CHICAGO (AP) — Winfrey chooses Franzen’s Freedom for book club USA chose Jonathan Franzen’s new book, Freedom, for her book club on Friday, calling it a “masterpiece” nine years after she cancelled his appearance on her TV talk show when he expressed ambivalence over her endorsement of one of his previous works.
“I am really betting that Freedom by Jonathan Franzen will end up being for you, as it is for me, one of the best novels you have ever read,” Winfrey said on a live episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show as she announced her 64th book club selection. “When is the last time you heard that? I am not kidding.”
Winfrey made the pick 14 years to the day from when she announced her first book club selection — Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean.
In 2001, Winfrey picked Franzen’s The Corrections for her book club. But then Franzen called some of Winfrey’s book club picks “schmaltzy” and worried about his place in the “high-end literary tradition.”
But at the same time, he praised Winfrey for making some good choices and for “fighting the good fight”. He apologised quickly and repeatedly.
Winfrey told viewers she read Franzen’s new novel after the 51-year-old sent her a copy over the summer along with a note. She said she declared it a “tour de force” after reading the first chapter and called Franzen to ask his permission to make it an Oprah Book Club selection.
“We have a little history, the author and I,” Winfrey said. “And after careful consideration the author said yes.”
Winfrey’s book club pick tells a story she loves well, one of redemption. It involves a Minnesota family and Winfrey described it to her viewers as a “saga that has everything. It has sex and love, even rock and roll, and everything you want in a book.”
She lauded the book, asking her viewers to buy or download a copy. She said Franzen would appear on her show. He was not on Friday’s show.
“Now you haven’t heard me say this word often, but this book is a masterpiece,” Winfrey said.
Selection to the popular TV talk show host’s book club has become the publishing world’s surest and swiftest path to the top of best seller lists, usually guaranteeing hundreds of thousands of new sales.
But Freedom is already a critical and popular success. Released in late August, Freedom was virtually canonised by critics before publication and has been topping best-seller lists. Franzen was the subject of a Time Magazine cover story, titled, Great American Novelist.
The Oprah Book Club logo will appear on new shipments of the novel. Freedom had already gone into a second printing, with 300,000 copies in print, and is virtually assured of selling hundreds of thousands of copies.
Winfrey also addressed rumours that Friday’s pick would be her final book club selection.
“Not true. Not true,” she said. “I’ll have books all season long and when I move over to OWN, my new network, the book club is coming with me.”
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