National Book Award Project

Wendy's Introduction and Progress List

UPDATE January 3, 2009 - MY GOALS FOR 2009

My goal for 2009: 5 books from this list

Winners:

• Three Junes, by Julia Glass (2002)
• The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
• Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier (1997)
• The Spectator Bird, by Wallace Stegner (1977)
• Them, by Joyce Carol Oates (1970)

Nominees:

• Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski (short list 2007)
• Drop City, by T.C. Boyle (short list 2003)
• The Known World, by Edward P. Jones (short list 2003)
• House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III (short list 1999)
• Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat (short list 1995)
• Breathing Lessons, by Anne Tyler (short list 1988)
• Beloved, by Toni Morrison (short list 1987)
• The Optimist’s Daughter, by Eudora Welty (short list 1973)

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I am very excited to be part of this long term project...thanks for hosting it, Sharon! I have already read several winner and nominees from the National Book Awards fiction list. Some I did not finish and will not attempt again - they were just books I disliked so much I couldn't get through them. I believe that life is too short to read books we don't like.

That said, I hope to read at least all the winners and many of the nominees. I will be posting my progress and reviews here and on my blog.

Books Read:

1952 WINNER - From Here to Eternity, by James Jones (no review)
1953 Nominee - East of Eden, by John Steinbeck (finished October 15, 2007; rated 5/5; read my review)
1960 Nominee - The Haunting Of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (no review)
1961 Nominee - A Separate Peace, by John Knowles (no review)
1961 Nominee - To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (finished March 21, 2007; rated 5/5; read my review)
1962 Nominee - Catch 22, by Joseph Heller (DNF)
1968 Nominee - A Garden of Earthly Delights, by Joyce Carol Oates (finished February 22, 2008; rated 3.5/5; read my review)
1970 Nominee - Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut (finished December 2006; rated 4/5; no review)
1979 Nominee - The World According to Garp, by John Irving (read multiple times; rated 5/5; no review)
1982 Nominee - The Hotel New Hampshire, by John Irving (read multiple times; rated 5/5; no review)
1983 WINNER - The Color Purple, by Alice Walker (finished January 12, 007; rated 4.25/5; read my review)
1983 Nominee - Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler (finished January 24, 2007; rated 4.5/5; read my review)
1988 WINNER - Paris Trout, by Peter Dexter (no review)
1992 Nominee - Bastard Out Of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison (finished August 1, 2007; rated 3/5; read my review)
1993 WINNER - The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx (no review)
1997 Nominee - Underworld, by Don DeLillo (DNF)
2003 WINNER - The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard (finished August 9, 2007; rated 4/5; read my review)
2006 WINNER - The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers (finished September 6, 2007; rated 4.5/5; read my review)
2006 Nominee - Only Revolutions, by Mark Z. Danielewski (DNF)
2006 Nominee - Eat the Document, by Dana Spiotta (finished May 22, 2007; rated 3.5/5; read my review)

Tammy's progress

I haven't read nearly as many National Award books as I thought, but there's so many good ones to choose from that I'll be able to find something to read for years.  The books I've read so far are:

1958 - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (nominated)
1952 - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (nominated)
1953 - East of Eden by John Steinbeck (nominated)
1953 - Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
1959 - Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (nominated)

You can read my reviews by clicking on the titles in blue, above.  Please feel free to visit my blog here.

A Garden of Earthly Delights - Wendy's Review

Clara felt heavy and hot and sad, imagining already school over in the afternoon and the way she would have to run to get away from the stones and mud balls. She and Ned would both have to run, cutting across muddy fields, with the boys laughing behind them…”White trash!” They were white trash, everybody knew that, and what it meant was that people were going to throw stones: you had to get hit sooner or later. -From A Garden of Earthly Delights, page 47-48-

There are plenty of stones getting thrown in Joyce Carol Oates’ early novel: A Garden of Earthly Delights. The novel centers around the character of Clara, an economically disadvantaged child growing up as part of the dysfunctional Walpole family. Clara is literally born in a ditch at the side of the road - symbolic of her later struggles to rise from the muck of poverty and dysfunction to make something of her life. Clara’s early years are marked by her alcoholic, abusive father who is a Kentucky-born migrant farm worker.  Carleton Walpole is a harsh, angry man who moves his family from one encampment to the next, never providing a stable home for any of them.

He turned and shaded his eyes to look back over the camp. He saw now that it was the same camp they’d been coming to for years. Even the smells were the same. Off to the right, down an incline, were two outhouses as always; it would smell violently down there, but the smell would be no surprise. That was the safe thing about these camps: there were no surprises. Carleton took a deep breath and looked out over the campsite, where the sun poured brilliantly down on the clutter; rain-rotted posts with drooping gray clotheslines, abandoned shoes, bottles of glinting red and green, tin cans all washed clean by the rain of many months, boards, rags, broken glass, wire, parts of barrels, and, at either side of the camp, rusted iron pipes rising up out of the ground and topped by faucets. -From A Garden of Earthly Delights, page 58-

Oates’ descriptions are raw, real and depressing - she captures the hopelessness of Clara’s surroundings perfectly. So it is no wonder when Clara meets the much older and charming Lowry, she wastes no time in fleeing from her father and her downtrodden family. Still a child, Clara envisions a life much different from that which her mother lived. She is not discouraged by the seemingly insurmountable challenges she faces, and is not afraid to work hard. She sees Lowry as her knight in shining armor, a man she can rely on. But as with all the men in Clara’s life, Lowry is less than dependable.

If Lowry was in one of his moods, it was like Clara did not exist. Or she was some kind of thing tied to his ankle, or a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a weight, a burden but not too much of a burden; for Lowry wasn’t the kind of man who endures much of a burden. -From A Garden of Earthly Delights, page 130-

As the novel progresses, the reader watches Clara evolve from a girl with dreams of a home she can call her own, to a woman who is hardened by the world around her. With the impending birth of her son Swan, Clara takes control of her future by falling back on her ability to manipulate others into giving her what she needs.

The day Clara took her life into control was an ordinary day. She did not know up until the last moment exactly  how she would bring all those accidents into control, like a driver swerving aside to let a rabbit live or tearing into it and not even bothering to glance back: he might do one or the other and not know a moment before what it would be. -From A Garden of Earthly Delights, page 195-

Clara’s relationship with Revere - a man who offers stability and predictability to her - is developed over the last half of the book. This relationship represents all that Clara’s father was unable to provide, and so it is rimmed with sadness and disappointment.  The adult Clara, a woman who sees happiness in the accumulation of wealth, is a hard character to like. She hides behind the lie that everything she does is done for Swan - her only son. And yet her behavior is solely narcissistic and tinged with childishness. Swan is a tragic figure, a boy cut loose from his “roots” and unsure about where he fits in society. His moral decline is almost predictable, and yet still stuns the reader.

Originally written in 1966 (the first novel in the Wonderland Quartet), A Garden of Earthly Delights was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1968. Oates rewrote it in 2002 for publication by the Modern Library. She writes:

As a composer can hear music he can’t himself play on any instrument, so a young writer may have a vision he or she can’t quite execute; to feel something, however deeply, is not the same as possessing the power - the craft, the skill, the stubborn patience - to translate it into formal terms.

In rewriting her novel, Oates discovered some autobiographical elements to which she had previously been unaware - her own upbringing on a struggling family farm, her youthful exposure to stories about her paternal grandfather (a violent alcoholic named Carlton), the crude language of her childhood which was accepted as commonplace, and the similarity of the name Clara to that of Oates’ mother Carolina. In the rewritten version, Oates attempts to examine her characters more thoroughly so that the reader can ‘experience them intimately, from the inside.‘

A Garden of Earthly Delights is not so much about  what happens to a young girl raised in poverty and abuse, but is more about the awful gap between social classes.  It is about a young girl who must confront her past in order to move into her future. And it is about survival, as well as about those who do not survive. Oates writes:

The trajectory of social ambition and social tragedy dramatized by the Walpoles seems to me as relevant to the twenty-first century as it had seemed in the late 1960s, not dated but bitterly enhanced by our current widening disparity between social classes in America. Haves and have-nots is too crude a formula to describe this great subject, for as Swan Walpole discovers, to have and not to be, is to have lost one’s soul.

This is not an enjoyable book. It is harsh, shocking, and tragic. Dreary and depressing at times, this is a novel not always easy to read. And yet Oates writes with a beauty that is hard to deny.  Her ability to uncover the soul of her characters is amazing. Readers who enjoy strong literary novels with tragic characters, will want to read this book. Those who are offended by foul language (Oates does not temper her dialogue) or dislike stories centered around dysfunctional families, will probably not like A Garden of Earthly Delights.

Review: All the Pretty Horses (1992)

All the Pretty Horses is the bastard offspring of a mating between Ernest Hemingway and Zane Gray, with some William Faulkner apparent in the DNA. “It was his horse. And it was a good horse. And he rode the horse. When it was night, he hobbled the horse by a stream and both boy and horse drank from the cold water of the stream . . . .” So, maybe that is not a direct quote, but it captures the essence.

Not that it is a bad book. There is plenty of exciting plot to keep it moving along, at least after the plodding first chapter. The story of John Grady Cole’s adventures in Mexico is riveting, involving vagabonds, a lovely senorita, her rich rancher father, Mexican prisons, murder, escape, and lots and lots of horses.

But the characters, with the exception of the fascinating aunt, are one-dimensional. Cole is a particularly wooden hero. It is apparent that McCarthy intended him as an archetype, but his approach of always doing the right thing, damn the consequences, becomes wearily repetitive. By the time he reaches his final soul-searching scene with a sympathetic judge back in Texas, he has become a stoic goody two shoes.

All the Pretty Horses won the National Book Award in 1992 and is the first of the three novels in McCarthy’s oft-praised “Border Trilogy,” followed by The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. Hopefully, the later books will keep the same spirit of adventure, but drop the Hemingway parody and add character development.

The Adventures of Augie March

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow won the Award in 1964. The story follows the life of the eponymous hero from childhood in Chicago, through a sojourn in Mexico with a zany huntress, to life on the seas in the Merchant Marines. Full of Bellow's over-the-top characters and riddled with discourses on Big Ideas, Augie is a great American hero. Bellow is a treasure.

The Centaur

Despite its title, I was surprised by how myth-centric The Centaur is. It is the story of a high school science teacher and his student son. It is also John Updike's re-telling of the myth of the centaur Chiron who, wounded, gives his life (his immortality) to Prometheus.

This is a book I may appreciate more in the recollection. While reading it, I was distracted by the allegory. Sometimes, the mythical references were too vague or convoluted to catch and I had to refer to the index at the back to make sure I wasn't missing something important.

But at times, the myth is more than allegory -- it is right there in the middle of the action. Updike sometimes refers to the hero as Chiron and describes his hooves clacking on the school stairs, for instance. I found the switch from allegory to action to be jarring. Also, the hero was annoying, not just to me as a reader, but to his son, wife, and co-workers in the story. I can't figure out how his unlikeability ties in with the myth of Chiron.

I read this because it won the National Book Award in 1964. I prefer his Rabbit novels.

Introduction and Progress

As I explain on my Rose City Reader blog, I am a "compulsive list reader" -- if it won a prize or made it to a "Must Read" list, I'll want to read it. Of the many lists of prize winners and recommended books I have going, I’ve been working for the past several years on reading the winners of the National Book Award.

So I was very happy to find this project. I’ll be posting about my progress here as well as on Rose City Reader.

According to Lists of Bests, I am 38% finished with this list. Those I’ve finished are in red; those I own but haven’t read yet are in blue.

2007 Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson 2006

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers

2005 Europe Central by William T. Vollmann

2004 The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck

2003 The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

2002 Three Junes by Julia Glass

2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

2000 In America by Susan Sontag

1999 Waiting by Ha Jin

1998 Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

1997 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

1996 Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett

1995 Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth

1994 A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis

1993 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

1992 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy 1991

Mating by Norman Rush

1990 Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

1989 Spartina by John Casey

1988 Paris Trout by Pete Dexter

1987 Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann

1986 World's Fair by E.L. Doctorow

1985 White Noise by Don Delillo

1984 Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist

1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1982 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

1981 Plains Song by Wright Morris

1980 Sophie's Choice by William Styron

1979 Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien

1978 Blood Ties by Mary Lee Settle

1977 The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner

1976 JR by William Gaddis

1975 The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams

1975 Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone

1974 Gravity's Ranbow by Thomas Pynchon

1974 A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer

1973 Augustus by John Williams

1973 Chimera by John Barth

1972 The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

1971 Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow

1970 Them by Joyce Carol Oates

1969 Steps by Jerzy Kosinski

1968 The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder

1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

1966 The Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter

1965 Herzog by Saul Bellow

1964 The Centaur by John Updike

1963 Morte d'Urban by J.F. Powers

1962 The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

1961 The Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter

1960 Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth

1959 The Magic Barrell by Bernard Malamud

1958 Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever

1957 The Field of Vision by Wright Morris

1956 Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara

1955 A Fable by William Faulkner

1954 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

1953 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

1952 From Here to Eternity by James Jones

1951 The Collected Stories by William Faulkner

1950 The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren

Sorry for the double spacing -- I am new to html and doen't know many tricks yet.

I'll post reviews of some of the ones I've read.

Fieldwork

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski (2007 National Book Award finalist)

In Mischa Berlinski’s first novel, Fieldwork, a young American expatriate (named Mischa Berlinski) living in Thailand gradually uncovers the intertwined stories of an American anthropologist who was studying the Dyalo people, and a missionary family who was trying to convert them. At the heart of Fieldwork is a mystery surrounding a murder committed by the anthropologist.

Berlinski creates a believable, textured world in his novel, with a strong anthropological sense of the Dyalo (a fictional group, but apparently based on several real Thai groups). The lonely life of a field anthropologist was well realized. Berlinski’s biggest achievement, for this reader, was his sympathetic take on the realistic, flawed missionary family. I found this a particularly interesting read in such close proximity to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, which was more about the negative effects of missionaries on native culture than the natives themselves.

The narrator teases out the anthropologist’s story slowly and painstakingly, and my one disappointment is the narrative voice Berlinski finally used to wrap up the mystery. Some of the book felt quirky for quirkiness sake (why did the narrator have to have the same name as the actual author?), but the clarity of the writing made up for this. All in all, a strong first effort by a writer I’ll be keeping an eye on.

Chris's Progress to Date

Thanks to Sharon for setting this up! I've found the National Book Award to be a good list to mine for reads in the past. Like Wendy, I'd like to read the winners, and many of the shortlisted books, although there are some writers on here I've successfully avoided like the plague (I'm looking at you, Ayn Rand), and I don't know that I'm going to change that. I'll be posting reviews here and on my blog.

Books from the list I've read so far:

• 1952 Nominee - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• 1952 Nominee - Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron
• 1953 WINNER - Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• 1953 Nominee - The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• 1957 Nominee - Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
• 1959 Nominee - Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• 1961 Nominee - A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• 1961 Nominee - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• 1962 Nominee - Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
• 1979 Nominee - The World According to Garp by John Irving
• 1980 WINNER - Sophie's Choice by William Styron
• 1980 Nominee - Endless Love by Scott Spencer
• 1982 Nominee - The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
• 1983 WINNER - The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• 1986 Nominee - A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
• 1987 Nominee - Beloved by Toni Morrison
• 1989 Nominee - Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
• 1990 WINNER - Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
• 1992 WINNER - All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
• 1992 Nominee - Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
• 1993 WINNER - The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
• 1994 Nominee - The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
• 1995 WINNER - Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
• 1995 Nominee - All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell
• 1995 Nominee - The House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferre
• 1996 WINNER - Ship Fever and other Stories by Andrea Barrett
• 1996 Nominee - The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken
• 1996 Nominee - Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Stephen Millhauser
• 1997 WINNER - Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• 1997 Nominee - Underworld by Don DeLillo
• 1998 WINNER - Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
• 1998 Nominee - Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman
• 1998 Nominee - A Man in Full by Thomas Wolfe
• 1999 WINNER - Waiting by Ha Jin
• 2000 WINNER - In America by Susan Sontag
• 2000 Nominee - The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
• 2000 Nominee - Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
• 2001 WINNER - The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• 2002 Nominee - The Heaven of Mercury by Brad Watson
• 2003 Nominee - Drop City by T.C. Boyle
• 2007 Nominee - Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

I haven't written any reviews of these. I was going to mention some of my favorites, but it turned out that I love many of these books, and it was too hard to narrow it down to a meaningful list. The only ones I wouldn't recommend are Cold Mountain (worst ending of a book I can remember) and A Man in Full. I think my gap from 1962 to 1979 is interesting. I was born in 1966 and started reading "adult" books probably around 1981, and I wonder if I stayed away from books in that time period because they were too new to be "classic," but I wouldn't have come across them as they were published?

Sharon's Progress to Date and List for 2008

Since I've taken on so many reading projects of prize lists that feature international authors, I am glad to balance it out with a prize list project of predominantly American authors.  I feel that doing all of these projects will give me an excellent exposure to some of the best literature in the world from the 20th century and beyond. 

My goal for this project is to read the winners and finalists in the adult fiction category  Following is a list of my progress to date:

• A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor (finalist, 1956)
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (finalist, 1960)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (finalist, 1961)
• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (winner, 1962)
• The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy (finalist, 1967)
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (finalist, 1970)
• Come to Me by Amy Bloom (finalist, 1993)
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (winner, 1997)
• You Are Not A Stranger Here by Adam Haslett (finalist, 2002)
• The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (winner, 2003)
• The March by E. L. Doctorow (finalist, 2005)

In 2008, I hope to read the following:

• The Grass Harp by Truman Capote (finalist, 1952)
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck (finalist, 1953)
• Beloved by Toni Morrison (finalist, 1987)
• Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett (winner, 1996)

Looking forward to some fantastic reading!