read the National Book Award winners

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.

Eventually I’d like to read ALL the books, not just fiction, but I think I’ll start with fiction.

As of now, upon starting this goal, I’ve read The Shipping News, so I’ve quite a row to hoe.

Last time I somehow felt the need to type up my own list, when of course it is easily available online. So here we go… books I’ve read in bold, books on my shelf in italics.

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

1986 Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez

1985 White Noise by Don Delillo

1985 Easy in the Islands (1st Novel Award) by Bob Shacochis

1984 Stones for Ibarra (1st Novel Award) by Harriet Doerr

1984 Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist

1983 The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1982 Dale Loves Sophie to Death (1st Novel Award) by Robb Forman Dew

1982 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

1981 Plains Song by Wright Morris

1981 Sister Wolf (1st Novel Award) by Ann Arensberg

1980 Birdy (1st Novel Award) by William Wharton

1980 Sophie’s Choice by William Styron

1980 The World According to Garp by John Irving

1979 Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien

1978 Blood Ties by Mary Lee Settle

1977 The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner

1977 Master Tung`s Western Chamber Romance by Li Li Chen

1976 JR by William Gaddis

1975 The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams

1975 Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone

1974 Gravity’s Ranibow 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

I really liked “White Noise” – it’s one of my favorite books and I’ve read it a few times. I thought “The Corrections” was overrated – sometimes I just don’t get why books win awards. Of the zillions I haven’t read, I’m looking forward to reading more Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Ha Jin, and Thomas Pynchon, and from the looks of this list I better be looking forward to reading Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and John Updike. Of those guys, I’ve read “Portnoy’s Complaint” which I liked but didn’t blow me away, some assorted Bellow stories that were either really good or really ehh, and I started “The Centaur” but it moved really slow and I got impatient.

I’m also looking forward to “Spartina” because it’s set in Rhode Island, where I live. I have to admit that I don’t know too much about most of the books on this list, so I will be keeping my eyes open and adding them to my overflowing bookshelves.