Delivered by Neil Baldwin

Photo © Sandy Wavrick

Just how historic is this event? I want to recognize some very important members of the audience tonight, in addition to the 1999 National Book Awards Finalists and Judges, whom you will be meeting later in the program. We're proud to welcome thirty-five past National Book Award Winners this evening, as well as the recipients of our Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. We welcome seventeen distinguished alumni, who attended the very first National Book Awards in 1950, who are here with us. They've come to see whether we've progressed at all in the past half century, I guess.

We welcome past and present Chairmen, and members of the dedicated Board of Directors of the National Book Foundation. And I'd like to extend a special welcome, on behalf of our institutional family, to all the Oprah book club authors who are with us tonight paying tribute to our Gold Medal Recipient. I'd like all of the people I just mentioned to stand and be recognized, and applauded.

This is the largest National Book Awards in history. There are approximately 1,056 people in this room at the present time. I should know. And up there in the balcony, we have over 125 members of the press from around the world. This is also the most successful benefit dinner in the history of the National Book Foundation. Thanks to your philanthropy, we have raised over $1.7 million this evening, in support of our educational outreach programs. Thank you.

And I should add that in spirit, the first three Winners of the National Book Awards 1950, Nelson Algren, Ralph Rusk, and William Carlos Williams, are here in the guise of their three winning books, which are on your tables this evening for you to take a look at.

And now, what can possibly be said about Oprah Winfrey that has not already been said? I was intrigued to learn that her birth name, selected by her mother's aunt, Ida Carr, was to have been Orpah, from the Bible. But the two letters were transposed on the birth certificate. So, what's in a name? Orpah, in the Book of Ruth, was Ruth's sister-in-law. The two women were married to the sons of Naomi. And when their husbands died, Ruth chose to follow Naomi to the Holy Land. However, Orpah has two meanings in Hebrew. One is "the obstinate one." Perhaps that has something to say. The other is more poetic: "she who rides the clouds." Orpah resolved to remain faithful to her own people. She turned back alone, independent, to the place of her childhood, and to her roots in Moab.

I think that Aunt Ida demonstrated prescient faith in this newborn child's qualities. Because if you look at the underlying themes of the books which Oprah has chosen over the past three years for her book club, you will find testimonies to the strength of women in desperate times. You will find morality tales, very much like the tale of Orpah and Ruth, in which someone chooses a road not taken, and takes her own path, instead of one urged upon her by others. And you will discover, as Oprah Winfrey herself has observed in praise of Toni Morrison's books, literature that goes to the interior of a person's spirit. You will find heroines, and heroes too, to cheer for. Intrepid, yet often vulnerable. Tough, yet often threatened, as they confront and try to overcome their various demons.

All of the publishers in this room know that Oprah Winfrey possesses the magical quality to create bestsellers. And we recognize, and indeed we are in awe of that phenomenon. The Board of Directors of The National Book Foundation has decided to present Oprah Winfrey with our Fiftieth Anniversary Gold Medal, and with a special crystal sculpture, created for us by Tiffany, because our mission dovetails so well with hers. Through our educational programs, we share her belief that quality, challenging, and, yes, often times difficult literature, can and should be made popular. We share her belief that great literature in our culture, while it always has been the creation of the few, must become the province of many.

We share Oprah's belief that books change lives. Oprah Winfrey, would you come up, please?