National Book Award: Classic or Dud?

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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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