The novel’s not dead, it’s not even seriously injured.
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Don DeLillo to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award
The National Book Foundation’s will award Don DeLillo its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 2015 National Book Awards ceremony. The award will presented by Jennifer Egan.
One of Literature’s most prestigious honors, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters recognizes individuals who have made an exceptional impact on this country’s literary heritage.
Feeling deflated? 8 National Book Award honored books about every sport but football.
(From top, left to right)
1. Horse racing: The Lord of Misrule, Jaimy Gordon (Bret Anthony Johnston interviews Jaimy Gordon here.)
2. Baseball: The Ballpark, William Jaspersohn
3. Baseball: Underworld, Don DeLillo
4. Wrestling: The Pugilist at Rest, Thom Jones
5. Baseball: Almost Famous, David Small
6. Basketball: Rabbit Run, John Updike (Amity Gaige on Rabbit here.)
7. Wrestling: The World According to Garp, John Irving (Deb Caletti on Garp here.)
8. Boxing: The Big Smoke, Adrian Matejka (Shara Lessley interviews Matejka here.)
FIRST PAGE, FIRST LINE of John Darnielle’s Wolf in White Van, LONGLISTED for the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction. @mountain_goats @fsgbooks #NBAwards #books #novels #JohnDarnielle #fiction #literature #bookstagram #reading #mustreads #readdeep
FIRST PAGE, FIRST LINE of Richard Powers’ ORFEO, LONGLISTED for the 2014 #NBAward for Fiction. @wwnorton #lit #fiction #novels #books #bookstagram #reading #mustreads #readdeep
It’s true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.
Whoever looks for the writer’s thinking in the words and thoughts of his characters is looking in the wrong direction. Seeking out a writer’s ‘thoughts’ violates the richness of the mixture that is the very hallmark of the novel. The thought of the novelist that matters most is the thought that makes him a novelist.
Philip Roth has won two National Book Awards and also was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to Americans Letters in 2002.
CONGRATULATIONS Cynthia Kadohata, WINNER of the 2013 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
Cynthia Kadohata lives in Los Angeles, California and is the author of several books for children and adults. Her novel The Thing About Luck won the 2013 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature on November 20. Shortly before the Awards Ceremony, Kadohata spoke with National Book Award Winner William Alexander for the National Book Foundation’s Compilation of 2013 Finalists’ interviews.
William Alexander: Tell us about riding a harvester!
Cynthia Kadohata: Riding a combine through a wheat field, going over and over up and down the field, was actually a kind of relaxing, meditative experience. You really feel like a natural part of the field, like an extension of it, all of you (including the wheat) working together in some cosmic way to put bread on tables around the world. I wasn’t driving; I was riding along. Combines cost around $350,000 and have about a zillion parts that can break, so I don’t think they would have let me drive one.
WA: Summer is constantly translating those around her, as though twelve-years-old were another country and a separate language. Her grandmother’s affection stands out, for me at least, as something spoken in a language Summer doesn’t understand—or is only just beginning to understand. What are some of your own daily acts of translation?
CK: I don’t know if this is a daily act of translation, but every day I learn something new about my son, or think I understand him better after a long talk…and then he grows up a little bit and what I’ve learned becomes moot. Then I have to learn to translate a whole new language.
WA: I gather that a household love of Legos and a similar devotion to dogs are both translated from your own life. True?
CK: If you stepped through the threshold to our house, you would be immediately faced with two crazy dogs and a LOT of Legos. For a while my son seemed to have moved on from Legos, but now he’s back into them, which is good since they were damn expensive. The Legos and one of the dogs were definitely verbatim from real life, with no translating. The Doberman in the book was my Doberman, Thunder, in every way.
WA: Do you have any good luck rituals? I’m especially curious about writerly rituals, something that might please the muse before a session of banging on the keyboard or scribbling in the notebook.
CK: I have three writerly good luck rituals. Two of them I can’t stop doing, just in case they help. But they’re probably just OCD…or are they? I confess that I really believe in one of the three. One of the OCD ones was actually started by my live-in boyfriend of 14 years. So we both do it. I asked him if I could tell you what it is, and he cried out, ‘NO, it’ll mess with the karma!’ I’ll just say that it makes us look a little silly in public sometimes. It involves parking lots, of all things.
WA: What is the very first bedtime story you can remember?
CK: My father usually wasn’t around for bedtime because he worked such long hours, and I don’t believe my mother read to us or told us stories. I’ve told my son, Sammy, every story I can think of when we have our pre-bedtime life talk that I think we both really, really enjoy.
William Alexander won the National Book Award in 2012 for his debut novel, Goblin Secrets, and the Earphones Award for his narration of the audiobook. He teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
A gentle good night to Peter Matthiessen, who died last Saturday at the age of 86. Matthiessen is pictured here accepting his 2008 National Book Award for his novel Shadow Country.
Among his many achievements, Matthiessen enjoyed the distinction of being the only writer to win a National Book Award in both the Fiction and Nonfiction categories. At Play in the Fields of the Lord earned a National Book Award in 1966. Matthiessen was also a Finalist in 1973 with Eliot Porter for The Tree Where Man Was Born/The African Experience.
Read Matthiessen’s interview with Bret Anthony Johnston here.
Watch Matthiessen’s 2008 acceptance speech here.
And read our Executive Director’s appreciation of Shadow Country here.
Jane Smiley’s new novel Some Luck is LONGLISTED for the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction
Gene Luen Yang, who most recently won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in young adult literature for his graphic novels Boxers and Saints, discusses a mistake he made in his latest novel, The Shadow Hero.
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Gene Luen Yang began drawing comic...
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