Click here for info on the Print Journal (and to purchase your copy)!

10.22.04

Culturally Speaking #41: The Prizewinner Edition

By Sarah Stodola

-------------------------------------

Over the past couple of weeks, the Nobel and Booker Prizes were awarded, and the National Book Award nominees were announced. Of all these writers, I'd only heard of one.

So, because I don't want all of you literary folks to look dumb when you get drunk at the next LES reading, I offer you the following in lieu of the traditional Culturally Speaking column: the goods on all of our newly crowned Literary Elite (and, gasp!, four of the five are females, and the other one is gay. Finally, frat boys have been left in the dust)...

Alan Hollinghurst - Hollinghurst just won the Booker Prize for his book, The Line of Beauty. He went to Oxford and was the Deputy Editor of the Times Literary Supplement. None of his bios say that he is gay, but he must be because all of his characters are, including the protagonist in this year's prize winner. In his acceptance speech, he said, "It's very amazing to me that the long, solitary process of writing a novel should lead to a moment like this." That statement endears me to him very much.

Elfriede Jelinek - This Austrian writer won this year's Nobel Prize in literature. This is what the Nobel Prize's webpage had to say about her novels: "[E]ach within the framework of its own problem complex, present a pitiless world where the reader is confronted with a locked-down regime of violence and submission, hunter and prey." So I still don't know anything about her writing. But they say she is very controversial, so I think I might pick up one of her novels. Also, they say she isn't all that into straightforward prose, which I either love (Pynchon) or hate (Faulkner), so who knows which it will be in her case.

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum - Bynum's novel, Madelaine is Sleeping, has been nominated for the National Book Award. Bynum lives down the street from me and she also has the same name as me, and also we are both friends with my friend Darren, so I think that probably I will one day be nominated for the National Book Award, as well. Darren has read her stuff before and he says it's good, and also that she is really nice and humble, so we should all root for her to win.

Christine Schutt - Schutt has been nominated for the National Book Award for her novel, Florida. She is one of the few graduates of Columbia's MFA program to have actually gone on to have a literary career to speak of (not to be taken personally, Sarah Balcomb - I think you will be one of the few, as well). The Book Award webpage says that her novel is about the "life-giving power of language and memory." I hope her book is not as corny as that description. And also, I hope her book votes for Kerry.

Joan Silber – Silber’s collection of short stories, Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories, has also been nominated for the National Book Award. I didn’t even know that short story collections could be nominated for the National Book Award. I bet she is the underdog to all the novels. However, although I usually like underdogs, I am tempted to discredit immediately any book with the word “heaven” in its title, so this is the contender I am probably least likely to ever get around to reading, and the one that as of now I would least like to see win. I like books about atheism and infidelity and general neuroticism much more. But I have to admit that the premise of the book is neat: a minor item in each story becomes a major item in the next, and thus all of the stories are tangentially related.

Lily Tuck – Tuck’s nominated novel is titled The News from Paraguay. I was under the impression that National Book Award winners had to be American, but Tuck was born in Paris, so who knows what kind of rule-bending is going on here. Also, her novel is historical and it is about Paraguay, so we have a non-American writing about not America. That’s not right. Most Americans don’t even know what continent Paraguay is on, and we hate the French. Let’s not start giving our awards to them. We already have to share our pop culture with them. Anyway, Tuck’s novel tells an “unusual love story.”

Kate Walbert – Kate Walbert published a novel, Our Kind, that has been nominated for the National Book Award. You might be surprised to learn that Walbert, along with the other four Book Award nominees, is a female living in New York City. Maybe for once we have a realistic representation of where all the writing is really happening. Or maybe I’m just biased; you decide. Our Kind is about a group of women in the 1950’s. Again, I hope the book is better than the description.

So there you go. Now you know just as much about the literary scene as any old snob. Congratulations. But remember, I won’t be truly impressed unless you actually read someone from this list.

Click here for the last Culturally Speaking.

---------------------------------------

Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three.  She can be contacted here.

© 2004 Me Three