Inaugural Aspen Words Literary Prize Announced
The Prizewinners 2010/2011
With the awarding of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the 2010/2011 literary award season is now over, which gives us the opportunity to update our list of prizewinners.
Literary prizes are, of course, deeply arbitrary in many ways; such is the nature of keeping score in a creative field. Nonetheless, our prizewinners post is compiled in the same spirit that one might tally up Cy Young Awards and MVPs to determine if a baseball player should be considered for the Hall of Fame. These awards nudge an author towards the “canon” and help secure them places on literature class reading lists for decades to come.
There are three books climbing the ranks this year. Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad unsurprisingly had a good showing with judges. Meanwhile, the IMPAC win puts Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin on our list, and the shortlist nod does the same for Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn.
Here is our methodology:
I wanted to include both American books and British books, as well as the English-language books from other countries that are eligible to win some of these awards. I started with the National Book Award and the Pulitzer from the American side and the Booker and Costa from the British side. Because I wanted the British books to “compete” with the American books, I also looked at a couple of awards that recognize books from both sides of the ocean, the National Book Critics Circle Awards and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The IMPAC is probably the weakest of all these, but since it is both more international and more populist than the other awards, I thought it added something. The glaring omission is the PEN/Faulkner, but it would have skewed everything too much in favor of the American books, so I left it out.
I looked at these six awards from 1995 to the present, awarding three points for winning an award and two points for an appearance on a shortlist or as a finalist. Here’s the key that goes with the list: B=Booker Prize, C=National Book Critics Circle Award, I=International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, N=National Book Award, P=Pulitzer Prize, W=Costa Book Award [formerly the Whitbread] bold=winner, red=New to the list or moved up* the list since last year’s “Prizewinners” post
*Note that the IMPAC considers books a year after the other awards do, and so this year’s IMPAC shortlist nods were added to point totals from last year.
11, 2003, The Known World by Edward P. Jones – C, I, N, P
9, 2001, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – C, I, N, P
8, 2009, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – B, C, W
8, 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz – C, P, I
8, 1997, Underworld by Don DeLillo – C, I, N, P
7, 2005, The March by E.L. Doctorow – C, N, P
7, 2004, Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst – B, C, W
7, 2002, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – I, N, P
7, 2001, Atonement by Ian McEwan – B, C, W
7, 1998, The Hours by Michael Cunningham – C, I, P
7, 1997, Last Orders by Graham Swift – B, I, W
7, 1997, Quarantine by Jim Crace – B, I, W
6, 2010, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – C, P
6, 2009, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann – N, I
6, 2009, Home by Marilynn Robinson – C, N, I
6, 2005, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai – B, C
6, 2004, Gilead by Marilynn Robinson – C, P
5, 2009, Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín – W, I
5, 2008, The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry – B, W
5, 2008, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout – C, P
5, 2007, Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson – N, P
5, 2006, The Road by Cormac McCarthy – C, P
5, 2006, The Echo Maker by Richard Powers – N, P
5, 2005, Europe Central by William T. Vollmann – C, N
5, 2005, The Accidental by Ali Smith – B, W
5, 2004, The Master by Colm Toibin – B, I
5, 2003, The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard – I, N
5, 2001, True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey – B, I
5, 2000, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon – C, P
5, 2000, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood – B, I
5, 1999, Waiting by Ha Jin – N, P
5, 1999, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee – B, C
5, 1999, Being Dead by Jim Crace – C, W
5, 1998, Charming Billy by Alice McDermott – I, N
5, 1997, American Pastoral by Philip Roth – C, P
5, 1996, Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge – B, W
5, 1996, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser – N, P
5, 1995, The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie – B, W
5, 1995, The Ghost Road by Pat Barker – B, W
5, 1995, Independence Day by Richard Ford – C, P
5, 1995, Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth – N, P
Excerpts of Pulitzer Winners and Finalists
Comcast’s Internet service was been down for about 36 hours which has made blogging difficult. Now that my day job is officially a work from home gig, I rely on steady Internet access like never before, and considering the amount of time I spend blogging and using the Internet for pretty much all of the information consumption in my life, going without is next to impossible for me. I’d say that’s a little scary, but it’s been like this for several years now so I’m pretty used to it. At any rate, hopefully I’m back up and running for good, no thanks to Comcast – it took three phone calls to them and 12 hours before they could even confirm that an outage was causing my problem. Luckily, Mrs. Millions was kind enough to let me use her office for work, otherwise I would have been really screwed.In the meantime, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday. To me, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction is the most predictable of all literary prizes as it usually goes to the most well-known American literary work of the previous year, especially if the book deals with American themes, namely the American immigrant/Melting Pot idea. American history is usually an important theme as well. This year I figured E.L. Doctorow’s The March was a lock, both because it sold well and because it’s about an iconic episode in American history, General Sherman’s great march during the Civil War. Instead, Doctorow’s book was named a finalist, but the much less well-known, but similarly named and themed book March by Geraldine Brooks won the prize. March is about the Civil War as well, but the book is not simply a fictional account of a historical event, rather March tells the story of Mr. March, the father who in Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women is away fighting in the Civil War. This isn’t the first time that what Booksquare calls a remix has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1999 Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, a “remix” of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway won the prize.Listed below are this years winners and finalists in all the “Letters” categories. I’ve included links to excerpts and other interesting material where available.FictionWinner: March by Geraldine Brooks – excerptThe March by E.L. Doctorow – excerptThe Bright Forever by Lee Martin – excerptDrama:No Winner: (I rather like that the Pulitzer unlike most other prizes is unafraid to not pick a winner if they don’t feel there’s a worthy book in a category – though, admittedly, I’d be surprised to see them not pick a fiction winner any time soon.)Miss Witherspoon by Christopher Durang – New York Times reviewThe Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow by Rolin Jones – New York Times reviewRed Light Winter by Adam Rapp – New York Times reviewHistory:Winner: Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky – Bookslut reviewNew York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan by Jill Lepore – excerptThe Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz – interviewBiography:Winner: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – excerptThe Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion – excerptThe Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism by Megan Marshall – Megan Marshall at SlatePoetry:Winner: Late Wife by Claudia Emerson – a poemAmerican Sublime by Elizabeth Alexander – excerptElegy on Toy Piano by Dean Young – excerpt (pdf)General Non-fiction:Winner: Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins – (very short) excerptPostwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt – Judt in The NYRBThe Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer – excerpt
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Booker Season
We are swiftly approaching the announcement of the Booker Prize. Britain’s highest award for fiction, the award is fussed over endlessly by the gossip-hungry British press, and, for the winner, the rewards are plentiful, often turning a book into a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. Take Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, for example. This year’s Longlist has been out for a while and the Shortlist will be out in a week. The winner will be crowned on October 19th. For the American reader, it is worth mentioning that this is the first year that American authors are eligible for the Booker. Still, as is often the case, the Longlist includes books that are not currently available in the States, though others have been bestsellers and award winners here. Here are the ones that have excerpts available:The Island Walkers by John Bemrose — excerptHavoc, in Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett — excerptA Blade of Grass by Lewis Desoto — excerptThe Honeymoon by Justin Haythe — excerptThe Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard — excerpt, my reviewCloud Atlas by David Mitchell — excerptThe Master by Colm Toibin — excerptThe Brits love to bet, and the bookmakers over there actually come up with odds and take bets on the Booker each year. According to them Cloud Atlas is the big favourite. And if you don’t believe me when I tell you that the Brits (and the whole of the Commonwealth) get really saucy over the Booker, check out The Bluffer’s Guide to the Booker or better yet, Tibor Fischer’s tell-all about being a Booker Judge.
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2011 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners Announced
The winners of the National Book Critics Circle Award have been announced in New York City. The award is voted on by critics and considers all books in English (including in translation), no matter the country of origin. The winners in the various categories and some supplementary links:
Fiction: Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision (excerpt)
Nonfiction: Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War (excerpt)
Autobiography: Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace: A Memoir (“The Writer at the Memory Table“)
Criticism: Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews (“Putting It Together,” “The Millions Interview: Geoff Dyer on the London Riots, the Great War, and the Gray Lady“)
Biography: John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (excerpt)
Poetry: Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains
Previously: The finalists
The Booker’s Dozen: The 2016 Booker Longlist
In the third year that the Booker Prize has been open to U.S. authors, five American authors again make the longlist, including National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Paul Beatty. Double winner J.M. Coetzee is the lone former winner on the list, while Elizabeth Strout is the most celebrated American to be tapped. Other notable names include A.L. Kennedy and David Means, and four debut novels made the list.
All the Booker Prize longlisters are below (with bonus links where available):
The Sellout by Paul Beatty (The Inanity of American Plutocracy: On Paul Beatty’s The Sellout)
The Schooldays of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee
Serious Sweet by A.L. Kennedy
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
The North Water by Ian McGuire
Hystopia by David Means
The Many by Wyl Menmuir
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (Ottessa Moshfegh’s Year in Reading)
Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (Elizabeth Strout’s Year in Reading, A Millions Top Ten book)
All That Man Is by David Szalay
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
2010’s Pulitzer Winners: A Big Day for Indie Presses
This year’s Pulitzer winner for fiction has gone to a book from Bellevue Literary Press, an “unlikely” operation that runs out of Bellevue, the famous New York psych hospital (the New York Times wrote up the press in 2007). Rounding out the fiction finalists is an effort from another small press, the venerable Soft Skull, and a much praised short story collection .Here are this year’s Pulitzer winners and finalists with excerpts where available:FictionWinner: Tinkers by Paul Harding – (excerpt)Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet (Lydia Millet participates in our Year in Reading)In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (a Year in Reading selection)General Nonfiction:Winner: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman (excerpt)How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John CassidyThe Evolution of God by Robert Wright (excerpt)History:Winner: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed (excerpt)Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin – (excerpt)Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood (excerpt)Biography:Winner: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles (excerpt)Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey (excerpt)Woodrow Wilson: A Biography by John Milton Cooper, Jr. – excerptWinners and finalists in other categories are available at the Pulitzer Web site.
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