Gush-a-thon

Hey, y'all. I don't know quite whas'sup with Oprah these days, but it seems her "farewell season" has to trumpet "a Very Special Oprah" every damn day now.

Having survived the Kitty Kelley debacle (the most unflattering star bio I have ever read), she's all geared up to put on Memorable Shows about Memorable

Things.

No issues, however. Not even Favorite Things, that gluttinous orgy of empty materialism. Most of them have to do with movie reunions. Oprah is big on reunions, not having been to her high school one (can you imagine the mob scene? The devastation to the buffet table?).

I recently sat through a Sound of Music reunion with the entire cast (actually it was nine people, and I really think the credits rolled for longer than that). An aged but wicked Christopher Plummer talked about his drinking binges during the shoot, and revealed that his nickname for the saccharine picture was "The Sound of

Mucus".

Oprah asked the eldest von Trapp daughter (I think it was the one who dated the Nazi: can't resist a man in a uniform!) what she had learned on the shoot. "Chris taught me a lot," she said sweetly. "What did he teach you?" (A life lesson that changed the course of her existence?)

"He taught me how to drink."

So much for "doe, a deer, a female deer," and all that rot. (Maybe it should have been "dough"). But hark! What see-est I now-est? She's doing it again, the reunion thing, only this time with the movie she refers to wistfully as the high point of her life, The Color Purple. Even back then, in '84 I think, when she was relatively unknown and had never acted before, she somehow butted everyone else out of the

way.

So now we have a Reunion of the Entire Cast, consisting mainly of a wisecracking Whoopi Goldberg (laying to rest rumors of a monumental feud sparked by Oprah cutting Whoopi out of a prestigious Legends Weekend to honor "accomplished" African American Women. I guess multiple Oscar nominations and 25-year careers aren't enough.)

Anyway, we got to see Whoopi's deluxe toilet, which was a blast and a half. She has a nice house, huge rooms. OK. We know Oprah is big on luxe housing. Then she trotted out Danny Glover, Rae Dawn Chong (what the - ?), and a few others we forgot about, the dame who played Shug Avery and all. Stephen Spielberg sent his video greetings, and Quincy Jones, looking half-stoned and sounding like Harry Belafonte on a bad day, was wheeled out to represent Living

Legends.

So what exactly was wrong with this show, aside from the kind of terminal gushing we used to see on SCTV's Sammy Maudlin Show? Why were there only a couple of references to Oprah Winfrey Presents The Color Purple, THE MUSICAL? I don't know much about it. No one does, because I don't think it did very well. Too grapey, or something.

But that's not what fried me.

What fried me is, this all started somewhere. The movie, I mean, and all the surrounding gush, and even the vulgar Broadway musical with Oprah's name

above the title (even though she wasn't in it anywhere).

Somebody, like, at some point, kind of, uh, er. WROTE THIS

THING.

I'll give them this: there was one, very brief mention of Alice Walker, with a shot of her that was on for maybe two seconds. Then they quickly moved on.

Let me tell you how wrong that

was.

If it weren't for Alice Walker's quirky little gem, NONE OF THESE PEOPLE WOULD BE UP THERE ON THAT STAGE.

None of these people would have had the career break of a lifetime by being cast in a Spielberg film that garnered 11 Oscar nominations (but no wins: another shutout, it seems. Oprah defends it by saying "it was ahead of its time". Does the name

Beloved mean anything to you?), had it not been for the diminutive,

brilliant woman

who penned the original novel in a sort of hypnotic trance.

I don't think Alice Walker got rich.

She went on writing, which is what real writers do, though no doubt The Color Purple is still her best-known work. Given its obscurity when the movie was made, it's doubtful she was paid a fraction of what the actors made (even the lesser-known ones).

Kitty Kelley's book talks about how Oprah quickly "dropped" Alice Walker once the movie contract had been signed. Kind of the way she "dropped" Whoopi, after Whoopi made a little joke in public about Oprah's absolute power in talk-show land.

Never mind that it was

true.

In spite of a lot of posturing, Oprah is uncomfortable with certain true things, and in spite of all her bafflegabbing, she must hate authors too. Remember poor James Frey being fried, live on the air, and wanting to commit suicide as a result? The drug memoir he wrote, A Million Little Pieces, turned out to have some fictionalized elements. Show me a memoir that

doesn't.

Oprah's naivete in this regard reveals that she isn't the sophisticated reader she pretends to be. She should have known that almost all memoirs are partly fictional. If anything, it's a sign that he actually wrote it

himself.

The next Oprah gush-a-thon will be a unique, one-of-a-kind, unforgettable Barbra Streisand show (hey, it went over well last time, and moved a lot of albums), in which Barbra floats onstage in a diaphanous floor-length Davinchsky gown and the same banged bob she wore in Funny Girl. (For some reason, really big stars get

frozen in time, especially regarding their hair.

You see it whenever they interview 95-year-old starlets from Hollywood's Golden Age, their lacquered 1940s do's sitting atop ancient faces bizarrely rearraged by primitive plastic surgery.)

Barbra still sings, but her voice is now in the lower register, and she no longer belts because she can't. Why she's doing all this after 30 years of being publicity-shy is anybody's guess. (Another album?) But soft! What comes next, I wonder?

Why. . . speaking of bad face lifts. . . it's. . . it's. . .

It's Robert Redford, in a VERY VERY Special Oprah, a reunion of the Cast of The Way We Were!!!

God, haven't some of these people died by now?

Novel #3: I need a (not-so-secret) agent

Reviews of BETTER THAN LIFE and MALLORY

"Joy - heart-swelling, button-bursting, exhilarating, uplifting, exuberant joy - is at the centre of Margaret Gunning's first novel, Better than Life. The details, the turns of phrase, the sharp observances that evoke both place and characters in a small town in Ontario at the end of the 1960s, are infused with a sense of lightness and humour that borders on the divine. Redemption overrides judgement every time in this carefully crafted novel, and Gunning manages to illuminate that which is dark and secret with that which is rich and riotous in colour. She is an author able to open up the world of a fractured but seeking people and bring them into light, healing and hope. Better Than Life is fiction at its finest."
- Edmonton Journal

"As Anderson-Dargatz did with her town of Likely and Stephen Leacock did with Mariposa, Gunning has created a fictional place that's recognizable to anyone who has ever lived in a small town. . . This delightful novel looks like a contender for the Leacock Medal. It may be just the book to bring some light into the room as the grey days of the rainy season settle in."
- Vancouver Sun

“Gunning does period ambience with a minimum of well-chosen references. Her expressive turns can spur shivers of pleasure. It’s a book that seduces quickly, then pulls you happily through an afternoon.”
- Globe and Mail

“It’s short and breezy, by times droll, intermittently serious and, ultimately, warm as toast. It could be in every shopping cart in the country.”
- Montreal Gazette

"There is a contagious energy to Gunning's prose which often -- and accurately -- delineates Mallory's intense emotional improvisation, child-like perspicacity and surprisingly mature realizations. Marketed as adult fiction, this is a book that could very easily attract a younger crowd, hungry for the extremes of experience and sensation Mallory represents.”
- Globe and Mail

“Margaret Gunning writes with uncanny grace and unflinching clarity about what it is to be a young girl forgotten by the world. She captures the heartbreak of loneliness and separateness, the fear and self-loathing of adolescent girlhood, with a gentle, sympathetic touch. And she manages to make Mallory complex and fully human in the process -- both victim and torturer, brilliant yet painfully naive, innocent yet seething with awakening sexual desire. The ominous feeling that underscores much of the novel is reminiscent of the best work of another Canadian author, Ann-Marie MacDonald, whose girl heroes seem to inhabit this same dark world.”
- Edmonton Journal

OK, maybe you needed to read these first. Maybe that's why my original post disappeared as I tried to cut-and-paste this. Maybe now you'll see why I am so frustrated.

There's a myth floating around in writers' circles that if you have one book that is favorably received, you're "in" and don't need to worry any more. So what happens if you have two? The comments above are just a small sampling of my reviews for Better than Life and Mallory, my first two novels. Mallory got no negative reviews at all, and BTL got only one. Both were very favorably reviewed in the books section of Canada's national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Several of the reviews appeared in American publications which hadn't even been sent a copy. This just doesn't happen, and my first publisher called it "a miracle" (implying it had been a spontaneous act of God and not the result of my own skill and hard work).

Funny how miracles can come apart, almost as if they never happened. Sales of my first two books were abysmal, and I can't tell you why. I do know, after 25 years of being a reviewer, that some books generate "buzz" before they even go to press. Why? I will never know. It's an alchemy, a magic I don't seem to be able to capture.

I need someone to represent me. That much is plain. I need to make that leap. The novel I am ready to publish is called The Glass Character: a fictional retelling of the life and work of a long-ignored genius, silent screen comedian Harold Lloyd. I didn't just research this topic: I became Harold Lloyd, I saw the world through his glasses, I climbed high, hung on to the hands of the clock, and fell from a great height.

I am ready. But for what? For more head-banging, more trudging around, more slammed doors? I recently received the following rejection, no doubt carefully worded so as not to bruise my delicate feelings: "We may be turning down the next best-seller here, and I am sure it will find a good home soon, but I regret to tell you the answer is no."

People get there, they do. I see it. As a reviewer, I notice that a lot of very ordinary books of a certain genre do very well, and I mean every season. I'm probably breaking the writer's code of keeping your mouth shut no matter what hell you're going through. I should keep smiling while the best book I am ever likely to write goes nowhere.

Does my track record mean nothing? I wonder why no one in the industry can see that I made that "miracle" happen. It was my work, and I have a lot more. Here it is.

My e-mail address is magunning@shaw.ca. Perhaps it should appear in every post from now on.

Carrie Fisher: Romancing The Stoned