Hi Margo,
This year the annual "best books" issue of
The New York Times Book Review offers a fascinating juxtaposition. Along with the nine books anointed as the year's best comes novelist Julia Glass' letter to the editor responding to Laura Miller's earlier essay blasting the National Book Award for fiction. The fiction finalists consistently strike many as eccentric, Miller declared. Glass, the 2002 winner, hotly defended the choices and the process. How fitting, I thought, that this defense of one group of idiosyncratic choices serves as prelude to another, the Book Review's own.
Rule No. 1 about all book contests and lists: They are arbitrary, subjective, even outright political. No matter who chooses or how many are involved in the choice, there's no justice. That's why it's outrageous to see the same book chosen for two major awards, which demonstrates only the limited imagination and reach of the judges.
I'm writing this as I juggle the holiday season with the impossible task of submitting my own short list of candidates for the
National Book Critics Circle Award. As you know, the board to which you once belonged and on which I still serve, will pick five finalists per category -- fiction, non-fiction, biography, poetry, criticism -- in January, followed by winners in March. Publishers can nominate any book they want. This means a deluge, especially at this time of year. Miller contends that "only a handful of truly excellent books are published annually." But based on my experience, there are many.
This is, of course, the make-or-break season for retailers, and also our turn to cheer for our favorites, to make a case that, with luck, will translate into holiday sales. So, give me five, Margo -- five (or so) books that you think prize-worthy, and why. I'll follow with my gems.
Hey Ellen,
Only five? That's a real challenge, but here goes...
1. "The Fortress of Solitude: A Novel" by Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday) This big, messy wonder of a book, may be as close to the Great American Novel as we'll ever get. Part "Catcher in the Rye," part "Invisible Man" and part Action Comics, it combines the personal and the political, gritty realism and fantasy, and themes of class and race into one spectacular whole that is both entertaining and enlightening.
2. "A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness" by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (Houghton Mifflin)Suffering doesn't generally enoble people. On the contrary. It more likely makes them bitter and small. That's why this book -- and the work Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and others have done in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- is so remarkable. Gobodo-Madikizela is a black clinical psychologist who served with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the Human Rights Violations Committee of the TRC.
As part of her job, she interviews one of the most notorious mass murderers under the former white-dominated apartheid regime -- Eugene de Kock, known as ""Prime Evil'' -- in Pretoria's maximum security prison. There, she expects to look into the face of evil. (De Kock not only ordered the killing and torture of hundreds of people -- he bloodied his own hands.) Instead, to her great discomfort, she finds a human being, someone "capable of feeling, crying, and knowing pain.''
Her attempts to reconcile herself to the fact that those who perpetuated such violence against her people were humans, not devils, leads her to profound truths about the need for -- and limits of -- healing after mass atrocity. This is not some phony plea for people to get along. It is a searing look at what an immensely complicated task it is to forgive the unforgiveable.
3. "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" by Robert Kagan (Knopf)Europe is from Venus and the United States is from Mars. That's Robert Kagan's thesis in this short, tightly packed volume attempting to explain why America and Europe are at such odds these days. When Kagan defends America's right to reshape the world with its mighty force, you can't help but think back on all the "British Empire and its white man's burden" malarky, but when Kagan outlines the European position, he is eloquent and surprisingly sympathetic.
4. "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes, a new translation by Edith Grossman (Ecco) Recently, the Norwegian Nobel Institute polled 100 leading authors worldwide, asking them to pick "the best and most central works in world literature." "Don Quixote," the 17th-century story by Miguel de Cervantes, topped the list. Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican, has called Cervantes the founding father of Latin American literature. This most recent English translation of the Spanish masterpiece (there have been some 20) by Edith Grossman, translator of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, helps me understand why. Spanish hasn't changed much since the gaunt knight and the roly-poly Sancho Panza roamed the dusty landscape of La Mancha in search of adventure, but English has. And happily, Grossman takes that into account, offering an accessible and readable version of the story of a man who loses his mind by reading too many romances.
5. "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson (Broadway)A readable book about science by one of the funniest writers alive.
Thanks, Margo.
I admire your list, and am delighted to find that we have ABSOLUTELY NO OVERLAP! This supports my contention that there are many worthy contenders out there, and book contests and editor's choice lists should be viewed as mere samplers of the excellence to be found. So, without further ado, here are my picks. Regrets to the many unnamed also-rans.
Non-fiction: "Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of the Age in the Bronx" by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (Scribner) This fine book gets its power from from the decade LeBlanc spent reporting it and from a neutral tone that lets readers judge for themselves, introducing middle-class readers to a world they'll scarcely recognize and how justice works there.
Biography: "An American Pilgrimage: The Life You Save May Be Your Own" by Paul Elie (Farrar, Straus, Giroux). You don't have to be Roman Catholic (I'm not) to appreciate this braided tale of four legendary figures -- Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, and Walker Percy -- who shared not only the same religious background but also a profound awareness of the existential nature of life.
Fiction: "A Distant Shore" by Caryl Phillips (Knopf) A story of the unlikely friendship between a lonely English divorcee and an African immigrant. Among the many contenders, I chose this novel because its themes continue to haunt me. Tender though it may sound, this book is definitely NOT a bromide for the improved-race-relations crowd.
Criticism: "A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life" by Arnold Weinstein (Random House)Ranging wide with examples from art and music as well as literature, this book shows why the arts are not incidental. Through art, the Brown University professor argues, we learn who we are as individuals as well as the universality of the feelings we experience.
Poetry: "The Poetry of Pablo Neruda" Edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)This comprehensive volume of nearly 600 poems, many accompanied by the Spanish original, bursts with evocative images. Neruda is to word lovers what Julia Child is to cooks.
Wild card: "I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company" by Brian Hall (Viking)A fictional account of the Lewis & Clark expedition that combines solid research and terrific descriptive writing with imaginative reach. And it even has a news peg -- the 200th anniversary of an amazing trip.
