Oprah's Book Club

Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new book, usually a novel, for viewers to read and discuss each month.^[1][2][3] In total, the club recommended 70 books during its 15 years.

Due to the book club's widespread popularity, many obscure titles have become very popular bestsellers, increasing sales in some cases by as many as several million copies.^[4] Al Greco, a Fordham University marketing professor, estimated the total sales of the 70 "Oprah editions" at over 55 million copies.^[1]

The club has seen several literary controversies, such as

On March 25, 2019, Apple Inc. and Oprah announced a revival of Oprah's Book Club that aired on Apple TV+.^[6][7]

History

The book club's first selection on September 17, 1996, was the then recently published novel The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard.^[1] Winfrey discontinued the book club for one year in 2002, stating that she could not keep up with the required reading while still searching for contemporary novels that she enjoyed.^[8] After its revival in 2003, books were selected on a more limited basis (three or four a year).

Winfrey returned to fiction with her 2007 selections of The Road by Cormac McCarthy in March and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides in June. Shortly after its being chosen, The Road was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Winfrey conducted the first ever television interview with McCarthy, a famously reclusive author, on June 5, 2007.^[9]

The October 2007 selection was Love in the Time of Cholera, a 1985 novel by Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel García Márquez, greatly furthering not only the influence of the author in North America, but that of his translator Edith Grossman. Another work by Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, was a previous selection for the book club in 2004.^[10]

The last club selection was a special edition of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.^[3] It had disappointingly low sales figures.^[1]

Influence

In Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America, Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading—a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act—and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."^[11]

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Oprah phenomenon is how outsized her power is compared with that of other market movers. Some observers suggest that

National Public Radio's Terry Gross, radio personality Don Imus, and CBS' 60 Minutes. But no one comes close to Oprah's clout: Publishers estimate that her power to sell a book is anywhere from 20 to 100 times that of any other media personality.^[12]

In 2009, it was reported that the influence of Winfrey's book club had even spread to Brazil, with picks like A New Earth dominating Brazil's best-seller list.^[13]

The club generated so much success for some books that they went on to be adapted into films. This subset includes The Deep End of the Ocean and The Reader.^{[citation needed]}

At the show's conclusion in May 2011,

1. Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth (2005), 3,370,000 copies
2. James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, 2,695,500 copies
3. Elie Wiesel, Night, 2,021,000 copies
4. Cormac McCarthy, The Road, 1,385,000 copies

In a 2014 paper by economist

Scott Stossel, an editor at The Atlantic, wrote:

There is something so relentlessly therapeutic, so consciously self-improving about the book club that it seems antithetical to discussions of serious literature. Literature should disturb the mind and derange the senses; it can be palliative, but it is not meant to be the easy, soothing one that Oprah would make it.^[1]

Controversies

Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen felt conflicted about his book The Corrections being chosen as a book club selection. After the announcement was made, he expressed distaste with being in the company of other Oprah's Book Club authors, saying in an interview that Winfrey had "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 she's really fighting the good fight."^[17] Franzen added that his novel was a "hard book for that audience."^[18]

Following the criticism Franzen was uninvited from the televised book club dinner, and he apologized profusely.^[19] When Franzen was not invited back, he suggested that perhaps he and Winfrey could still have dinner but not on TV, but Winfrey was all booked up, and her spokesperson said she was moving on.^[18]

Other writers were critical of Franzen. Writing in The New York Times, author Verlyn Klinkenborg suggested that "lurking behind Mr. Franzen's rejection of Ms. Winfrey is an elemental distrust of readers, except for the ones he designates."^[20] Author Andre Dubus III wrote that, "It is so elitist it offends me deeply. The assumption that high art is not for the masses, that they won't understand it and they don't deserve it – I find that reprehensible. Is that a judgment on the audience? Or on the books in whose company he would be?"^[19]

In 2010, Oprah chose another of Franzen's books, Freedom, for her book club. She said that after she read a copy of the book Franzen had sent her with a note, she called the author and gained his permission.^[21] Oprah said, "we have a little history this author and I", but called the book "a masterpiece", and according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, she "seems to have forgiven the bestselling author after their 2001 kerfuffle".^[21][22]

James Frey

In late 2005 and early 2006, Oprah's Book Club was again involved in controversy. Winfrey selected

The media commented on the televised showdown.

Source:^[26]

The original book club ended with the conclusion of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011. See Oprah's Book Club 2.0 for the selections of the club's 2012 relaunch.

Streaming television series

On March 25, 2019, Apple Inc. and Oprah announced a revival of Oprah's Book Club that was released on Apple TV+.^[6][7]

References

Footnotes