We know all about Oprah Winfrey and Richard and Judy and their ability to send sales of a book spiralling into the stratosphere simply by mentioning the title. But Tom Stoppard?
The playwright appears to have acquired Oprah-like powers, at least in Manhattan. The book in question is Isaiah Berlin's Russian Thinkers, a collection of essays in Berlin's classic prose that surveys the terrain of Russian intellectuals in the 19th century and contains his most famous essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox.
In recent years sales of the book have been, shall we say, steady. Its publisher Penguin says it averaged 36 sales a month across the whole of the United States.
But since November booksellers in New York have noticed a strange phenomenon: customers have been requesting the title in growing numbers and there are now 2,000 orders for it that cannot be supplied.
Behind the surge lay the opening last November at the Lincoln Centre of Stoppard's epic trilogy The Coast of Utopia, and an innocent entry at the back of the play's programme notes that list seven books, with Berlin's right at the top.
Two parts of Stoppard's trilogy - which run to eight hours and span 30 years of Russian history - have already opened in the city, with the third to come next month. The plays have been greeted with ecstatic reviews, and Stoppard's typically dense flow of ideas and influences has clearly inspired many theatregoers to dip into that reading list.
The rush reached Penguin's attention this month, and the company's New York branch has ordered a reprint of 3,500 copies from London.
Penguin's spokeswoman, Maureen Donnelly, said they began to notice some movement in sales and acted accordingly soon after the New Year. She said although the publishers were surprised, this was not the first instance of sudden surges brought on by cinema or play openings. The film the English Patient had, for example, led to a run on the works of Herodotus, and the Italian movie Il Postino had put sales on Pablo Neruda's love poems.
The other cause of the ripple of interest in Berlin's book was an article in the New York Times shortly before The Coast of Utopia opened in Manhattan. Written by the newspaper's former legendary restaurant critic, William Grimes, it exhorted readers to put in some research before going to see the plays. With tongue only slightly in cheek, he listed no less than 11 volumes that would repay the effort under the title Required Pretheatre Reading, and with the pay-off: "That should do it. You are now ready to see the plays."
When Stoppard read the article he said his blood ran cold. The title should have been Recommended Post-Theatre Reading, he said in a letter to the newspaper, adding: "What kind of madman would write a play that requires the audience to read a dozen books in advance? Come as you are; you'll be fine."
