National Book Awards 2011--Let the Award Season Begin!

It's that time again, as the literary world recognizes the best efforts of authors around the country.

The National Book Awards, (along with the Pulitzer Prizes), have held my interest for many years.   When I started reading in earnest again, after 9/11, the lists of winners and finalists from both Literary Awards helped me identify quality writing. From these, I identified favorite authors, read more of their work, which helped me branch out into other works in similar genres.

As I read more, I gained confidence in my evaluations of quality, and relied less on the award itself as anything more than a way of locating serious new work.  I began writing more, too, so I was less intimidated by the opinions of "experts".  I  thought more about what I was reading, and honed my critical skills, asserting my own opinion of a work, good or bad.

More and more each year, I am unfamiliar with some of the authors of the books that are chosen as finalists and winners. That, to me, is a good thing, because it says that publishers are accepting new work, and submitting excellent work from new voices. That gives new hope to writers like myself.  It also provides readers like myself an introduction to original writing, and is endlessly inspiring and enlightening.  I have my reading material for the winter!

Movie lovers, too, might enjoy picking out which books could have the makings of an Oscar-winning film!

The diverse and interesting subjects of this year's 5 selected works of Fiction include: an adventure set in the Italian Alps in World War One; a Balkan woman's search through "the Jungle Book" for clues to her Grandfather's death; an epic about Japanese "picture brides" in San Francisco circa 1900; classic and contemporary short stories spanning the globe and four decades; and a tale of a motherless Mississippi family's survival in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The cited Non-Fiction works include: a young New York Jewish woman converts to Islam and embraces her exile in Pakistan; the little-known love story between Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen as he works on his book Kapital; a Renaissance book hunter in 1417 locates a book by Poggio Bracciolini that predicted the existence of atoms and disputed the existence of God; a newly-researched biography that chronicled the constant re-invention of Malcolm X; and he story of Nobel-Prize scientist Marie Curie, her work, and her bittersweet marriage.

The 2011 Award page from the National Book Award web site appears below.  Match the book with its capsule description, and see which books won the prize. Click on the book cover to learn more about the book, its author, and read excerpts. (The books to the far right may be cut off...just click on the left edge!)


2011 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTS ANNOUNCED

FICTION

WINNER: Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
(Bloomsbury USA) - Interview coming soon.

FINALISTS:
Andrew Krivak, The Sojourn
(Bellevue Literary Press) - Interview

Téa Obreht, The Tiger's Wife
(Random House) - Interview coming soon.

Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic
(Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House) - Interview

Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision
(Lookout Books, an imprint of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington) - Interview

Fiction Judges: Deirdre McNamer (Panel Chair), Jerome Charyn,
John Crowley, Victor LaValle, Yiyun Li

NONFICTION

WINNER: Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
(W. W. Norton & Company) - Interview

FINALISTS:
Deborah Baker, The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism
(Graywolf Press) - Interview

Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution
(Little, Brown and Company) - Interview

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
(Viking Press, an imprint of Penguin Group USA) - Interview

Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout
(It Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers) - Interview

Nonfiction Judges: Alice Kaplan (Panel Chair), Yunte Huang,
Jill Lepore, Barbara Savage

A Special Book: "Just Kids" by Patti Smith

Patti Smith's memoir "Just Kids", is so intimate, I felt like she was looking at me while I was reading it.  Her story of New York bohemians living in an atmosphere of self-discovery and commitment to art made a gentle and indelible impression on me. 

It was a world I have romanticized; one that I yearned to have been a part of.  The late 1960's. A time of creative, social and political ferment. 

It was a world of Andy Warhol and "Midnight Cowboy";  a world of Automats and Nathan's hot dogs and poverty and idealism; of the Chelsea Hotel and the Factory; of Janis Joplin and Sam Shepard and Alan Ginsburg and Viva and so many others still finding their way; of "Hair" and Woodstock, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix.

Of 1967, 1968, the drug culture and poetry and turning discarded objects into works of art.


(Names are dropped casually, like they were just neighbors.  Names and places that are are heavy with significance, that blossom with nostalgic connotations.)

Of mysticism and fashion, and books and art and sexual discovery and anything goes.

The world of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.


This is Patti Smith's story of her days as a young artist, moving to New York to pursue her poetic dreams.  Living on the street, she meets the charming and sexually ambiguous Mapplethorpe, and thus begins their sweet loving friendship, and a vow that they would always be there for each other.

Amid their developments, their triumphs, their failures, their artistic experiments and soul-searching, their separate love affairs, their travels and their squalid rooms which they made into a home, they kept that vow.

These two people, with the souls of poets, one a future rock star and the other a soon-to-be photographer-provocateur, supported one another's fledgling artistic visions.

Among many other things, this is a terrific story of love and friendship.


The writing here is exquisite.  I hung on every sentence, written simply, clearly, bejeweled with detail of the everyday as well as the unusual.


I loved her delicate descriptions of their processes of creating art;  and pondered with awe their philosophies.  For Mapplethorpe, art was like holding hands with God and singing.  For Smith, the challenge is to create something significant, as art must illuminate.


Smith  describes her family and that of Mapplethorpe's, creating  full portraits in small sketch-lines.  Both came from religious backgrounds, which each rejected, but that yet still infused their art.  She perfectly blends this straightforward personal narrative with musings on creativity that went straight to my core and inspired me.


I especially adore Patti Smith's love for the book as an object of art, as well as a vessel for artistic expression.  She describes having supported herself by working in various bookstores and by buying obscure books and selling them to collectors for profit.  I was proud to see her champion the humble book, which I maintain will not soon die.

"Just Kids" is a marvelous, special work about creative struggle and poetry and finding ones' artistic soul, set in a time period which always fascinates me.  It is certainly one of the best memoirs I have ever read. 

I loved this book.  It rightly deserved to win this year's National Book Award.

And it put me in the right frame of mind for my next series: The Movies and Oscars of the Year 1970.

National Book Award Winners: A Long Shot and a Sentimental Favorite

Award Season continues with the announcement of The National Book Awards Tuesday of this week.

(Click here for coverage from NPR)

Awards like this help draw attention to literary works that would otherwise go unnoticed by the general reading public.  While an award is no guarantee of unimpeachable artistic quality, it helps define the cultural and artistic preferences of the moment, and I think literary awards like NBA and the Pulitzer (in April) at least attempt to recognize something lasting and universal. 

This year's winners in the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories are notable.

The Fiction Prize was awarded to Jaimy Gordon for her novel about the world of cheap horse racing, "Lord of Misrule."  Gordon was considered the darkest of dark-horses, so to speak.  She herself felt she was a long-shot from the start.  Gordon's publisher pushed her to finish her tale of lowlifes, losers, and one remarkable woman who loves horses, in time to be submitted for nomination for the Award.  Gordon thought he was crazy.  Finish she did, and was surprised to be among the five finalists...and the eventual winner.  The book is starting to gain a solid critical reputation. 

(Other Fiction finalists were: Peter Carey, "Parrot and Olivier in America"; Nicole Krauss, "Great House"; Lionel Shriver, "So Much for That"; and Karen Tei Yamashita, "I Hotel".)

The Non-Fiction Award went to artist, performer and punk icon Patti Smith for "Just Kids", the story of her friendship with gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.  The book has been widely praised, and is definitely on my short list of must-reads.

Smith gave a heartfelt, tearful thank-you to nearly 1300 attendees, as reported in the story on NPR:

"I have loved books all my life," she said, reminiscing about her time as a clerk at New York's Scribner bookstore. "I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf."
Smith also...gave a teary defense of the book as a physical object. "There is nothing more beautiful than the book," she said. "Please don't abandon the book." The applause in the room after her speech was close to thunderous...and Smith seemed to win two awards at once: an NBA medal, and the room's heart.

(Other Non-Fiction finalists were: Barbara Demick, "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea"; John W. Dower, "Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq"; Justin Spring, "Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward"; and Megan K. Stack, "Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War".)