A very enjoyable rant in The New York Times about the 5 latest nominees for the National Book Award.
I love literary brou-hahas, even if I haven’t read the books being argued about.
Caryn James is getting a lot of crap for writing that piece. (More on this over at Book Slut). She’s being called a “misogynist”. She is trying to say something about the award itself, the nomination process, etc. It’s a very interesting article. I haven’t read any of these 5 books, and I don’t think I will – not really my cup of tea … but I think James is brave, to call to attention the short-story fetish in today’s novels … the lack of scope, the lack of words on the page (I love her line: “There’s such a tyranny of white space in these already-short books that a chapter running a few pages feels like “War and Peace.””)
And the last line of the piece is great. To my taste, you could insert “John Irving” in place of “Philip Roth” (and probably a couple of other names too) and get the same idea.
I know such awards are essentially meaningless, to some extent, and who cares about a literary dust-up anyway … But what is interesting to me is the analysis of what is going on right now in the world of fiction, what James sees as disturbing trends, her analysis of what is wrong about today’s hit books, and also what is wrong with the entire Award process.
I didn’t realize Rick Moody was leading the panel of judges for the award. He seems an odd choice, because his writing strikes me as fairly quirky – something you either appreciate or totally despise. I’m thinking of Dale Peck’s characterization of him as “the worst writer of his generation.”
I guess I see some relation between Moody leading the judges and the controversial outcome.
I’m one of the ones who despises Rick Moody – although I thought Dale Peck’s article was wayyyy over the top. (Probably why I enjoyed reading it so much.) Like – Dale Peck was completely undone by the very THOUGHT of Rick Moody!!! It was quite an amusing bitch-slap, I thought.
But I also wanted to tell Dale Peck to take a Xanax.
I find Rick Moody sort of exhausting. I read The Black Veil a couple years ago and thought, whoa, dude, chill out. Peck was over the top, and yet I appreciate him for writing in a lively manner. Book reviews so often seem chummy/boring/back-slappy. Nice to find an actual opinion in one of them.