DEAR OPRAH
Dear Oprah Winfrey,
I am writing to inform you that I cannot accept your kind offer to name this book as your October 2007 selection for Oprah’s Book Club™. I realize this letter may come as something of a shock, given my reputation for shameless self-promotion, which I hope precedes me. I also realize that authors who cross you tend to wind up with an awful lot of egg on their faces. Fortunately, I walk around most days with a four-cheese omelette hanging from my chin, so no problem there.
The truth is, I don’t give a shit how many books you sell. I don’t care how much dough you give away, or how many famous people you make cry. At the end of the day, you’re a TV star. You show up on a tiny screen and give lonely people a place to park their emotions for an hour. You’re the world’s leading retailer of inspiration. You’re the Wal-Mart of Hope.
Literature, though, isn’t supposed to be a convenient shopping experience. It’s a solitary imaginative endeavor aimed at arousing the anguish hidden inside us, the bad news of our hearts. There’s no celebrity shrink on hand to dispense hankies, no empathic host to buzz-manage our tears. There’s no assurance that our frail human experiment will end in triumph by the final commercial break. You tell me, Oprah: Should the Savior of Publishing be available with your basic cable package?
I can already hear your fans howling for my head. But from where I’m sitting, you’re just another zillionaire narcissist for whom fame (the illusion of unconditional love) has become the true goal and your public acts of good merely the means. Whatever noble cause you’re pimping this week, in the end you’re pimping yourself. Because if you really gave a shit about all us little people, you’d hoist your fluctuating ass out of the luxury self-help suite and express some outrage over the state of this nation: the young Americans snuffed over in Iraq, the poor ones economically sodomized by your pal Dubya, a realpolitik that dependably rewards bigotry over policy.
But outrage isn’t your thing, Oprah. To express such a vulgar emotion would violate the dictates of the brand. All we have to do to solve the crisis of empathy in this country is buy your lousy magazine, right? The one with you on the cover every single fucking month. Forget confronting evil. Just keep dreaming and hoping and snuffling with Oprah, keep gulping down the aspirational sugar pills. What a crock.
The answer is no.
Until we meet again,
Phil Donahue
P.S. Kidding! My real name is Steve Almond.
Dear Ms. Winfrey,
I’m not sure if you got the last letter I sent. I hope not. I don’t want to make excuses, so I’m not going to mention that I suffer from depression, or that my infant daughter was ill, or that I’d just finished a truly disappointing blackened grouper sandwich that left me queasy and out of sorts.
The point is contrition. I’d like to apologize for the things I wrote. I talked this over with some of the folks at my publishing house yesterday—there were twelve in all, I guess—and they felt that I had done both of us a disservice by refusing your gracious (potential) offer to select my book for Oprah’s Book Club™. Their contention was that insulting you may have gratified my own righteous indignation, but did little to promote the greater cause we share. That crack about your ass, for instance. I didn’t mean that it literally fluctuates.
A lot of this boils down to insecurity. There’s a part of me that worries you won’t really choose my book for Oprah’s Book Club™. The letter was my way of rejecting you before you could reject me. Pretty third-grade on my part.
I have deep respect for the work you do, not just as a media figure, but as a literary philanthropist. You could easily have hitched your wagon to the Freakshow Express, like Springer. Instead, you’ve spent your cultural capital encouraging people to read writers like Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. That I failed to acknowledge this reflects nothing beyond my own chronic bitterness.
This is all by way of saying that, on the off chance that you have read my previous letter, I hope you will file it under Unintended Satire, or perhaps Temporary Dementia. Rest assured, I have no plans to pull a Franzen. It would be an honor to appear on your show. And I promise not to jump on your couch! (Unless you’d like me to.)
Yours in apology & admiration,
Steve Almond
Dear Oprah,
This is going to seem a little crazy, but I’m enclosing another copy of the letter I sent along earlier this week. I know how much mail you must get. Better safe than sorry.
Great show yesterday, by the way! I have to admit that I had not given a great deal of thought to the challenges of menopause, but I appreciated how you handled the jerk who referred to his wife as Señora Hot Flasha. My wife and I had a long talk after the show and I came away with a whole new perspective. It’s like you say, “Menopause isn’t a process, people, it’s a journey.”
Let’s talk soon,
Steve
P.S. I’ve enclosed a photo of our little angel. That’s her peeking out from an official Oprah 4 Prez tote bag. What can I tell you—she’s a fan!
Oprah,
One thought I had, in terms of planning—one of the essays in my book is about Condoleezza Rice. Long story short, I slam her pretty hard. I’m thinking it might be cool to do a show that’s about “healing” the rift between Condoleezza and myself. She could (for instance) apologize for the lies that got us into the Iraq war, and I could apologize for referring to her as “the President’s office wife.” Then we might hug. Or do some music together. Or both.
Think about it.
Steve
Oprah!
Just a silly note to tell you that my wife and I rented The Color Purple. Again. What can I tell you? You got jobbed at the Oscars. Your performance made Anjelica Huston’s look like dinner theater. Also: my publicist was wondering when I might hear back from you. (I explained about your schedule, but you know how these people get.)
Also also: Would it be too forward of me to refer to you, in future correspondences, as my homegirl?
Oprah in ’08!
Steve
Dearest O,
Last night I was looking through The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey: A Portrait in Her Own Words and I came across this quote:
“I don’t do anything unless it feels good. I don’t move on logic. I move on my gut. And I have a good gut!”
You were talking about your business philosophy. But it got me thinking about your actual gut, and the way the tabloids cover it so obsessively. It’s like, in a way, your body has become public property, up there on display for everybody to gawk at and poke and prod. I’m sure this thought has occurred to you a few million times, but here you are, the most influential black woman in human history, and somehow you’re still the white man’s slave.
That’s fucked up.
Steve
Oprahlove,
I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I get a bad feeling about Stedman. Every time I see a photo of him, I think: Snidely Whiplash. Lord knows you’ve waited long enough to find a man who will treat you right. But I can’t help feeling he’s sponging off you. It’s like when TomKat snubbed you for their wedding. I know you rose above that, but when I think about that ungrateful little Scientology hobbit and the way he frog-marches his stick-figure wifey around—I don’t know, it just gnaws at me.
I guess I feel kind of protective of you is what I’m saying.
I hope that’s all right.
Steve
Special Ops!
Given the hours you keep, I’m not upset you haven’t yet responded to my letters. I will say that certain folks at my publishing house have begun to express some concern. But I’m not even writing about that.
I’m writing because I had this strange dream last night. I was back in California (where I grew up) wandering through a desert; it must have been the Mojave. I was very weak and my tongue had swollen into a giant cigarette filter and I could feel this immense grinding weight on my shoulders. Every few steps the sun struck like a whip. The only thing I could think to do is what you advise in A Journal of Daily Renewal. I closed my eyes and burrowed into my spirit place and even though I was technically in the midst of a dream, I could see what the dream meant: I was experiencing the hardships my ancestors had as slaves in Egypt. I was still carrying around all that negative energy. So I stopped dead in my tracks and took ten cleansing breaths. When I opened my eyes the weight was gone and I was standing before the gates of the Promised Land. Only the Promised Land wasn’t in Palestine, it was in Montecito. It was your 42-acre mountain view estate! I opened my right fist and there was a slip of paper with the security code for the gate. So up the winding path I flew, past the Lake of Serenity and the Rejuvenation Redwoods and the blinding lawns. It all looked exactly like it does in the Special Collector’s Edition DVD of Oprah’s Legends Weekend. Then I came to a huge house, which, it turned out, belonged to the caretaker, who was Rosie O’Donnell, only she was thin so I didn’t recognize her at first. She pointed to a speck in the distance. “You want the Main House, spanks.” It took a long time to reach the main house, even without the stone block on my shoulders. There were little golf carts around, but I knew that would be cheating. I was on a walkabout, not a golfcartabout. Finally, I reached your home and I rang the doorbell and banged on all the doors and windows. But you didn’t answer. No one answered.
Bottom-line me here: Should I be worried?
Steve
Dear Oprah:
It’s been a few months now since we began this correspondence, and I have to be honest. I’m not sure you’re holding up your end of the bargain. I realize we got off on the wrong foot. It’s also true that one or more of my previous letters may have been written under the influence of mild psychotropics. But that’s not the issue. The issue is business. You’ve got 20 million readers to satisfy and I’ve got a book so hot it’s burning a hole in my publisher’s panties. I’m trying to tell you that, from my end, all is forgiven.
Also: I’m not going to stop writing until we make this happen. To quote a certain someone, “I don’t believe in failure!”
Still at the same address,
Steve Almond
Dear Oprah,
You’re going to think wow when you open the enclosed gift.
You recognize that little face, no?
Need a hint?
It’s my daughter! Josephine.
She’s a lot bigger than the photo I sent along four months ago, right? Try 21 pounds (minus whatever she lost in transit). That’s almost as big as the turkey you and Stedman served to those autistic orphans last Thanksgiving!
Anyway, it occurred to me last night, in the midst of re-reading The Gospel According to Oprah, that a gesture of trust was needed to seal the bond between us. So here she is, the little gal I call “our practice baby.” She’s been pretty good, overall. A bit flatulent after certain meals, but who isn’t? Both my wife and I feel that you’ll make an amazing mother to our (former) daughter.
I know what you’re thinking: Hey Steve, won’t adopting your child complicate my plan to select your book for Oprah’s Book Club™? Won’t people cry nepotism and/or bribery? Of course they will! And you know what the sponsors will be crying? Ratings! Especially after your special double episode featuring a tearful author/daughter reunion, with special guest babysitter…Condi Rice!
Seriously, homegirl: I’ve got goose bumps on my scalp.
Steve
P.S. The baby isn’t eating solid food just yet, so the missus expressed some milk for her. Please refrigerate immediately.