Winfrey praises Morrison at gala

Oprah Winfrey was in New York to praise one of her idols, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

“It’s impossible to actually imagine the American literary landscape without a Toni Morrison,” Winfrey said Tuesday night during a dinner gala in downtown Manhattan hosted by the Center for Fiction, which named Morrison the winner of a lifetime achievement award. “She is our conscience, she is our seer, she is our truth-teller.”

The 87-year-old Morrison was unable to attend, but she and her longtime publisher Alfred A. Knopf were the evening’s clear guests of honor.

Winfrey and Morrison have known each other for more than 20 years, dating back to when Winfrey was so determined to learn the author’s unlisted phone number that she called the local fire department. When Winfrey started her book club, in 1996, she was thinking of Morrison.

Winfrey has since made Morrison an unofficial laureate of her book club, choosing her work a record four times. On Tuesday night, she said that Morrison had both intellect and a “primal” power in how she “both receives and reflects out pain.” Morrison is “the empress supreme of doing language,” Winfrey said. “And I’m here tonight simply to say Long. May. She. Reign.”