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November 14, 2004
Award-Winning Fiction Should Not Make Our Heads Hurt
by Ron HoganOn the back page of this weekend's NYTBR, Laura Miller notes correctly that the annual hue and cry over the supposed obscurity of the National Book Award fiction nominees "was turned up a notch" this year, but that's about all she gets right as she continues the Times calumny heaping (about which the newly arrived Mad Max Perkins has some choice comments), declaring the NBA short list is "like an especially emphatic thumbed nose in the direction of the literary establishment." Pretending that she can read minds, she says the rationale of the judges "surely goes something like this":
Since accolades and sales are already so unequally distributed, why not use a national prize to even things out a little and draw the spotlight to books that have been unjustly passed over? The judges are fellow fiction writers who feel they know all too well how easily good books go unnoticed. As one of this year's judges, Stewart O'Nan, retorted to the complaints, "It's not a popularity contest."
Practically casting O'Nan and the other judges as the art fags who finagled their way onto the high school yearbook staff so they could replace the jocks and pep squad snapshots with photos of all their Goth friends, Miller then suggests that her "impression" of the shortlist--"the great books you should have been reading and the press should have been covering"--is, in fact, what the judges had in mind, then says they got it all wrong anyway, because "none of them could be reasonably expected to please more than a small audience" because they're too busy ignoring the demands of plot and "sidestepping readerly expectations." And one can apparently be sure that a novel that sidesteps readerly expectations--by which Miller seems to mean her expectations as a reader projected onto the population at large--can't possibly be as good as one by "Philip Roth, Russell Banks [or] Cynthia Ozick," all of whom, as readers are well aware, have been overlooked this year even though they deliver unto readers precisely what is expected and would never think to traffic in "cool, ironic, and merciless" prose like Lily Tuck's.
From this essay, one learns Laura Miller doesn't like "prose poems," for one thing, which leads her to conclude that "neither [Florida and Madeleine Is Sleeping] merits a spot on the short list, let alone deserves the award itself." One also learns that she, using her critical pseudonym "most of us," prefers "a strong story over perfect writing." And we learn that while Miller believes "it's too crude to say these five books are neglible," she doesn't have any problem suggesting such a thing. But her most flagrant misstep is her arrogant pronouncement of "a nagging conflict built into the awards themselves" at the essay's end:
For people who read, say, four novels a year, prizes help narrow down a bewilderingly vast field of candidates. Awards have become, as the critic James Wood put it, "the new reviews." The publishing industry, the press and the public want the National Book Award for fiction to serve that purpose... The judges, however, see it as an honor given to a writer by other writers, and apply very writerly, if not downright esoteric, criteria in making their decision.
That the industry likes awards as marketing tools should come as no surprise, and unfortunately it's also no great shock that a press which pays less and less attention to reviewing (and otherwise talking seriously about) literary fiction would want the National Book Foundation and other prize committees to pick up the slack so NYTBR can devote two entire pages to a non-story like Lee Siegel's pretentious, ambivalent meditation on Marion Ettlinger--which might even be characterized as a too-long review of a year-old coffee table book. One wonders, however, how Miller knows what "the public" wants...and then wonders why, if she wants NBA nominations to be the "new reviews," she's so upset that she thinks they're telling her she and her colleagues spent the last year "wasting time and column inches on safe big-name talents and inferior crowd pleasers."
Unless, that is, "the Academy Awards of the book business" should reinforce the Times mindset which put forth the notion that among the nominees this year only Kate Walbert's Our Kind was worthy of full review (not, you'll note, by a staffer) upon its initial release. When one thinks about that in light of Caryn James' attack on "precious writers' program language" and Charles McGrath's disdain for much of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, perhaps a theme emerges: Maybe Stewart O'Nan and his colleagues should have been focusing on "big and sprawling" comedies with "a good story" instead of "beautiful sentences, formal experiments and infinitely delicate evocations of emotional states."
Between your comments on the NYT articles and the great one on ones with the five authors, I feel like I've stumbled onto a great investigative reporter at his peak. My appreciation is passed on for the effort you've put into this one, especially while things on your personal writing front have heated up.
Great job!
Ron, I think you're doing a phenom job with your NBA coverage. My only discomfort comes from any defense of this year's nominees that relies on taking a shot at Ozick, Banks and Roth, all of whom are interesting writers in their own right. I don't think of Plot Against America as delivering precisely what is expected, nor of Heir to the Glimmering World as perfunctory. Maybe I am mistaking your meaning?
My own opinion is that this year's nominations are wonderful, and I commend the panel for looking beyond the expected. At least three of the nominees are now on my must-read list, and with the exception of Bynum, I wouldn't otherwise have been aware of their work. It just goes to show how much amazing work is going on that doesn't necessarily make it to the front table of the bookstore.
I read the Miller piece as an odd amalgamation of marketing advice and criticism. And I think that's a dangerous, unuseful place for a critic. A critic's job is to provide a clearly written, impassioned response (for good or ill) to the work. The process doesn't work if the critic anticipates other people's opinion and lets that pollute her judgment. It mucks things up, because how is she to know what lies in the "public's" heart? She can only know her own. A critic is supposed to lead — not mill around asking, "what did you think?"
Where I've been upset with the Times lately is the continued phenom of the double review: For example, do we need two full-length reviews to tell us that Helprin's book of short stories is stale and stiff, with poor character development? Aren't there other worthy works of fiction that readers might like to know about? The fact that as you say, of this year's nominees only Walbert's book received a full review, points to the answer being "yes."
Yeah, that crack at the triumvirate was strictly sarcasm.
I think I've mentioned this before, maybe not here, but the "double review" isn't as unsettling to me in that I believe it's right for the Times to consider the Review as to some extent distinct from the daily arts section, and to assume that it has an audience of its own that may not get the daily paper. In the Internet age, though, I can see how that distinction might be collapsing.
Posted by: editor at November 14, 2004 12:59 PMThanks for clarifying on the sarcasm. Excuse the misunderstanding. There's been so much backlash to the nominations, and backlash to backlash, and backlash to backlash to backlash that I can get confused as I make my bloggy rounds.
I see your point about the double review, and agree that the Internet may be collapsing that. I think sometimes the double review is warranted, such as with the publication of Bill Clinton's autobiography, where (as I think Terry Teachout put it) the publication represented a major cultural event. I'm less convinced with the Helprin example, as well as the recent Kitty Kelley double (esp. as the second review, when it did appear, was *way* tardy to the party). And need these doubles always be full-length?
I guess what I'm really objecting to is castigating novels for being obscure in the same paper that hasn't made room to review them. So recognizing the paper has finite space I'm looking at what, if I was editor, I'd cut.
That said, is it just me or has the NYTBR been much more exciting the past few weeks? Less drowsy. I've actually started looking forward to its arrival again.
Posted by: CAAF at November 14, 2004 01:37 PMDitto Carrie's observation on critic's falling into marketing/sales mumbo jumbo. If I cared, I wouldn't be looking to Ms Miller's business insights. Frankly, she is creating more than her fair share of crap.
Posted by: birnbaum at November 15, 2004 11:52 AMOne wonders how outraged Miller et al would have been had "I Am Charlotte Simmons" been nominated. Not too, methinks. If it's good enough for Michiko to trash, it's good enough to be nominated for the NBA.
Posted by: Jimmy Beck at November 15, 2004 12:08 PMMiller ran a piece last year complaining about the NBA nominations, last year's being, TC Boyle, Susanna Choi, Edward Jones, and the eventual winner, Shirley Hazzard. One other that I can't recall. Miller would have been as horrified as anyone if Wolfe's slab had been nominated.
I don't think this is as simple as it has all been made out to be.
I think reasonable people can be ticked by the nods and for reasons unrelated to the five authors.
But maybe I'm just crazy
Posted by: Third Kermit at November 15, 2004 12:18 PMI also find the double reviews unhelpful. I suppose I never thought about the need for 2 reviews for the different audiences that the NYT and the NYTBR have. But I agree that the internet is collapsing that need. The NYTBR has been more interesting, but I usually find a few things that make me wonder what they are thinking (the Marion Ettlinger piece as Ron points out).
And as for the NBA nominees, I assume they are good books because they've been nominated. But I'd also only heard of 2 of them. The backlashes keep coming and coming. Should big name authors be automatically considered for prizes? Or passed over for people who haven't received the attention they deserve? It's a tricky question---one that I can't answer.
Sorry, nothing new here. Just enjoying Ron's coverage.
As someone who reads many more than four novels a year, I appreciate your take on Miller's take on the NBA short list. I'm not sure to whom the book awards should cater, but I appreciate it that this year they seem to be catering to me, someone who exhausts the lists of easily obtainable fiction and needs to be pointed toward something a little less visible, perhaps. I was excited because I hadn't read a single book on the list this year, and that's the way it should be, I think. If people are only going to read four books in an entire year, they can find those four books fairly easily just by engaging their local librarian in a lengthy chat at the reference desk.
I suppose it's not surprising to hear someone suggest that awards should support the industry with their marketability, but to attribute that opinion to the public as well...well, she can quit putting words in my mouth any time now.
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