Can Nick Cave rival Bad Sex Award favorite Philip Roth?

British magazine the Literary Review has announced the shortlist of finalists for its Bad Sex Award. The contenders list could be plucked from any highbrow literary award competition: John Banville has won a Booker, Amos Oz has been awarded the French Legion of Honor and Philip Roth has one Pulitzer and two National Book Awards. But maybe they'd prefer not to add the Bad Sex Award to their achievements.

"Nobody wants to win that award," Margaret Atwood -- who is not in the running -- told Jacket Copy in October. 

Not all the finalists feel that way. Nick Cave's "The Death of Bunny Munro" follows the sexual misadventures of traveling salesman Bunny. "Frankly, we would have been offended if he wasn't shortlisted," his British publisher Canongate told the Guardian. Maybe that's because Cave deliberately rendered a crude, sexually obsessed character. "I think it’s a hard look at a particular aspect of masculinity," Cave told Jacket Copy in September. "It’s fronting up to that and railing against the kind of misogynistic and predatory element of the male psyche."

There's a tension about the way the sex appears in Philip Roth's "The Humbling" that caught the judges' attention. In the book, over-the-hill actor Simon Axler woos a young lesbian named Pegeen -- who brings in another woman. The cited passage begins:

This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal.

OK, enough of that! We're not going to get to the devices part. This is a family newspaper.

The trouble, they note, is in the effort to claim literary respectability. Why write "This was not soft porn," an editor at Literary Review asks, "unless you're worried that it might be taken as such?"

Our reviewer Richard Rayner is a little more diplomatic. "Readers, according to their taste, may find the sex scenes in 'The Humbling' shocking or arousing or just plain silly."

The complete Bad Sex Award shortlist -- silly, sexy and shocking -- is after the jump. To read the passages themselves, you'll have to crack open the books.

National Book Awards include McCann, Eggers, Vidal

The National Book Award for Fiction went to Colum McCann for his novel "Let the Great World Spin," a story of New York in 1974 that doubles as an allegory of 9/11. It was the final award at the black-tie event Wednesday evening in New York City.

"In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, little anonymous moments that won't necessarily make it into the history books," McCann told the L.A. Times last week. "I think we need stories, and we need to tell the stories over and over and over not only to remind us, but to be able to have that clarity of experience that changes us, so that we know who we are now because of who we have been at some other time."

Juried awards were presented in three other categories. The nonfiction prize was awarded to T.J. Stiles for "The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt." Poetry went to Keith Waldrop, for "Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy," published by the University of California Press. Phillip Hoose took the award for young adult literature for "Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice"; Colvin joined him on the stage. 

Two awards were known in advance: Gore Vidal received the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and Dave Eggers the Literarian Award. Those were presented before dinner -- downsized to chicken from last year's lamb -- after which the competition awards were announced.

A new award -- the Best of the National Book Awards -- was presented to celebrate the awards' 60th anniversary. After weeks of revisiting all the previous winners, five finalists were set to a public vote. More than 10,000 people voted online, and tonight, Flannery O'Connor's "The Complete Stories" beat out books by John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon and Eudora Welty to take the honor.

Since its start in 1950, the National Book Foundation, led by publishing professionals, has striven to reward excellence in American literature. It may not be the Oscars, but it's about as close as the publishing world gets.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Gore Vidal at the National Book Awards with presenter Joanne Woodward in the background. Credit:  Tina Fineberg / Associated Press

Author Marie NDiaye is the first black woman to win the Prix Goncourt

France's top literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, was awarded today to French Senagalese author Marie NDiaye for her novel "Trois Femmes Puissantes" ("Three Powerful Women"). It is the first time a black woman has received the award.

Last week, NDiaye told the news agency AFP that she "never thought of it in those terms: 'black woman' and 'Goncourt,' " the Guardian reports. "I find it impossible to see things that way," she said. "I don't represent anything or anyone. I have met many French people raised in Africa who are more African than I am." But at the ceremony in Paris, she said, "I am very happy to be a woman receiving the Goncourt," the BBC reports. "This prize is an unexpected reward for 25 years of persistence."

NDiaye, 42, published her first novel at 17. She moved to Berlin in 2007, the BBC reports, "after President Nicolas Sarkozy won the election, saying she finds France under his rule 'monstrous' and 'vulgar.' "

The Prix Goncourt's preeminence helps books find their way to -- or remain on -- bestseller lists. But the financial reward that comes with it -- about $15 -- is a mere token. Previous winners include Marguerite Marguerite Duras, for "The Lover," Georges Duhamel for "Civilization" and Simone de Beauvoir for "The Mandarins."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Marie NDiaye surrounded by reporters after the announcement. Credit: Christophe Ena / Associated Press

Substantial Whiting Awards given to 10 up-and-coming writers

Each year, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation presents 10 writers with a tremendous boon: the gift of $50,000. The substantial prize is designed to allow these promising authors, all at early stages of  their careers, to focus on their work. And they've got a good record of picking novelists, nonfiction writers, poets and playwrights who go on to produce excellent work, including William T. Vollman, Denis Johnson, Colson Whitehead, Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jorie Graham, Mark Doty, Jeffrey Eugenides and David Foster Wallace.  

Today the foundation announced the awards at a ceremony in New York. There are two nonfiction writers, three poets, four writers of fiction and one playwright.

Rajiv Joseph, above, is the sole playwright. His "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" was staged at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles earlier this year; theater critic Charles McNulty wrote, "I'm tempted to call it the most original drama written so far about the Iraq war, but why sell the work short? The imagination behind it is way too thrillingly genre-busting to be confined within such a limiting category." Joseph, then 34, told the L.A. Times, "Any fears about the ambition of this play had more to do with dramaturgy than politics. I've written a surreal story, so that allows me leeway as an artist to explore Iraq in my own way."

Poet Jericho Brownteaches at the University of San Diego; he was a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before getting his PhD in creative writing. Novelist Adam Johnson also teaches in California -- at Stanford -- and won a California Book Award for his 2003 novel, "Parasites Like Us."

Salvatore Scibona's debut, "The End," was nominated for the National Book Award last year. "I think of a writer as a skinny person scraping by on crackers and milk," he told Jacket Copy. "But everybody was served a loin of beef and red wine by waiters in white jackets and black tie."

Today's event may not have included beef, but it did feature Margaret Atwood as the keynote speaker. The other award-winners in attendance were poets Jay Hopler and Joan Kane; Vu Tran and Nami Mun, who write fiction; and nonfiction authors Hugh Raffles and Michael Meyer.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Rajiv Joseph, photographed at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, May 2009. Credit: Christina House / For The Times

One lucky writer will get a free trip to the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival

The Tennessee Williams/ New Orleans Literary Festival is running a short story contest for writers who have not yet published a book of fiction, and the reward is bigger than usual. The winner will get domestic airfare, accommodations and admission to the festival, which takes place from in March. And they'll also get to hear their story read at the festival, and take home $1,500.

Oh, and there's also the classic literary awards, stuff, which in this case is publication in the journal "New Orleans Review." Entries can be made online -- or mailed in -- with a submission fee of $25.

The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival takes place about a month after Mardi Gras and a month before the Jazz Festival warms up. Founded in 1986, it has carried on ever since, even in 2006, the year after Hurricane Katrina struck.

Last year, an all-access pass for the festival was $500, which included panels, master classes, scholarly discussions and events; single tickets were offered for $10. While participants for the 2010 festival have not yet been announced, last year's included David Simon, creator of "The Wire," and John Berendt, author of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: New Orleans Mardis Gras in 2007. Credit: Chris Graythen / Getty Images

Nobel laureates in literature: the good, the bad and the Nazi

When the Nobel Prize in literature was announced this month, the name "Herta Muller" met much American head-scratching. Muller, an ethnically German Romanian who writes of trials of living under a repressive dictatorship, has a strong reputation in Europe that hasn't gained much momentum in the U.S. Coming as it did on the heels of last year's choice, French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio -- few of whose works had been translated into English -- the selection made some wonder whether the prize is becoming increasingly esoteric.

Not to mention, in the case of Le Clézio's award, wrongheaded. His landmark 1980 work "Desert," recently released in translation in the U.S., is, our reviewer writes, "a truly dreadful book."

But it hasn't always been this way. A look at the list of Nobel literature laureates is stunning. Just a few: Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Mann, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Butler Yeats, Hermann Hesse, T.S. Eliot, Andre Gide, Albert Camus, Jose Saramago, V.S. Naipaul, Naguib Mahfouz, Gunter Grass, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Octavio Paz. And many Americans: William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Pearl S. Buck, Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison. It's enough to inspire a years-long reading binge.

Some Nobel laureates have been forgotten. The first, French poet and essayist Sully Prudhomme, has not exactly remained a household name since receiving the prize in 1901.

And then there's Knut Hamsun. The Norwegian author's book "Hunger" (1890) was praised both as a modernist work and for its critique of modernity. When he won the Nobel in 1920, he was thought of as a leading humanist, but 20 years later, he became a Nazi. An enthusiastic one: after meeting Joseph Goebbels, he mailed him his Nobel medal in admiration. After the war, he was found guilty of crimes against Norway.

This is the 150th anniversary of Hamsun's birth, which is being celebrated in his home country. Two new books return to his difficult legacy, looking simultaneously at his politics and his prose. In our pages today, Matthew Shaer looks at "Knut Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissenter" by Ingar Sletten Kolloen and "Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance" by Monika Zagar. Shaer writes:

To thrive, an artist must leave the city for the rough living of the country. He must immerse himself [Hamsun wrote] in "the unpredictable chaos of perception, the delicate life of the imagination held under the microscope; the meanderings of these thoughts and feelings in the blue, trackless, traceless journeys of the heart and mind, curious workings of the psyche, the whisperings of the blood, prayers of the bone, the entire unconscious life of the mind."

In his prime, Hamsun always wrote like this -- beautifully, poetically and savagely. ...

And yet Hamsun, personally and politically, was a monster.

Without "Hunger," Shaer writes, we would not have Kafka's "A Hunger Artist." That's one measure -- and the Nobel is another -- that marks it as an important work, one that should be read. Or should it? If Hamsun's work is evaluated through the lens of his politics, is he better forgotten?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: William Faulkner in 1955.

National Book Award finalists announced

Books about Henry Ford's failed jungle experiment and a Faulkneresque novel about the lasting effects of war on memory are among the finalists for the 2009 National Book Award, which the National Book Foundation announced this morning. Five finalists were named in four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.

Fiction finalists are Bonnie Jo Campbell, "American Salvage" (Wayne State University Press); Colum McCann, "Let the Great World Spin" (Random House); Daniyal Mueenuddin, "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" (W.W. Norton & Co.); Marcel Theroux "Far North" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); and Jayne Anne Phillips, "Lark and Termite" (Alfred A. Knopf). In an interview with The Times' Susan Salter Reynolds, Phillips described the origins of her novel:

The novel ... began with a strong image that Phillips had carried with her for three decades. "I was visiting a friend in Virginia, where I grew up. I looked out her window into an alley and saw a boy seated on a metal chair holding a blue strip from a dry cleaning bag. He sat there for hours." Yet another ingredient came in the form of the story of the massacre of hundreds of Korean civilians at No Gun Ri in 1950, reported by the Associated Press' Charles J. Hanley in 1999 (Hanley shared a Pulitzer with two colleagues for the story in 2000).

In nonfiction, finalists are David M. Carroll's "Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook" ((Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); Sean B. Carroll, "Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); Adrienne Mayor, "The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy" (Princeton University Press); T.J. Stiles, "The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt" (Alfred A. Knopf); and Greg Grandin, "Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt). Times columnist and book critic Tim Rutten called Grandin's book a perfect merging of history with a novelist's sense of story:

Historian Greg Grandin has taken what heretofore seemed just such a marginal event -- Henry Ford's failed attempt to establish a gigantic agricultural industrial complex in the heart of Brazil's Amazon Basin -- and turned it into a fascinating historical narrative that illuminates the auto industry's contemporary crisis, the problems of globalization and the contradictions of contemporary consumerism. For all of that, this is not, however, history freighted with political pedantry. Grandin is one of a blessedly expanding group of gifted American historians who assume that whatever moral the story of the past may yield, it must be a story well told.

More of the finalists after the jump:

Herta Muller wins Nobel Prize in Literature

An ethnic German born in Romania, writer Herta Müller has won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. The 56-year-old, who emigrated to Germany in 1987, has made the trials of living under Nicolae Ceauşescu's dictatorship a focus of her work.

In its citation, the Nobel committee wrote that Müller, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

Müller, a novelist and short-story writer, was considered by some to be among the top authors in the running for the award, although Amos Oz of Israel was the odds-on favorite of British wagering firm Ladbroke's.

Ladbroke's, which had Müller, at 50 to 1, had two American writers as likely winners: Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth. Last year, Horace Engdahl, then permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which distributes the Nobels, caused a stir when he declared American fiction unfit for the award. "Europe still is the center of the literary world ... not the United States," he told the Associated Press. "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular."

Müller's cross-European history may have appealed to this year's judges. She was raised in a German-speaking minority in Romania, but her early writing set her on a collision course with the repressive regime there. After her first two books, she was forbidden from publishing in Romania, leading to her departure for Germany. When she won the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for her novel "The Land of Green Plums," she said, "I wrote this book in memory of my Romanian friends who were killed under the Ceausescu regime. I felt it was my duty." 

"The Land of Green Plums" is one of only four of Müller's 19 books that have been translated into English. The most recent is "The Appointment," published in 2001. Chances are her work will now become more widely available. Although if last year's winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio is an indicator, it may be some time before that happens -- his novel "Desert" took about a year to hit shelves.

In addition to the honor, the Nobel Prize in Literature comes with a hefty financial reward: Herta Müller will receive $1.4 million.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Jens Meyer / Associated Press

Man Booker Prize shows the Tudors still got it

 

The prestigious Man Booker Prize has been awarded to Hilary Mantel for "Wolf Hall," her historical fiction of Henry VIII's court. Mantel was considered the odds-on favorite going into tonight's ceremony in London -- yes, the British do take bets on who will win a book prize -- and beat out shortlisted authors A.S. Byatt, J.M. Coetzee,  Adam Foulds, Simon Mawer and Sarah Waters. In addition to the honor of winning the award, Mantel will receive $83,500.

"Wolf Hall," scheduled for U.S. release Oct. 13, is said to be a minutely researched yet sweeping historical novel of the Tudor period. Told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, the book follows the courtly machinations that keep Henry VIII in power as he breaks with Rome to marry Anne Boleyn.

In Mantel's telling, historical tropes get a freshening-up. Cromwell is more bureaucrat than revolutionary, Sir Thomas More is not the heroic man of faith as we've come to know, and Henry VIII is not the virile sex fiend of the Tudors.

The Man Booker has boosted sales for all its shortlisted books this year and in the past has brought its winners significant international attention. But in this case, is it possible the British monarchy may resonate more with the British than with international audiences? Perhaps -- or perhaps readers everywhere will find this version of Henry VIII's 500-year-old story as delectable as Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Author Hilary Mantel with her Man Booker-winning "Wolf Hall." Credit: Alastair Grant / Associated Press

National Book Foundation names 5 under 35

The National Book Foundation has named its 2009 class of 5 Under 35 -- five exceptional novelists not yet 35 years old. The list includes Josh Weil, author of "The New Valley," three linked novellas; Karen Russell, author of "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," a short story collection; and Lydia Peelle, for her short story collection "Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing."

In our review, we called fourth honoree Ceridwen Dovey's "Blood Kin" "a taut and remarkably self-assured first novel." We also reviewed "All the Living," by final honoree C.E. Morgan. "This is a book about life force, the precious will to live and all the things that can suck it right out of a person. It is a first novel, and the writing is simply astonishing: The way small movements betray a character, the effects of hard labor, the damaging power of communication withheld. It is the writing of a much older (at times, even world-weary) author."

It's the fourth time the honors have been awarded; each year, five former National Book Award winners select new, up-and-coming writers. Certainly each of these has written work worthy of renewed attention.

But the honor, as constructed, can't help but call attention to its own arbitrariness. What purpose does the 35-year-old designation serve? It's not exactly young -- a young writer is Jonathan Safran Foer, 25 years old when his highly accomplished debut, "Everything is Illuminated," was published. And if it's meant to find promising emerging writers, why ignore someone like Charles Bock, who turned 38 the year his weighty  "Beautiful Children" was released?

Thirty-five means different things depending on where you sit. A professional athlete might see 35 as the twilight of his career; a hopeful mom as tick-tock time for babymaking. But in the literary world, what marker does 35 signal? Why 5 under 35 at all? Why not 5 debut novelists, or 5 exciting writers, or 5 new authors to watch?

-- Carolyn Kellogg