I was so, so tempted to title this post “Graduation Day at the NBA” for having witnessed the medal ceremony prior to last night’s marathon reading at the New School. Because how could I not be amused as each of the twenty nominees were called to the dais of the Orozco room, bowed their heads to receive their respective gold medallions and given a certificate of award (or of good standing?) Did some get to graduate cumma sum laude, magna cum laude or just eke their way onto the honor roll?
But of course, that’s all meant in good fun, and the reception was filled with lots of choice moments – especially for someone still unabashedly enthusiastic about hangin’ with the literary folk. After introducing myself to Ken Kalfus I brought up the tail end of his Philly Inquirer interview, wondering if he had “negative campaign ads” for the other fiction nominees (he did, but stressed that the gist got “somewhat botched” in print format.) Mark Danielewski brought many members of his family – including his mother, his brother and his sister – and related how it took him almost a full day after the award nominations were announced to find out thanks to a calamitous combination of mixed messages, tour stops, phone spam and untimely cell phone interruptions. Dana Spiotta circulated with her husband (and partner in the Rose & Kettle restaurant) Clement Coleman, while Jess Walter was somewhat awed to be in the company of heroes such as Richard Powers (who, once the introduction was brokered, expressed admiration for THE ZERO; Walter countered with his own for all of Powers’ body of work) When I pointed out to Walter that no one had ever gone from winning the Edgar Award to a National Book Award nomination int the same year, Walter agreed that it was a surprise to him, too, while also revealing his next project – a children’s book.
By the time the reading began in the Tishman auditorium, I could match the nominee’s face with the name – a good thing, since each was only given five minutes to read from his or her work and the sense of connection was already formed in my mind. Kudos to the National Book Foundation folks for arranging the two and a half hour event in a way to maintain maximum interest. By starting things off with Gene Yang, it allowed the audience to be fully engaged with AMERICAN BORN CHINESE as the pages were displayed overhead for all to see and follow along. By ending with Danielewski reading from ONLY REVOLUTIONS, the same applied, as all could see the complex arrangement of the alternating, upside-down narratives (he only read from Sam’s point of view, leaving Hailey’s narrative tantalizingly out of reach.) The nominees were arranged in groups of five (one from each category) and generally, the young people’s and fiction authors kept to their alloted time, while the non-fiction nominees tended to go on longer than necessary (or perhaps five minutes is more elastic in their world…) Minor quibbles aside, the evening is best summed up by emcee Nicole Krauss, who closed the night by commenting on the common question of “why literature matters”: each reading, in its own way, offered a unique answer, one that bodes well for literature’s future and perpetuation of necessary enthusiasm.