Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [137]
She was lionized by her publisher on Saturday evening of that weekend, at one of the most elaborate and expensive parties Alfred A. Knopf, the most prestigious publishing company in the book business, had ever thrown for an author. The exterior of Miami’s International Palace was lit in purple as an homage to Oprah’s favorite color and her first movie. Within the skyscraper, tables groaned with platters of shrimp the size of iPods for the eighteen hundred guests who swarmed around silver chafing dishes brimming with pasta, haunches of prime rib, and strips of sizzling sirloin. Tuxedoed waiters raced back and forth with trays of crystal flutes bubbling with champagne for booksellers more accustomed to cheap wine in paper cups.
Wearing a bright aqua suit, a once-again-thin Oprah arrived on Stedman’s arm and was introduced by the chairman of the board of Random House, Inc. She charmed everyone by saying she was so excited about her book that she wished she could get on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote it. Although she had not yet started Oprah’s Book Club, everyone knew what she could do for books she liked. Just two weeks earlier, she had taken her cameras to Iowa to do a segment on The Bridges of Madison County. The weeper was already a bestseller, but Oprah’s show triggered an additional demand for 350,000 copies.
So it was understandable that as the featured speaker at the book and author breakfast the next morning, she would be received like Cleopatra on her barge for all of Rome to honor. The crowd was wall-to-wall and the applause was deafening as she approached the microphone. She began by saying that she thought everyone should sit down and write a book about themselves. “You can save yourself a huge therapy bill,” she said. “For me, working on this book the past year and a half has been like ten years of therapy. I’ve learned so much about myself.” She heaped praise on her collaborator, Joan Barthel, and quickly assured everyone that she had not written a celebrity kiss-and-tell. “I haven’t done that much anyway, and besides, the people I did it with, you don’t know ’em, so … you don’t have to worry about that,” she said to peals of laughter.
Turning on all of her telegenic charm, Oprah dazzled the booksellers with her often-told anecdotes—which, to those who had never seen her show, seemed fresh and spontaneous. She talked about growing up as “a poor little ole nappy-headed colored chile” who wanted to be Diana Ross “or just somebody supreme”; how she had to hide in a closet with a flashlight to read because her family made fun of her for being “an old bookworm” and accused her of “trying to be more than everybody else” because she loved books. She talked about her weight, how her bosses in Baltimore tried to make her over, and how she ended up bald. “You know you’ve got a struggle on your hands when you’re black and fat and bald in America, and you’re a woman on television,” she said. Rocking with hilarity, the crowd clapped until their hands hurt.
“It doesn’t matter how victimized any of us have been, we’re all responsible for our lives,” Oprah said. “This is a book about taking responsibility for the victories in your own life. Mine has been a wondrous amazing life. I grew up with feelings of not being loved, and that’s why I feel so blessed to speak to 20 million viewers everyday who write … to tell me that they love me.” She said she was going to bring people into bookstores who had never before been in them, words that fell on the assembled booksellers like manna from heaven. The idea of an adoring audience of twenty million potential book buyers made them giddy with anticipation. She concluded