Toni Morrison
Beloved onscreen and "the Oprah effect"

Also in 1998, the movie adaptation of Beloved was released, directed by Jonathan Demme and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey, who had spent ten years bringing it to the screen. Winfrey also stars as the main character, Sethe, alongside Danny Glover as Sethe's lover, Paul D, and Thandiwe Newton as Beloved.

The movie flopped at the box office. A review in The Economist opined that "most audiences are not eager to endure nearly three hours of a cerebral film with an original storyline featuring supernatural themes, murder, rape, and slavery". Film critic Janet Maslin, in her New York Times review "No Peace from a Brutal Legacy", called it a "transfixing, deeply felt adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel.... Its linchpin is of course Oprah Winfrey, who had the clout and foresight to bring 'Beloved' to the screen and has the dramatic presence to hold it together." Film critic Roger Ebert suggested that Beloved was not a genre ghost story but the supernatural was used to explore deeper issues and the non-linear structure of Morrison's story had a purpose.

In 1996, television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey selected Song of Solomon for her newly launched Book Club, which became a popular feature on her Oprah Winfrey Show. An average of 13 million viewers watched the show's book club segments. As a result, when Winfrey selected Morrison's earliest novel The Bluest Eye in 2000, it sold another 800,000 paperback copies. John Young wrote in the African American Review in 2001 that Morrison's career experienced the boost of " The Oprah Effect,... enabling Morrison to reach a broad, popular audience."

Winfrey selected a total of four of Morrison's novels over six years, giving Morrison's novels a bigger sales boost than they got from her Nobel Prize win in 1993. The novelist also appeared three times on Winfrey's show. Winfrey said, "For all those who asked the question 'Toni Morrison again?'... I say with certainty there would have been no Oprah's Book Club if this woman had not chosen to share her love of words with the world." Morrison called the book club a "reading revolution".
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