Here’s Peter Matthiessen, accepting congratulations from Dan Simon of Seven Stories Press just a few minutes after winning the National Book Award for fiction for his novel, Shadow Country. The decision came as a surprise to many in the audience; waiting for his coast, one veteran editor allowed that the portion of the 900-plus-page novel he had read was of the highest literary quality, but that he had still been sure the prize would be going to Aleksandar Hemon for The Lazarus Project, a view many in the ballroom had echoed earlier in the evening. (Many GalleyCat readers felt the same way; in our pre-ceremony polling, Hemon had come in second behind Marilynne Robinson, with Matthiessen a close third.)
THe editor we spoke to described Matthiessen’s win as “a provocative choice,” but the mood of others in the audience ranged from polarizing to deflated. Graywolf Press publisher Fiona McCrae, who had been rooting for her own book, Salvatore Scibona‘s The End, took a more philosophical view of the evening, noting the gap between younger writers like Scibona, Hemon, and Rachel Kushner and Matthiessen and Robinson, then pointed out that Scibona had dodged a bullet by not winning for his debut novel, thus reducing the critical pressure on subsequent boosk—and she was sure (just as that editor had been of Hemon) he would have many more opportunities ahead of him.
In the other categories:
- Nonfiction: Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello
- Poetry: Mark Doty, Fire to Fire
- Young People’s Literature: Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied
GalleyCat readers successfully predicted Doty’s victory, while Blundell was their second choice in the YA category; as with Matthiessen, Gordon-Reed was third on their list for nonfiction.