It’s becoming a tradition of sorts, the Nobel jury gives the Prize to an author virtually unknown in the United States, and newspaper columnists grumble while small and university presses bask in a moment of publishing glory.
Nobody outside a few square miles in New York cares that this year’s Pulitzer or Booker winner was put out by Random House or HarperCollins, but even to the casual observer of the literary scene, there’s something refreshing (and, for some, aggravating) about seeing yet another Nobel winner with only the faintest, most haphazard publishing footprint. The Nobel Prize, probably half the time, shines a huge spotlight some pretty obscure books.
For small and university presses, the Prize is a rare moment of popular notice. Daniel E. Pritchard who works for David R. Godine, Publisher in Boston wrote as much a year ago reacting to J.M.G. Le Clézio’s Nobel win, “Nobel Prizes are usually the playground for big boys. They were noticeably absent from this one, leaving all the fame and street-cred for small independents.” Godine published Le Clézio’s The Prospector.
The University of Nebraska Press also published Le Clézio, with two books in print when the Nobel was announced last year: The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts and Onitsha. According to the press’ publicity manager Cara Pesek, Nebraska sold just “a handful” of copies of both titles in 2007, but “since the prize was announced last year, those two titles have accounted for more than $100,000 in incremental sales.”
With Herta Müller’s win, Nebraska has now struck Nobel gold two years in a row. Pesek said that the day after the Nobel was announced, the press had 3,000 backorders for Müller’s book Nadirs.
The director of University of Nebraska Press, Donna Shear, tempered the excitement somewhat, saying that the Nobel turns a book into “a steady backlist seller” as it finds its way onto University reading lists. But she added that a side-effect of the Nobel jury’s idiosyncrasies is that the Prize becomes “a validation of the efforts of University presses.”
The Euro-centric Nobel also injects some commercial viability into the typically limited world of literature in translation. After winning the Nobel in 2002, Hungarian writer Imre Kertész went from university presses to Knopf and Vintage. Meanwhile, plans are already underway to bring Müller to a wider audience. Shear said Nebraska put in a bid for Müller’s latest, Atemschaukel, recently shortlisted for the German Book Prize, but it’s expected that the book will land with one of the big publishing houses.
We expect our book prizes to confirm that a book or author’s commercial success and positive reviews are well-deserved. Sometimes the Nobel plays this role – a validator of critical opinion – but, for the American audience, it often does something different. And this is where the grumbling comes in. We don’t like to be told that an author we’ve never heard of is one of the greatest ever. But in cases like Müller and Kertész and Le Clézio, the Nobel serves as a reminder that in certain corners of the publishing industry, there are presses shepherding the work of these writers into print and keeping it available until such time as the rest of us are able to take notice.
I haven't read Johnson's novel yet, but I suspect Sarvas made the right choice: "slight" seems to fit with my impression of Vida's book as well. There are stunning pieces to her writing, and I was entranced by the setting, but there were so many missed opportunities to take the story deeper (not necessarily longer), that I finished the book rather frustrated. Vida's talented, and I'll look forward to her future work, but this novel is underwhelming.
Since when can a novelist not be a critic as well?
The word 'slight' must be stricken from one's vocabulary after being published? Many of our greatest novelists have also been our greatest critics… I really hope that our best writers can recognize when a book fails to achieve that special something… and many are able to look back on their own work with an equally critical eye.
While I remain unconvinced by Sarvas' appreciation of "Tree of Smoke" (for me, the action/'longueur' combo was exactly the point…), I feel the need to defend his right as a critic.
Oh, and "Tree of Smoke" was amazing.
Though my money's on "Remainder", which was equally great (better?).
Aside; am I the only one who hated "Oscar Wao"?
Winjer, I respect Mark Sarvas as a critic (I like his blog a lot), and of course I think one can write novels and discuss them in the public sphere, but certainly it's not as easy as doing just one or the other. Since I didn't read Tree of Smoke or Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, I can't say which I'd "advance" to the next round (which, is a pretty funny way to read books anyway, but so entertaining!).
For the record, I loved Oscar Wao, and absolutely hated The Remainder–but I seem to be the only one who had a hard time with that one…
Thanks for your comments!
winjer —
While I certainly didn't hate Oscar Wao (Diaz can flat-out write, there's no doubt about it) I found myself very frustrated by the jumping around between characters. I felt like Diaz went through all this trouble to create a compelling, interesting, empathetic lead character in Oscar, and just when I would follow Oscar anywhere, poof!, we're in someone else's story. Maybe some felt this deepened the story, but I felt it made the story more superficial. Of course, that may be personal taste.
It also left me with the nagging feeling that Diaz didn't really have a story to tell, and when he ran out of ideas, he would just simply turn to a different character.
(It also, frankly, made me wonder what in this book took 10 years to write, when not only does it draw heavily on Diaz's own experiences, but his previous book of short stories, Drown. Here's hoping Diaz will broaden his horizons with his next book.)
For my money, Diaz also went to the pop-culture/geekery/nerdlinger well for references far too many times, and I felt like he used it as a crutch to avoid tackling real human emotion.
Of course, all of these tactics could just be his attempt to dress up what is essentially a story about a nerd trying to get laid.
I think the novel works best if it's looked at as a collection of loosely collected short stories, and not a "novel" per se. And once I realized Diaz wasn't going to be writing a story-driven novel, it became more enjoyable.
(Though I have to ask, why title the book that way? I think that also helped create a false impression.)
Anyway, this got a little long, but while I don't know if I would recommend this book, I do know I will at least pick up the next thing he writes, as long as he stretches his wings some.