About Last Night

A lot of ink has been spilled (or whatever the information-age version of that figure of speech might be) over what Stephen King said at Wednesday’s National Book Awards ceremony in New York, and what Shirley Hazzard said right back at him.

Of all the many reactions I’ve seen, this one struck me as especially worthy of note:

When is it appropriate to make lists and start lecturing and when is it wiser to keep a steady campaign going, to talk about books one loves, to highlight what makes genre fiction so good and complementary, even, to literary fiction?…

Good writing is the key. It’s in places we don’t necessarily expect it to be, and comes in many different forms. Let’s keep our minds open and welcome all the possibilities. No, literature isn’t a “competition,” as Hazzard put it, and neither should people feel any sense of guilt that they aren’t reading the authors King recommends. These things take time, obviously. But labels are just that, designations often arbitrary. If it’s good, then that’s all that should matter.

Read the whole thing here. It’s by Sarah Weinman, who blogs at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, where she writes regularly (and smartly) about mysteries and other related matters.

What struck me about this posting is its openness to the full range of potential aesthetic experience–an openness that Shirley Hazzard, as fine a writer as she is, appears to lack. Like Hazzard, I’ve never read any of Stephen King’s books (though I mean to), but I do read a moderate amount of genre fiction, and I think some of it deserves to be taken quite seriously. Raymond Chandler and Patrick O’Brian, for instance, both merit that kind of consideration, and so do James M. Cain and Rex Stout, albeit on a lesser level. I haven’t read much of Georges Simenon, but what I’ve read I’ve found compelling. Among living writers, I enjoy Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake. And I’m lucky enough to count Laura Lippman, a first-rate mystery writer whose latest book is something more than that, as a friend.

As for Stephen King’s speech, I think it was misguided at best. You don’t change people’s minds by calling them names, which he came perilously close to doing on Wednesday. If King changed any minds at the National Book Awards ceremony, I’m not aware of it. More likely, he hardened still further the resistance of his highbrow listeners to considering the possibility that he might have had a point–which he did.

To my way of thinking, genre fiction is by definition limited in its expressive possibilities, but those limits are a lot less restrictive than many, perhaps most people realize, especially by comparison with much of what is now thought of as “serious” fiction. Back in 1997, I wrote an essay called “Real Cool Killers” about Crime Novels: American Noir, a two-volume set published by the Library of America. (Yes, it’ll be in
A Terry Teachout Reader.) Here’s part of what I said:

The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher whose dust jackets declare it to be “dedicated to preserving America’s best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes,” has brought out Crime Novels: American Noir, a pair of volumes containing eleven examples of what has lately come to be called “noir fiction,” after the cinematic genre of the Forties known as film noir. No such fancy name was applied to these short novels when they first appeared in paperback, bedecked with cheesy cover art and tumescent blurbs promising their semiliterate purchasers the cheapest of thrills. Forty years ago, Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me and Charles Wileford’s Pick-Up were smut; now they belong to the ages.

Arrant relativism? Well, yes, and then some. But while the noir novelists scarcely deserve to be ranked among America’s best and most significant writers, their harsh tales are infinitely more readable than the chokingly tedious output of a thousand American writers of impeccably correct reputation, and I venture to guess that people will still be turning the pages of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Cornell Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man long after the likes of Toni Morrison and Allan Gurganus are remembered only by aging professors of literary theory who wonder why nobody signs up for their classes any more.

Does that put me in Stephen King’s camp? I think not. I don’t think The Long Goodbye is as good a book as The Great Gatsby, and I believe the difference between the two books is hugely important. But I also don’t think it’s absurd to compare them, and I probably re-read one as often as the other.

The point is that I accept the existence of hierarchies of quality without feeling oppressed by them. I have plenty of room in my life for F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler, for Aaron Copland and Louis Armstrong, for George Balanchine and Fred Astaire, and I love them all without confusing their relative merits, much less jumping to the conclusion that all merits are relative.

In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s part of what this blog is all about–a big part.

I gave Anna in the Tropics a rave in this morning’s Wall Street Journal:

When coolness is all, nothing is so deadly as to be declared old-fashioned. So please don’t get me wrong when I say that Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics,” which opened Sunday at the Royale Theatre, is old-fashioned in the best sense of the word. It’s melodramatic, unabashedly poetic and perfectly serious–and it won a Pulitzer Prize from a panel of judges who’d never seen it on stage, a circumstance that left me wondering whether it could possibly be any good, especially in light of the suspiciously convenient fact that Mr. Cruz was (quoth the press release) “the first Latin American to win the coveted prize for drama.” Nobody ever went far wrong questioning the motives of Pulitzer judges, but this particular bunch, God knows how, managed to hit the target. “Anna in the Tropics” touched me as much as anything I’ve seen since I started writing this column….

I also very much liked the new production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV
that just opened at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, directed by Jack O’Brien and starring Kevin Kline as Sir John Falstaff:

He’s properly sly and unctuous, and if his Falstaff is perhaps a bit too much the roguish clown, he nonetheless rises with ease to the terrible moment when Prince Hal (Michael Hayden) betrays him. “I know thee not, old man,” declared the newly crowned king, and the audience gasped–I’m not exaggerating–as Mr. Kline reeled at the shock of his public humiliation.

As I say, there’s much else to like about this “Henry IV.” Mr. O’Brien imposes no high directorial concepts of his own, dressing his players in conventional period garb and letting Shakespeare be Shakespeare….It’s Shakespeare for moviegoers, in short, “popular” in the same pleasing way that “Anna in the Tropics” is old-fashioned. It runs through Jan. 11, and you won’t be sorry to see it.

No link, so to read the whole thing (including my two cents’ worth about Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, which closed after one performance, which was one too many), buy today’s Journal and look me up in the “Weekend Journal” section, which is worth reading for all sorts of other reasons.

Dear OGIC:

ODID is absolutely right, and I squirm to admit it. (Nobody’s father should be right.) To be sure, Stephen Maturin is a more than sufficiently interesting character in the earliest books, but I do think it took O’Brian a bit of time to start identifying personally with Maturin. Once he did–and in particular when he began writing about Maturin’s obsession with Diana, the love of his life–the focus of the series shifted.

Incidentally, here’s a story I’ve always wanted to tell in public. In my New York Times Book Review piece about O’Brien’s The Yellow Admiral, I made the following comment:

If Evelyn Waugh or Anthony Powell (or Anthony Trollope, for that matter) had been writing these books, the curve balls would have started flying several volumes back; Diana, for example, might have been killed off, and Stephen’s resulting grief used to deepen our understanding of his personality. But Mr. O’Brian coddles and cossets his darlings instead of murdering them, a sure sign of loss of nerve: there are by now at least a dozen untouchable continuing characters in the series, all of whom must be tended, watered and trotted out for their annual star turns.

And do you know what? Somebody really important died in the very next volume, The Hundred Days. (I won’t say who, since you’re clearly teetering on the verge of Aubrey-Maturin addiction.)

Anthony Trollope wrote in his Autobiography about how he went to his club one day, overheard a pair of clergymen complaining about one of his recurring characters, then went straight home and killed her off in the book he was writing, The Last Chronicle of Barsetshire. Ever since The Hundred Days was published, I’ve always wondered whether I might have similarly contributed to the demise of…well, never mind.

Our Dad in Detroit on Tuesday, me on Wednesday, Terry on Thursday: we fell like dominoes this week before Peter Weir’s majestic vision of Aubrey-Maturin. Didn’t matter whether we’d read Patrick O’Brian’s books before (Terry and ODID) or not (OGIC). But ODID has just written to register a slight caveat to Terry’s view that “the essence of Patrick O’Brian’s books…is the inner life of Stephen Maturin.” ODID thinks the books evolve in that direction but don’t start there, and he puts it most interestingly:

I’m not sure I totally agree that the books are about Maturin’s inner life. I think there is more of that in the later books than the earlier ones, Master and Commander, Mauritius Command, Desolation Island, and a couple of others. Maturin is a complex character, and I believe that O’Brian fell in love with developing his story as the saga went on.

The notion that O’Brian created this character, set him loose in the novels, and proceeded to fall in love with him and let his story take over, makes me want to read those novels even more. The whole idea of literary characters having, or acquiring, a life of their own, apart from the mind of the author, is of course a seductive one. I may have first encountered it in Edward Gorey’s first book, The Unstrung Harp, or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel, where the tortured author, uncomfortably mid-book, is confronted by his characters at the top of his staircase in the middle of the night. They hover there, mutely imploring him to do something with them.

But when the character is in a series–i.e., the relationship is long-term–then serious emotional involvement must threaten to supplant mere stalking. So what do you think, TT? Does O’Brian fall for Maturin in media res? And how does Aubrey feel about that?

The film 21 Grams opens in a few cities today, and the critics are divided. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal love it; Salon is torn; and The New Yorker feels much as I did about it. You can read my not-so-smitten review, first posted last week, here.

Click here to read a list of Bill Clinton’s 21 favorite books, which includes, among other things, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Hillary Clinton’s Living History, Thomas

We seem to be having a veritable traffic explosion today, so if you’re visiting “About Last Night” for the first time and want to know more about it–and us–click here to read an archived posting that tells all. Or simply work your way down the right-hand column, which is crammed full of information about this page and its proprietors.

Either way, we’re glad you stopped by. If you had fun, come back tomorrow…and bring a friend. The easy-to-remember alternate URL is www.terryteachout.com, which will bring you here lickety-split (as, of course, will the longer address currently visible in your browser).

Welcome.

I don’t know how much ink the National Book Awards would have gotten under normal circumstances, but given the events with which today’s papers (on and off line) are understandably crowded, it’s a wonder they got covered at all. Given the brevity of the various news stories about this year’s awards, though, I thought I ought to supply a few more details.

The ceremony was held at the Marriott Marquis, one of the super-monster hotels in the theater district of Manhattan, and a good thing, too–some 900 people showed up. The crowd at the reception was so thick that you could barely get a drink, and it was for all intents and purposes impossible to find anyone you knew (I ran into one of my fellow judges, but only by accident). Inside the ballroom, the tables stretched on and on and on, thus making informed table-hopping similarly impossible. Hence the dinner wasn’t nearly as social an occasion as I’d expected.

The ballroom was full of security–tough guys in tuxes, wearing Secret Service-style earpieces and talking into their hands. I don’t know whether this was standard operating procedure or arose from the fact that Stephen King is in the middle of a much-publicized bout with a stalker, but it seemed clear to me that his presence was part of the reason for their presence. I tried to say hello to him, and a big bruiser shoved himself in front of me and said, “Hey, Mac, you can’t talk ta Mr. King.” On the other hand, he backed down immediately when I told him I was a judge, and I was permitted to pay my respects to the guest of honor.

Of the 900 other guests, only about 120 were authors. I was the lone writer at my table–everybody else was from the business side of publishing. This, too, was a little disorienting, as I’d expected the mealtime chat to be rather more literary in tone, though I did get into a worthwhile conversation with a fellow from RR Donnelly Publishing (they’re the ones who actually manufacture books) about the prospects for e-books (he was skeptical). The food, incidentally, was quite good for a gathering of this sort–I wasn’t counting on rack of lamb.

The fiscal orientation of the audience may help to explain why Stephen King received two standing ovations as he was presented with the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. As one of the Donnelly execs said to me during Standing Ovation No. 1, “That man has made a lot of money for a lot of people in this room.”

King’s speech was interesting. He was clearly moved by the honor–he choked up. He was funny and unpretentious when paying tribute to his wife and talking about the “vulnerability” to self-doubt of poor, struggling authors (such as himself when young). I suspect he was the first National Book Award laureate ever to say “Oh, shit!” in his acceptance speech (he was describing the way an honest author might portray a terrified character in extreme circumstances). And he was simultaneously a bit defensive and more than a little bit aggressive when he informed the crowd that they’d be making a mistake if they treated their decision to give him the prize as an act of “tokenism.” He said (repeatedly) that he didn’t write for money, that genre fiction deserved to be taken seriously, and that the judges of the National Book Awards had an obligation to read the best-selling books that are shaping American popular culture (I’m paraphrasing from memory, but that was the gist of his complaint). “Bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and literary fiction,” he declared, and to that end he supplied us with a long reading list of popular novelists whom he commended to our attention, among them Elmore Leonard and John Grisham. (He also mentioned Patrick O’Brian.)

The confrontational tone of King’s speech startled me–I’d never heard him talk before. Had it been adequately reported this morning, I think it would already be stirring up no small amount of controversy in the literary sector of the blogosphere. The reason why I approached him, by the way, was to ask if he’d made arrangements to publish it. He was polite (just) but brisk when he said that he thought somebody “already had dibs” on it. I hope it gets into print in some form or other, because it deserves to be talked about extensively.

King didn’t give the only attention-getting speech of the night. Carlos Eire spoke at unexpected length–eloquently and effectively–upon being given the nonfiction award for Waiting for Snow in Havana. He, too, was moved to the point of tears, but he wasn’t so disconcerted as to forget to point out to us that had he published Waiting for Snow in Havana in Cuba rather than America, he wouldn’t have been receiving an award in New York–he’d be locked up in one of Fidel Castro’s prisons. It was a surprising speech to hear at a gathering of New York literary types, who aren’t accustomed to being reminded that to be an honest writer in Cuba is to run the constant risk of being thrown into a jail not fit for animals (Eire’s words).

Polly Horvath, who received the prize for Young People’s Literature, gave a speech that lasted for about 15 seconds, and her brevity amazed and delighted everyone at my table. C.K. Williams, the poetry winner, read one of his poems in lieu of giving a speech, and it, too, was short. (I very much admired his nerve.)

Then Shirley Hazzard stole the show. Here’s how the New York Times described her acceptance speech:

She accepted the award before a crowd of 900 writers, editors and publishers, and urged American writers to remain aware of their immense power in the world and their consequent responsibility not to degrade the language they had been given.

“We’re drowning in explanations,” she said. “What we need is more questions.”

What the story didn’t say is that Hazzard was chiding Stephen King–politely, but by name, and she made no bones about it–for telling the NBA judges what they ought to be reading. My guess is that she is more accustomed to weighing her words than speaking off the top of her head, for her remarks, though brief, weren’t nearly as pointed as they seemed, and you could tell she was torn between her obligation to be tactful and her desire to tear a piece off King. Nevertheless, it was an unambiguously confrontational moment, and an electric one.

That’s about the size of it, though I do want to add a few last words about the experience of being an NBA judge. We considered 436 books (some of them very, very briefly, but they all got talked about at some point in the past few months). We never raised our voices, never argued with one another, never got angry. Our deliberations were civilized, collegial, and great fun. When we met yesterday afternoon to make our final selection, it was the first time all five of us had been in the same room at once–we mostly deliberated via e-mail and in conference calls–and the atmosphere, far from being tense, was positively festive.

Yes, it was hard work, and I really wish the NBA would break up the nonfiction award into at least two parts: it isn’t easy or fair to directly compare histories, biographies, and memoirs, as we had to do. But we did it, and though I’m sworn to secrecy as to the particulars of our discussions, I think I can speak for the whole panel when I say that we were collectively pleased and proud to give the prize to Waiting for Snow in Havana. I gather that not all literary prizes are awarded in so companionable an atmosphere, so I hate to disappoint you by not reporting any fist fights, but the sad truth is that I had a wonderful time being a judge for the National Book Awards.

UPDATE: More details of the ceremony are getting into print. For a reliable wire-service account (by way of Maud) with good quotes from the King and Hazzard speeches, go here. Looks like the Times punted on this one….