17 October 04
Writing for Oprah
When I lived in the 13th (Vietnamese) arrondissement in Paris in the early 80s, my then husband and I were befriended in the supermarket by a sephardic couple (he was learning English, overheard us, wondered about English conversation). They had a television, we did not. They invited us over regularly on Friday nights (their Shabbat evening featured an oil lamp and exquisite stewed clementines) to watch Apostrophes, a show on which the host, Bernard Pivot, interviewed about five or six authors whose books he had read (another gluttonous passion of his was wine, so when he did the wine week with Hugh Johnson and other oenophile writers, it was a double treat: watching this guy ENTHUSE was a spectacle).
The French in general have a much higher level of popular discourse than we do here or in Britain —philosophy is taught as a compulsory subject in high school, so even kids whose destiny is to become mechanics or plumbers have a vague understanding of Descartes and Hegel. Pivot’s show was watched by hundreds of thousands; book design is almost nonexistent as a profession except for children’s books, because the French buy BOOKS to read, not because they’re pretty or enticing on the cover (this would render them suspect, in fact). However, Gallimard, Grasset, and Garnier Flammarion rubbed their corporate hands and stocked up local bookstores in preparation for Friday nights when one of their own was to be featured on Apostrophes, because sales would skyrocket the next day. (Pivot saved them millions of francs in marketing.)
Oprah Winfrey triggers the same hand-rubbing mechanism in publishers here. The books she plugs are in general quite different; though I don’t watch her show (still don’t have a TV), I know enough from spending time in bookstores where the Oprah Book Club sticker pops out at you from all over the place (salivate, salivate go the publishers) that she leans heavily toward fiction about women in history whose stories were inadequately told (if at all). (The genre has become a self-perpetuating one—Maria of Alembic and I were giggling about this during a recent visit: imagine a woman in history about whom almost nothing is known, and make up her life story; get it published; get on Oprah. Pass it on.)
That Oprah is getting millions of Americans to read when they otherwise wouldn’t is a) astonishing b) mahvelous c) slightly sad. But I’m reminded by Siona who is going to lead a discussion about The Red Tent soon that I balk heavily at reading a book that is either recommended by Oprah or that is making the book club circuit. I confess this is probably just on principle. My sister has two small kids and felt her mind turning to jelly—a book club is perfect for her, because she doesn’t have the time or other resources to choose reading material for the couple of hours a week she can spare. (I did read The Red Tent on my sister’s recommendation and did enjoy it, but it adheres to the above formula perfectly.)
I hope my powers of discernment never deteriorate to the point where I can’t figure out what to read by myself, from reviews, or through the recommendations of intelligent, literate friends, many of whom I’ve never met but whose words I read daily in blogland.
The irony is I participate in a pre-digesting activity myself by sitting on the committee to choose next year’s Campus Community Book Project. The irony is that this committee has tremendous power and weight (hey, we do a lot of work for it outside our regular jobs; there has to be SOME payback). I sometimes wonder whether the book project shouldn’t be, instead, the whole campus being the committee: everyone reads all these books and then we vote…
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Hi my name is Heaven Smith. I have lived in Las Vegas for 12 years. In the 12 years that I have lived here, I have a really good friend her name is Jessica Turner. Jessica Turner is 16 years old going on 17. We have been friends for a little over 10 years. Since about 1994 we’ve been good friends. In 2001, I found out that my friend that I’ve known all this time has Hepatitis, and that she needs a liver transplant. Well I was young just as well as she was. She and I were only 4 or 5 .Jessica had to go to L.A. To be treated. She was in L.A for a little over 2 months. She had four hours to live on June 20, 2002.When they found her a new liver. They were yes, kind of in a hurry because, they had only four hours to save this girls life. So they did the surgery, and saved my friends life. All of this has cost her mom Jessie Turner a little over 350,000; including doctor bills, medicine, etc… She is a single mom raising two kinds all by her self, with no assistants from anybody. She can’t get any disability for her daughter, because they say she makes to much money. She works as a janitor at a school. How can she make to much when she has to pay: doctor bills, medicine, rent, bills in her house, and raise two kids, which are 16, and 4.Well, its been 3 years since her transplant and Jessica has been doing ok. Until about a two weeks ago, when they found out that the boy who gave her his liver was an alcoholic. So, now she has something on her liver called Cirrhosis. The doctors said that the boy had to be drinking since he was about 4 or 5 for him to of had that on his liver, that bad. On Monday September 19, 2005 she was admitted to sunrise hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada. That’s when Jessica found out about what was going on with her liver and how come her body was rejecting it these past three years. The doctors said that they were treating something, but they didn’t know what. This never showed up in any blood test or anything. Two days later on Wednesday 21, 2005 Jessica found out that she was fighting for her life. So, now Jessica and her mom Jessie have to go through this again. Jessica and Jessie had to sit there and wait for L.A to call and give Las Vegas the ok to give her treatment. Then finally on Friday the 23 L.A finally gave them the ok. But they said at anytime they can change there minds and have Jessica come back to L.A for another transplant if they think its going to be better for her .So as you can see things have not been going very well for Jessica and her mom. So, I want to ask you to help me help them in any possible way that you can even the littlest things can help. Please get in contact with me. My phone number is 702-648-4917. My address is 3028Vegas Dr. Las Vegas NV, 89106.
Thank you for taking the time to listen.
Heaven Smith.