Did any of you read it?
It isn’t the first time that the National Book Awards have been compared to the Oscars, and while that comparison is simply for the sake of dreaming about how books could reach a wider audience, it misses the fact that books take longer to consume, longer to circulate, and longer to assess. The wonderful thing about following smart film blogs like Nick’s Flick Picks or The Film Experience (or the sorely missed *StinkyLulu) is the currency of both the posts and the people reading them. The strong debate about a divisive film is usually had by people who have seen the films. Books rarely have that kind of undivided attention, and even when they do (like last year’s big stink about Franzen), it’s still a conversation largely involving the participation of people who have yet to pick up the title. Who wants to follow that?
So we’re back to reviewers, and we’re back to our dependence on them to do more than react to publishers’ main titles. Over at NPR, Rachel Syme at least asks about book reviewers’ responsibility about “dropping the ball” (though the question ends up being rhetorical more than anything else). One look at the page and you’ll see the book being advertised is Obreht’s. What a surprise. Why not feature Krivak? Or Otsuka? (Why not read Krivak? Or Otsuka? And preferably without a knife out?) When Syme brings up the example of Jaimy Gordon’s reissue of Bogeywoman by Vintage, she describes it as a “fizzle,” insinuating that the NBA’s choice of the McPherson title Lord of Misrule last year was primarily a boost to the little guy. The question (and the ire) here should be on Vintage: did they advertise? Or on reviewers: did anyone pick up Bogeywoman and reassess it in light of Gordon’s new novel? My guess is no, on both counts—that “fizzle,” that failure to catch fire, should reflect on neither Gordon nor the awards, and more on the people who can stoke the flames.
Ultimately, these complaints about the relevance of the Awards have more to do with the shortlist failing to validate the admittedly hard work of the reviewers. I’ve seen the interior of a reviewer’s den: the stacks of publicity envelopes, the galleys, the author info packets. It’s a miracle for a reviewer to cover 30-40 a year if he or she is lucky. I get it, okay? A prize list ends up making that work look futile. But let there be no confusion that a reviewers’ choices about what to cover have little to do with quality or what we should rewarding with culturally significant prizes.
I’ll trust a judge like Yiyun Li or Victor LaValle over a reviewer any day. I’m teaching Yiyun Li’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and the day my undergraduates came back after having read her story “Immortality,” I knew something had clicked. Something changed in their perception about what a story could do, what it could offer, and even what they might expect from other stories from here on out. Prize lists function in the same way to a lot of readers—we’re ready to try something new. I’m excited to read Jesmyn Ward and Andrew Krivak and I’m thankful the NBA slate made me aware of them. As for reviewers, yes—you missed these. Look harder next time.
*Film fans should click through on StinkyLulu’s Supporting Actress Sundays, which was once a monthly feature asking readers to revisit and reassess Oscar performances in this particular category. Film nerds like me will find it deeply fun and engaging. It almost inspired me, at one point, to do it with past NBA slates. While the 2001 slate was considered a cakewalk for Franzen at the time, I know a lot of readers who ignored the book pundits for a while and took up some of the other four books on that slate. Dan Chaon, for example. Jennifer Egan’s Look at Me. Those nominations brought them needed readers, and it most assuredly got reviewers, on the next go-arounds with new books, to open the galley package and just give them a goddamn try.
