Book News: Matthiessen, Gordon-Reed Take National Book Awards
Francine Fialkoff -- Library Journal, 11/19/2008 8:44:00 PM
- Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello is Nonfiction winner
- Shadow Country, Peter Matthiessen's revision of the Watson trilogy, is Fiction winner
- Mark Doty's Fire to Fire wins Poetry prize, Judy Blundell's What I Saw and How I Lied gets Young People's Literature award
The Fiction judges, headed by Gail Godwin, looked for "purity of intent" in selecting the winner of the 59th 
National Book Award for Fiction from the 270 entries. Their criteria led them to Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country (Modern Library), a masterful rewriting of the author's Watson trilogy that some thought shouldn't be up for the prize in the first place. Robert Pinsky, who led the Poetry panel, said the judges searched for "goodness" and read the finalists aloud before settling on Mark Doty's Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins). Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) said the judges for the Young People's Literature award bickered over everything, except, finally, the selection of Judy Blundell's (aka Jude Watson) What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic). And Marie Arana, who chaired the Nonfiction committee, which selected Annette Gordon-Reed's magnum opus, The Hemingses of Monticello (Norton), noted that "a bumper crop" of 540 entries confirmed that "the life of the mind is alive and well in America."
You might have thought Barack Obama was up for a National Book Award too, since his name came up so frequently during the awards ceremony. Calling him "a reader and a writer," emcee Eric Bogosian noted that his presidency, representing the "literary empathetic complex" (rather than the "military industrial complex"), would see more libraries and schools being built. "One one-hundredth of the money spent on Iraq could build a library next to every Starbucks," said Bogosian.
The book community celebrated the 59th National Book Awards last night in New York City's financial district, down the street from the Stock Exchange. The location, however, did little to dampen the mood, though that may have had more to do with incoming president Obama and with the gorgeous new venue at Cipriani in a converted bank building. The National Book Foundation also presented the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Maxine Hong Kingston and the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to Barney Rosset. Rosset, former publisher of Grove, famously brought to America--and fought legal battles for--both D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.
