National Book Awards Announced
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Before a crowd of editors, publishers, authors, agents, and booksellers, Richard Powers won the National Book Award for fiction for “The Echo Maker” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), set in Nebraska amid the spring migrations of the Platte River.
Mr. Powers accepted the award from the National Book Foundation in a blacktie ceremony last night at the Marriott Marquis.
A third-generation Westerner, Timothy Egan, won the National Book Award for nonfiction for “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl” (Houghton Mifflin).
The committee chairwoman, Jill Jonnes, elicited mirth from the audience in describing how so many books were sent to their homes that the child of one judge made a fort out of them.
Nathaniel Mackey garnered the award for poetry for “Splay Anthem” (New Directions). He said that he was especially pleased to receive an award whose first recipient was William Carlos Williams, who was an abiding influence.
M.T. Anderson won the award for Young People’s Literature for “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. I: The Pox Party” (Candlewick Press),a work set in Revolutionary Boston.
The master of ceremonies, Fran Lebowitz, welcomed the audience. Famed for having writer’s block, she said, “They’ve provided me with a script. Finally, what I’ve always wanted — writers.” She pointed out that unlike in the Olympics (where there is an “actual winner, one you can prove is the best”),there were no silver or bronze medals. Echoing F. Scott Fitzgerald, she said, “There is no second place” in American life.
Two earlier awardees broached the subject of speaking truth to power. Adrienne Rich received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Ms. Rich whose first book was published through the Yale Younger Poets series, having been selected by W.H. Auden, said poetry was not emotional massage, linguistic aromatherapy, a blueprint, instruction manual, or billboard.
The editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, presented the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to the coeditors of the New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers and the late Barbara Epstein. Mr. Silvers recalled how Epstein referred to the review as a ma and pa store.
