Oprah and Franzen bury hatchet over Freedom

Chat show queen Oprah Winfrey and the feted American novelist Jonathan Franzen have apparently buried the hatchet and ended their nine-year stand-off. According to New York publishing gossip, Winfrey will announce today that his just-published novel, Freedom, is her latest Book Club choice.

In 2001, Franzen was famously disinvited from appearing on Oprah to talk about his then latest novel, The Corrections, after he made it clear he was unhappy about Winfrey making the novel a Book Club pick.

He described himself rather pompously as being "solidly in the high-art literary tradition" and said he didn’t want to be associated with the Oprah Book Club and its choice of "schmaltzy, one-dimensional" novels.

As a result, in the run-up to the recent publication of Freedom, the new book was pointedly overlooked by Winfrey's O magazine in its monthly list of must reads – ‘Ten Titles to Pick Up Now’.

As The First Post reported, the advance notices made it clear Franzen had produced another masterpiece – even better than The Corrections – and the magazine would surely regret its snub.

Since then, the reviews have been fabulous. The book was has gone straight to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list and it is the fastest-selling title on Amazon.com.

If Winfrey has made it a Book Club pick, then clearly Franzen and his publishers must be happy with the idea – she would not risk being humiliated again.

Last night, both his publishers - Farrar, Straus and Giroux – and Winfrey’s TV production company – Harpo - refused to comment. Angela DePaul, a spokeswoman for Harpo, said only: "Oprah announces her book club selections on her show and shares her reasons for choosing the books at that time".

The New York publishing commentator Dennis Loy Johnson is so confident it’s going to happen he’s already Photoshopped a cover of Freedom bearing the famous ‘Oprah Book Club Selection’ logo and stuck it on his MobyLives blog. ·