it gets that book—that kind of book into the hands of people who might like it.”

Franzen defined his book—“that kind of book”—as in the “high-art literary tradition,” whereas he said most of Oprah’s books were merely “entertaining.” He added, “She’s picked some good books, but she’s picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself, even though I think she’s really smart and really fighting the good fight.”

Franzen seemed to have publicly dismissed Oprah as a carnival barker, and she reacted by rescinding her invitation. She announced to her viewers, “Jonathan Franzen will not be on
The Oprah Winfrey Show
because he is seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection. It is never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or cause anyone conflict….We’re moving on to the next book.”

Franzen told
USA Today
that he felt “awful” about what he had done. “To find myself being in the position of giving offense to someone who’s a hero—not a hero of mine per se, but a hero in general—I feel bad in a public-spirited way.”

Flabbergasted,
The Washington Post
’s literary critic, Jonathan Yardley, called Franzen’s words “so stupid as to defy comprehension. He did everything he could to take Oprah Winfrey’s money and then run as far away from her as possible.” Chris Bohjalian, whose novel
Midwives
was the twenty-first book chosen by Oprah, said, “I was angry on behalf of the book club, and I was appalled as a reader who appreciates the incredible amount that Oprah Winfrey has done for books.” He added that sales of
Midwives
jumped from 100,000 copies to 1.6 million after it became an Oprah pick.

Franzen was reviled from coast to coast.
Newsweek
called him “a pompous prick,”
The Boston Globe
called him an “ego-blinded snob,” and the
Chicago Tribune
called him “a spoiled, whiny little brat.” Stepping in to defend him, David Remnick, editor in chief of
The New Yorker,
said, “I think the world of Jonathan. I think he’s sorry about Oprah, but it’s not a monumental issue. Everyone steps on someone’s toes sometimes.” E. Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
The Shipping News,
also came to Franzen’s defense. “Jon was so right,” she said. “He objected because he didn’t like a lot of Oprah’s choices. And I can say this because I know none of my books will ever make Oprah’s list. Some of the books she picks are a bit sentimental. I see where she’s coming from, and she’s done marvelous things for books and readers. But for someone to think that it’s no kudo to be accepted on a list of sentimental books is understandable.”

In November 2001, a month after his disinvitation by Oprah, Jonathan Franzen won a National Book Award for
The Corrections,
and a few months later she decided to discontinue her book club. Our Lady of Literacy had had it. “It has become harder and harder to find books on a monthly basis that I feel absolutely compelled to share,” she said. “I will continue featuring books on
The Oprah Winfrey Show
when I feel they merit my heartfelt recommendation.”

If she appeared overly sensitive to public criticism, it was because she had become accustomed to getting perpetual praise from the press—laudatory profiles, admiring interviews, adoring cover stories. With the exception of the tabloids, the U.S.S.
Oprah
sailed mostly smooth seas. Now she had hit a little turbulence over her lack of literary taste, and being derided as Our Lady of the Lowbrows had nicked her in a vulnerable spot. Never particularly proud of her education from the historic black college of Tennessee State University, she felt inferior around her Ivy League contemporaries. She knew her success and celebrity lifted
her into most social circles, because, as she said many times, money opens every door in America. But the one marked “High-Art Literary” seemed to have slammed shut on her.