The winner of the best of the National Book Awards is The Collected Stories of Flannery O’Conner. Congrats and well-deserved though my favorite remains Invisible Man. By the way, i didn’t quite meet the challenge I gave myself. Gravity’s Rainbow took me under in a BIG way.
Over a decade ago I along with a group of my neighbors had a book club discussion that centered on the book Push. Our responses to the work of the poet, Sapphire was intense. We were raw, apologetic, stunned, disgusted and in awe. Struck by the audacity of the story, by the beauty of the character Precious, embarrased by our failure to be as human as we like to pretend we are when dealing with those who show extreme behavior that we can’t deal with emotionally but intellectually recognize. Years later I would open Brownstone Books and start an in-store book club. We read Push and 5 years after my first reading circle experience with this book it was de ja vu all over again. This month I’m hosting/participating in a teen book club group and they have chosen Push. I’m happy they are reading this book not just before the movie releases but also in a circle with a social worker and 4-6 adult women mentors/voulnteers. There’s so much to discuss in those 4 chapters. So much to turn away from and to turn to that no one should have to go it alone. There’s therapy in the pages. Which is good since you’ll all need a little bit after readin. Always nervous about what the silver screen does with sentimental nuanced works but I’ll be ther on the 6th along with the girls to figure it all out.
We’re in for a hand-clapping, toe-tapping, finger-snapping good (story) time with award-winning illustrator, Gregory Christie (Jazz Baby, When Louis Armstrong Taught Me to Scat et al) and jazzman Greg Porter. While Porter and his bass player perform jazzy renditions of kids classic songs, Christie will sketch our entire musical experience. You and your kids are invited to sing and play a-long.
Talk about improvisation!
Join us this Saturday 10/24 from Noon till 1pm.
$20 (includes one of Christie’s beautifully illustrated hardcover picture books and an “instrument” to take home.)
I’m meeting with a group of teenage girls from the Blossom program this evening. We’re discussing Push by Sapphire. This book is so powerful I don’t want to miss a thing. Really hoping I can steer these girls to a deeper understanding of poverty and invisibility, domestic abuse and what can happen in the absence of the safety net our country should have to keep kids from falling through the cracks.
So Invisible Man is done and has been passed on to my brother who, to my dismay and embarrassment, has never read it. I rarely lend a book but in this case I had to. We’ll see what he thinks. As for me I am reserving judgment until November 18th. Up next: Gravity’s Rainbow.
This one is a bit blistering but very entertaining. Have any of you finished the book as yet? Click here to see the article.
German Writer Wins Nobel Prize For Literature
Herta Mueller, a member of Romania’s ethnic German minority who was persecuted for her critical depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday in an award seen as a nod to the 20th anniversary of communism’s collapse.
Mueller was honored for work that “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed,” the Swedish Academy said.
The 56-year-old author made her debut in 1982 with a collection of short stories titled Niederungen, or Nadirs, depicting the harshness of life in a small, German-speaking village in Romania. It was promptly censored by the communist government.
In 1984 an uncensored version was smuggled to Germany, where it was published and devoured by readers. That work was followed by Oppressive Tango in Romania but she was eventually prohibited from publishing inside her country for her criticism of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s rule and its feared secret police, the Securitate.
“The Romanian national press was very critical of these works while, outside of Romania, the German press received them very positively,” the Academy said.
Mueller, whose father served in the Waffen SS during World War II, is the third European to win the prize in a row and the 10th German, joining Guenter Grass in 1999 and Heinrich Boell in 1972.
“I think that there is an incredible force in what she writes; she has a very, very unique style,” said Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. “You read half the page, and you know at once that it’s Herta Mueller.
“At the same time she has something to tell, partly from her own background as a persecuted dissident in Romania, but also her own background as a stranger in her own country, a stranger to the political regime, a stranger to the majority language, and a stranger to her own family,” he added.
Mueller emigrated to Germany with her husband in 1987, two years before Ceausescu was toppled from power amid the widening communist collapse across eastern Europe.
Most of her work is in German, but some works have been translated into English, French and Spanish, including The Passport, The Land of Green Plums, Traveling on One Leg and The Appointment.
Mueller is the 12th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Recent female winners include Austria’s Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 and British writer Doris Lessing in 2007.
The prize includes a 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) prize and will be handed out Dec. 10 in the Swedish capital.
With literature, four of the 2009 Nobel Prizes have now been announced. American scientists won the medicine and physics prizes, while two Americans and an Israeli researcher shared the award for chemistry.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Monday.
Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, established the Nobel Prizes in his will in 1895. The first awards were handed out six years later. Besides the monetary prize, each award includes a diploma, a gold medal and an invitation to the prize ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. The peace prize is handed out in Oslo.
Last year’s literature prize went to French novelist Jean-Marie Le Clezio
So last night as I felt myself descending further into the wickedly insightful world of IM I began to get nervous about my pledge to read the best of the best by November 18th. I decided to use the same basic just-in-time strategy I use to finish book club selections–number of pages divided by number of days. The six finalists have a total page count of 4,279. I’m 200 pages in with 41 days to go. That amount to 99.5 pages per day. I can handle that.
So, I am 100 pages into my re-reading of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and trying my best to remain neutral. I’m looking forward to the magic of the other 5 books nominated for the Best of the National Book Award Winners but this is going to be difficult. The introduction and prologue of Ellison’s book are stellar. The battle royal scene–heartbreaking. And, the social and historical distance travelled down that country road from the school to the Golden Day and back is masterful. And, as if that wasn’t enough to bias me, I also have such history with this book. It is without a doubt the novel that turned me into a serious reader. How then can I even hope to find room in my mind for the other worthy contestants? What a task.We’ve been getting some really good press lately. From the New York Times and TimeOut NY to this wonderful highlight on the local blog Brooklyn Based. Enjoy!
http://brooklynbased.net/everything/stuyvesant-heights-day-trip/
