A passionate defense of the validity of writing for a broad audience by popular author Stephen King and a virtual sweep of the awards by one of publishing's most literary publishers were the twin poles of an unusually crowded National Book Awards ceremony November 19.
More than 900 paying attendees, plus an unusually large number of media drawn by the singularity of King's appearance there to receive a Distinguished Contribution to American Letters medal, crowded the Marriott Marquis Hotel ballroom in Times Square for the 54th running of the awards. The occasion also marked Neil Baldwin's departure, after 15 years, as executive director of the sponsoring National Book Foundation, during which time he has presided over raising $25 million for its programs, said chairman Deborah Wiley.
Master of ceremonies Walter Mosley, who wondered why he had been chosen ("I'm not funny"), said that no writer was more worthy of the award than King, both for his writing and for his efforts on behalf of fellow writers. His great theme, Mosley said, is that of "small people experiencing difficulties and finding extraordinary strength," and his great popularity is due both to "his great knowledge of the fears of the working class and his reverence for life."
King, who was greeted at both the start and finish of his remarks with a standing ovation from a crowd that seemed to have put behind it any sense of his unsuitability for such an award, grasped the nettle immediately. "Some people think this award to me is an extraordinarily bad idea," he admitted, then added, "but most of us here tonight are on my side." He talked of his tough beginnings, struggling to make ends meet and living a hand-to-mouth existence in a trailer in Maine with wife Tabitha, before the publication of Carrie in 1973—the first of what would eventually turn into a string of more than 30 bestsellers.
He was a passionate defender of the validity of pure storytelling. Many people, he said, might like to see him as "a rich hack. But the idea that we're in it for the money is a lie. I never wrote for money." He said this award was recognition, "not for a good writer or a great writer, but an honest writer." King said he had always been "infuriated by the literary novelists and their old-boy network" but now feels it is time to try to "build bridges between literary and popular fiction." Writers like Peter Straub, Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly, he said, are "remaking the face of American popular fiction," and he asked how many of the awards judges had read any of their books. "You don't have to vote for them—just read them. Let's keep our hearts and minds open."
In the awards that followed later, books by Farrar, Straus & Giroux authors took three of the four. (Roger Straus quipped: "What happened in nonfiction?")
The nonfiction award went, in fact, to Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, published by Simon & Schuster's Free Press. This memoir of his long-ago Cuban childhood by an exile who is now a Yale professor was cited as "a powerful eulogy for every child's lost Eden." An emotional Eire, who crowned himself with a wreath from his table's decorations, noted the irony that his winning book had been written at night, while his more academic works were done in the daytime, and he added darkly: "Everything the NBA stands for is negated on a daily basis in Cuba."
The winner in Young People's Literature was Polly Horvath for The Canning Season (FSG). First nominated for an NBA four years ago, Horvath briefly but eloquently thanked her family and her editor, Margaret Ferguson.
In Poetry, the winner was C.K. Williams for The Singing (FSG), also a previous nominee (and a Pulitzer winner), who celebrated by reading one of his poems, called "The Doves," about "all the crap in my head" that comes with advancing age.
Shirley Hazzard, a very sporadic novelist who has been silent since The Transit of Venus in 1980, a nominee then, won for her novel The Great Fire (FSG). She seemed to be taking aim at King's remarks when she commented that she doesn't regard the creation of literature as "a competition." "We're lucky to have the language we share, and we all have to enjoy it," she said. And she also seemed to be commenting on the current political scene when she remarked dryly that in America today, "there are too many explanations, at least the official ones, and not enough questions."
In the end, however, the twin poles seemed reconciled; in a cheerful moment later, Hazzard and King were seen amicably comparing their medals.
