National Book Award: Classic or Dud?

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as a supplement to nick's supplement, what's the best national book award prize winner you've ever read, and what's the worst?

winners are listed here.

― fred solinger, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

to get it started:
best: gravity's rainbow
worst: j.r.
most underrated: steps

i notice that many authors didn't receive the award for their best work, e.g. roth, mccarthy, bellow, etc.

― fred solinger, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses
I plowed through this book for one reason only: I am a masochist. Dudderdud-dud-dud.
Despite the fact you guys think he's crap, I still stand by DeLillo.

― nathalie, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

well, i've read one this time (gravitys rainbow). i still have no idea what i make of that book

― gareth, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Fools, all of you! The best is quite clearly Chimera, and anyone who says otherwise is ... dumb, or something. Unless they say Goodbye, Columbus, which is almost acceptable, but only for the packaged short stories.

― Nitsuh, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

God I tried to start All the Pretty Horses several times before I finally left it on a train in a fit of pique.

― Nick, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

barth = barf. only acceptable when -elme is tacked on. it had to be said.

goodbye, columbus may be the slightest winner ever. short stories do, in fact, make it, esp. "defender of the faith."

mccarthy is often a tough slog, but blood meridian is quite brilliant.

nathalie, it was unfair of me to put don d. up against barthelme. i do love delillo myself, though i'd have to call white noise, though i like it (and seem to be in the minority), the most overrated winner. (libra is infinitely better: he's at his best when he's given a plot and characters and is left alone just to think and ponder and consider.)

― fred solinger, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

1976: William Gaddis JR
This isn't about that Dallas character, right?

― dumb fewl, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Much better list than the Booker one, surprise surprise - 'Invisible Man', 'The Moviegoer', 'Gravity's Rainbow' and the Bellows all GRATE (but 'Mr Sammler's Planet' and no 'Henderson The Rain King' or 'Humboldt's Gift' - bizarre!) Can't believe Fred likes GR but not 'JR', 'cos Gaddis is the tops - he should've won for the sublime 'Carpenter's Gothic' too.

Worst - any of the Updikes.

― Andrew L, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

i find gr a walk in the park compared to jr. maybe i should give it another chance (and maybe i should've used the recognitions as my intro to wm. gaddis).

agreed, updike & his writing = ass. oh, i mean, he has a fine prose style; it's well-written stuff, but what actually gets written is absolute shit. fucking rabbit.

― fred solinger, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Best : White Noise, Them, From Here to Eternity
Worst : Sophies Choice

― anthony, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I dislike Updike so much that discovering Nicholson Baker's freaky obsession with him made me try and persuade myself that Baker was crap as well.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I am coming around to that with Baker as well. The Mezzanine was fabulous, but ... a very steady decline / "Is that all there is?" feeling with him, with the exception of The Everlasting Story of Nory.

― Nitsuh, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Lost in the Funhouse is grate, Fred, you are insane and also a fool.

― Josh, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

for whom is the funhouse fun?

anyway, sot-weed factor bit and that's all i'm choosing to base him on. so nyeah.

― fred solinger, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I like Baker - even 'U and I', but esp. the brilliantly creepy 'Fermata' - but have to side w/the Barth doubters. Found 'Giles Goat-Boy' to be unreadable tripe, and have never ventured further; Barthes, yes, Bartheleme, yes (anybody ever read anything by Don's brother Fred?), Barth no.

― Andrew L, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Honestly, something is wrong with every one of you people. Chimera is brilliant on a practically OuLiPan level -- ranks right up there with Perec and Calvino for me. His essays -- his essay on postmodernism! -- are precise and perfect. Lost in the Funhouse is a marvel. And even his recent work, as the original thrill of his referential twists pales, is still brilliant reading, for his skill at revamping language alone. I cannot think of any other writer in the world who is as good as he is at reorganizing syntax and making words modify one another unexpected -- it's only a trick, but it's a neat trick and a signature trick and a damn good one. If he were still teaching at Johns Hopkins writing program, I would actually consider moving to godforsaken Maryland.

― Nitsuh, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Sorry -- the above was meant to be sort of funnily belligerent, but it came across as self-righteous instead. Note that I'm basically kidding about how much I love Barth. But really, I do think he's fabulous, to the point where I can't really understand how others can disagree.

― Nitsuh, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Shock, surprise! I've read TWO of these: _Invisible Man_ (CLASSIC) and _Going After Cacciato_ (CLASSIC). There's no reason why I haven't read _The Color Purple_ yet and I'm about halfway through _V._, which I must finish before starting _Gravity's Rainbow_.

― Dan Perry, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Fred and Don Barthelme shd be on the "whammy" thread, no? They broke the bank at somewhere and are now barred from gamblng anywhere... (This is TRUE!)

― mark s, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

it's true! we had quite a night! don had devised a system, see...

i always felt kinda sorry for fred barthelme, a pity which almost led me to read one of his books. reflecting on their popularity, perhaps more people should've felt sorry for don.

barthelme (don) anecdote: When an editor at The New Yorker said ten lines needed to be cut from a story that used the word "butter" 132 times, Barthelme replied that "the word butter must appear 132 times, you can cut out any other butter after that." The story, "Eugénie Grandet," was collected in Sixty Stories, Barthelme's own selection of his best. Looking at it today, it's hard to see how the paragraph consisting entirely of the word "butter" repeated 86 times makes much difference at all.

― fred solinger, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Two. I thnk they were the shortest ones.

― dave q, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Well, here's some ammunition against me, Fred: I have Invisible Man narrowly beating out White Noise as the book I liked least of those that I read. So, well, er, I'm still right and you are wrong neener neener.

― Josh, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

josh, i hardly call your encounter with invisible man "reading" unless you've since finished it and have stopped depending on hearsay. you literary philistine, you.

― fred solinger, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I've only read Invisible Man, half of Gravity's Rainbow, and about two pages of A Frolic of One's Own. Going by that, the best would be GR, and the worst would be The Invisible Man.

― Kris, Monday, 17 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I thought you said you never finished the Gaddis, Solinger. If so I bet I read more Ellison than you read Gaddis.

― Josh, Tuesday, 18 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Of that list, I have only read Ha Jin's Waiting. It is certainly good. A sort of anti-love story. In my defense for being such an illiterate, I've read quite a few short stories by many of the authors. And I'd stand by Updike's stories any day of the week. The A&P one is one of my all time favorites.

― bnw, Tuesday, 18 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

three years pass...

this year's winners:

fiction: _the news from paraguay_ by lily tuck
non-fiction: _arc of justice: a saga of race, civil rights and murder in the jazz age_ by kevin boyle
young people's literature: _godless_ by pete hautman
poetry: _door in the mountain: new and collected poems, 1965-2003_ by Jean Valentine

so anybody read any of these? any good?

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, 18 November 2004 18:25 (nineteen years ago) link

nine years pass...

Congrats John D.

― jaymc, Thursday, 18 September 2014 05:52 (nine years ago) link

^^ This!

― ambient yacht god (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 18 September 2014 06:05 (nine years ago) link

Pretty sure Richard Powers is going to take it, but absolutely fantastic that Wolf in White Van was nominated. It's a very confident debut.

― Tomás Piñon (Ryan), Thursday, 18 September 2014 06:23 (nine years ago) link

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