So everybody’s suddenly catching up with What nobody seems to have picked up on, however, is the salient point that the National It seems to me Algren’s perspective is the one to take. I realize of course that the tale sounds So everybody’s suddenly catching up with our remarks a week ago about Harold Bloom’s fit of horror over Stephen King’s elevation into the ranks of the “distinguished” by the National Book Foundation. Here’s Steve Almond on the subject, yesterday in Mobylives. And here’s Our Girl in Chicago, filling in for fellow Arts Journal blogger Terry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-6J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nfit of horror over Stephen King’s elevation into the ranks of the “distinguished” by the National
\nBook Foundation. Here’s Steve Almond on the subject,
\nMobylives<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>. And here’s Our Girl in Chicago, filling in for fellow Arts
\nJournal blogger Terry Teachout,
\n
\nBook Foundation is being taken much too seriously. Everybody has overlooked my lovely little
\nanecdote about Nelson Algren, who won the foundation’s highest honor, the National Book
\nAward, and discovered when he tried to hock the medal it came with that he couldn’t get
\nfive bucks for it. <\/P>
\n
\ntoo good to be true and that Algren was not above embroidering the truth at times to make a
\npoint. But I checked with an old friend of Algren’s, Roger Groening, and he assured me Algren
\nalso told him that story. And while Groening had no way of knowing whether it was accurate, it
\nwas a story Algren told with the sort of relish that made him believe it, too.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"