Awards
On September 10, the Library of Congress is going to present, for the first time, an award for lifetime achievement in fiction-writing. The award will be presented in a ceremony to –
Well, wait a minute. Before I actually name the lucky author, let’s speculate on whom it could be. Let’s consider the obvious choices for a lifetime achievement award in fiction writing. Of course, one criterion is that the writer be, you know, living.
On with the thinking cap. Here goes.
John Updike
Joyce Carol Oates
Philip Roth
E.L. Doctorow
Toni Morrison
Anne Tyler
Thomas Pynchon
Don DeLillo
Ernest J. Gaines
Richard Ford
Reynolds Price
Cormac McCarthy
J.D. Salinger? (He’s alive. Or aliveish.)
Doubtless my literate readers will have other suggestions. Remember, though, that the award is for a lifetime of writing achievement, not for a few well-known books, so maybe Salinger doesn’t qualify. Don’t forget, Norman Mailer is dead.
So, while you’re placing your bets and trying to slake your anticipation, I’ll tell you that the winner of the first Library of Congress award for lifetime achievement in fiction is –
Herman Wouk. 
You’re all smacking your foreheads and going, “Duh, well, yeah, of course, Herman Wouk. ‘The Caine Mutiny.’ ‘Marjorie Morningstar.’ ‘Youngblood Hawke.’ Those mini-series about WWII.”
Perhaps the intention is to present the award for longevity. Wouk, born May 27, 1915, happens to be 93, which makes him 16 years older than the next oldest possibility, E.L. Doctorow (b. Jan. 6, 1931). In fact, the award could simply be made each year to the next author in the chronological line, eliminating the cheap and petty element of suspense. There wouldn’t even have to be a ceremony. A certificate could be emailed to the winner. In that case, the roster would look like this:
Wouk (May 27, 1915)
Doctorow (Jan. 6, 1931)
Morrison (Feb. 18, 1931)
Updike (March 18, 1932)
Gaines (Jan 15, 1933)
Price (Feb. 1, 1933)
Roth (March 19, 1933)
McCarthy (July 20, 1933, a big year for writers!)
DeLillo (Nov. 20, 1936)
Pynchon (May 8, 1937)
Oates (June 16, 1938)
Tyler (Oct. 25, 1941)
Ford (Feb. 16, 1944)
See, that takes care of the award for the next 12 years, assuming that these authors all live that long. Pesky ol’ Death. The Library of Congress comittee doesn’t even have to have another meeting. They should have called me first.
Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” has won the Best of the Booker.
The 1981 winner of the Man Booker Prize was the front-runner going into this one-off competition celebrating 40 years of the award. It had won the Booker of Bookers during the 25th anniversary celebration.
This time, though, the readers had a choice, kind of. A panel of literary-minded folks chosen by the Booker people narrowed the field to six books deemed worthy of the big prize and allowed the masses to choose the ultimate winner. Before the six were announced, reader polls showed Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi” in first place. It didn’t make the short list.
The also-rans are: “The Ghost Road” by Pat Barker, “Oscar and Lucinda” by Peter Carey, “Disgrace” by J.M. Coetzee, “The Siege of Krishnapur” by J.G. Farrell and “The Conservationist” by Nadine Gordimer.
A while back I wrote this post about the Man Booker Prize folks holding a contest for the “Best of the Booker” — the prizewinner of prizewinners — to draw attention to the Booker’s 40-year anniversary.
Instead of trusting the public to choose from among all of the selections, a panel of judges would select six finalists and only then would the undiscriminating populace be allowed to vote to determine the winner.
At first I was offended with the idea that the Booker folks thought we needed training wheels, but after seeing how independent polls were running (and recalling a brief stint on jury duty years ago), maybe they had the right idea. “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel grabbed the lead in an AbeBooks poll, whose Top 10 resembled more of a specialized NYT Best Sellers list than a critical comparison of the past Booker winners.
I confess I hardly ever pick up an uncelebrated book or author unless I’ve done some research. There are so many good books to be read, I don’t want to waste my time on the potentially bad ones. But I read something last night that made me think I’m missing out on some hidden gems.
Over at Critical Mass, the book blog of the National Book Critics Circle, Molly Giles talks about what it was like to judge the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Excited at first about all the books she was going to read (”Free books! New ones! Hardbacks!”), she soon realized what she’d gotten herself into, and dreaded seeing a new brown box filled with books waiting by the back door. She and two other judges together read some 350 books before deciding on this year’s prize, “The Great Man” by Kate Christensen.
After all that reading, here is some of what Giles learned about American fiction:
1 Comment
The longlist for Britain’s Orange prizewas unveiled Monday, and charges of sexism immediately were unleashed, continuing a 13-year debate about whether women should have their own prize.
Officially known as the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, it was created by a group of folks in the publishing world who thought women writers weren’t getting their due in other literary contests, namely Britain’s big boy, the Booker, which has been bestowed on a woman 15 times out of 41. (Incidentally, the award has been known as the Man Booker Prize for the last several years. The name has nothing to do with gender — it’s sponsored by Man Group plc, an investment firm — but it does nothing to thwart the perceived bias…)
Some argue the Orange — which comes with some nice money and a small sculpted statuette called the Bessie — has outlived its usefulness. The last two Bookers were awarded to women. The most celebrated author of the last 10 years is a woman — OK, maybe not literary, but everyone knows who J.K. Rowling is. Even A.S. Byatt herself, who won the Booker many years ago, says it’s wrong to think women can’t compete against men in the literary world. She has refused to let her books be submitted for the prize, as have other authors.
At the very least, the Orange prize raises awareness of women authors, which can’t be a bad thing. Or can it? As the vitriol rises every year, the prize may become more of a mockery than a celebration of women authors.
Any men want to weigh in on this one?
The National Book Critics Circle Awards were presented in New York Thursday amid readings by talented authors and laments of newspapers closing or cutting staff — the Books page is often the first thing to go…
The prizes are given in six categories. No cash, just kudos. And they go to:
Fiction — “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz
Non-fiction — “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” by Harriet Washington
Autobiography – “Brother, I’m Dying” by Edwidge Danticat
Biography — “Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer” by Tim Jeal
Poetry — “Elegy” by Mary Jo Bang
Criticism — “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century” by Alex Ross
As I watched the montage of the Best Picture films over the years during the Oscars Sunday night, I started thinking about all the great films that were first set down as words in a book.
The Best Picture winner this year, “No Country for Old Men,” began as a novel by Cormac McCarthy. Other nominated films – “Atonement” and “There Will Be Blood” — also were based on books.
Every good book doesn’t translate into a good movie, though. The film version of one of my favorite books, “Love in the Time of Cholera,” was pretty much panned by critics and dissed at the box office. One person wrote it would’ve been a better movie if they just filmed someone sitting on stage reading aloud the book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez…. Sometimes it’s not so much the story, but the way it is written; it’s hard to make that translate on film.
But there have been many books that make highly successful movies: Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Schindler’s List” by Thomas Keneally, the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy base on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Micheal Ondaatje’s “The English Patient,” to name a few.
Of all the Best Pictures from books over the years, I’d have to say my favorite is “Out of Africa.” The cinematography, the music, Meryl Streep telling stories, Robert Redford washing her hair on safari… When I read passages from Isak Denisen’s memoir, I hear them in Meryl Streep’s ”Karen” voice.
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills…
What is your favorite film based on a book?
The folks who award The Man Booker Prize for Fiction are letting the readers have a say in who wins The Best of the Booker to celebrate the prize’s 40th anniversary.
But because the Booker folks don’t completely trust the general public, they’ll whittle the list of 41 down to six for you to choose from come May.
Among the titles and authors are some of my favorites — “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy being at the top of the list. But any of the contenders will likely be going up against “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie, which won the 25th anniversary celebratory award, the Booker of Bookers.
Read on for a list of the yearly winners, and punctuation be damned, I’m not sticking in all those quotation marks… or all the hyperlinks… (I’m feeling lazy today. Sorry.)
No Comments