read the National Book Award winners

Philip Roth won the 1960 National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a collection of five short stories and the title novella. He went on to create an incredible body of work – building on many themes introduced in Goodbye, Columbus – publishing 30 books to date with another on the way.

In the main novella, hero Neil Klugman is home in Newark after two years in the army. He has finished college, is working in the library, and lives with his Aunt Gladys and Uncle Max in the old neighborhood. When Neil falls in love with Brenda Patimkin, the prototypical Jewish American Princess whose family has moved to the suburbs up the hill, Roth begins the examination of American Jewish life that continues through many of his books.

The title is a reference to Ohio State University Seniors saying goodbye to college, goodbye to Columbus, Ohio, but it also signifies growing up and leaving youth behind. Neil and Brenda’s relationship demonstrates the intensity of first love, as well as the disillusionment and emotional tempering that result.

The five short stories that follow vary in force and effect. . . .

Full review posted on Rose City Reader.

Based on a true story, The Fixer is the story of a Russian Jew who, in the early 1900s, is unjustly accused of murdering a Christian boy. Bernard Malamud’s 1966 novel won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Yakov Bok has a hard luck life as a handyman, or fixer, in the Jewish Pale of Settlement. Although political reforms following the 1905 revolution gave Jews new freedoms and political clout, life in the Pale had not improved. After his childless wife abandons him for a goy, Yakov leaves the shtetl for Kiev, where he ends up working in, and living above, a Christian-owned brick factory. With an assumed name, no papers to allow him to live in that part of the city, and anti-Jewish sentiments on the rise, Yakov is headed for trouble. . . .

(Read the rest of this review on Rose City Reader.)

Mesmerizing, character-driven novel about the Vietnam War.

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.

Despite its title, I was surprised by how myth-centric this novel is. It is the story of a high school science teacher and his student son. It is also a 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 (Updike sometimes refers to the hero as Chiron and describes his hooves clacking on the school stairs, for instance) which I found 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 this ties in with the myth of Chiron.

I just found, at my neighborhood used book store, a 1966 Modern Library edition of Coodbye, Columbus, with a near perfect dustjacket. This puts me in the mood to pursue this goal again. It got pushed to the back burner while I finished the Modern Library Top 100 list. But now that I am almost done with that goal, I am looking forward to a new list. GC will be the first one I read.

I am just joining this website, but have had this goal for some time. I have these little cards posted all around my desk, with lists of the Pulitzer, Nobel, Booker, National and Modern Library award-winners. I got the lists at Powell’s in POrtland, which is the best bookstore on the earth. Sigh. But I live in NYC, and sorry, the Strand is a pitiful contrast.

Anyway, here are the books I”ve finished thus far:

2001 The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
1999 Waiting, Ha Jin
1993 The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
1983 The Color Purple, Alice Walker

Not as many as I thought. I have to get on it. Although I’m sharing my eyes with several other reading goals, so this may take a lifetime. Perhaps I should focus on one award category at at time, like they suggest you pay off your smallest credit card first, then spend all that money (time) on the other ones? hmmm. In that case I will have to finish Pulitzer first and get back to National. Now I’m getting ridiculous…

Spartina by John Casey, Nov. 26th

This is an excellent book, by far the best I’ve read this year. It’s about a Rhode Island man building his dream boat, the Spartina. At one point, I was unable to leave the apartment to go grocery shopping because I was so concerned for the characters and absolutely had to finish the chapter to make sure everything worked out okay. When I finished it, I was sincerely moved – I can’t remember the last time a book moved me that much. I don’t want to write a review: just read it.

It’s over! Unfortunately, that’s my first response to finishing this book. I’ve read and liked many of Sontag’s essays, and “Regarding the Pain of Others,” but I just never got that into “In America.” Sontag is definitely brilliant and a talented writer, but something about this novel just kept me at arm’s length. Often when I finish a book I have mixed feelings about, I like to check out Barnes & Noble or Powell’s to read editorial and customer reviews, hoping that someone else’s opinion will help clarify mine. This time, I came away feeling that I definitely understand what Sontag’s trying to do – it just didn’t touch me the same way it touched the critics who gushed on the book cover and gave her the National Book Award. A famous Polish actress decides to abandon the stage and emigrate to America with her family and friends to live a simpler life. But after she arrives, she decides to return to the stage and begins a triumphant American career. It’s about identity (personal and national) and transformation and idealism and the role the theatre plays in all of these things. It burrows deep into the characters’ heads – internal monologues, letters, one-sided conversations.

When I describe it like this, it sounds pretty good. Unfortunately I got annoyed with, not charmed by, Sontag’s style in the very first chapter and spent the rest of the book trying to recover. I think once you start getting frustrated with a novel this unusual and ambitious, it’s hard to change your mind and start seeing it as genius. I only got as far as “not as bad as it was.” I don’t want to poison anyone else’s opinion, but this book just never connected with me. But it’s another NBA winner and a step closer to my 30 books goal (and thus, cross-posted).

Up next: Spartina, fresh from the library.

I read this book while camping in the wilderness with my students and I wished it was longer. It won the First Novel Award and it is a beautifully written novel. A woman rents a summer house in her childhood home in Ohio with her children, and leaves her husband editing a literary review at home in Massachusetts. First of all, who would leave Massachusetts in the summer? Even the Berkshires must be kinda nice. But although the writing and emotions are perfectly captured, it is after all a novel. So the story concerns itself with children, childhood friends, brother, and parents.

Neither Dale nor Sophie are characters in the novel. And Robb Forman Dew is a woman. So already, it’s nothing like you expect.