The prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction was awarded to Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, it was announced last month. Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon won for nonfiction; The Passage of Power, the fourth volume in Robert A. Caro’s study on Lyndon B. Johnson, won for biography; Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton took home the award for autobiography; Stranger Magic by Marina Warner for criticism; and D.A. Powell’s collection Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys won the poetry prize.

The only winners in attendance were Andrew Solomon and Ben Fountain. “I really wanted to write a book about love,” said Solomon upon accepting the award, thanking his editors at the publishing company Scribner. Far from the Tree, a gigantic tome of a work, examines how parents raise children very different from themselves—such as those who are deaf or autistic. Solomon has previously won the National Book Award for his work The Noonday Demon.

Strange Magic by Marina Warner examines the Arabian Nights and how studies of it have evolved over centuries.

Useless Landscape is D.A. Powell’s fifth book of poetry. It deals with topics ranging from Disneyland to the 1970s dance scene.

Caro’s long and intense study of Lyndon B. Johnson has already garnered numerous awards, with past volumes winning Pulitzers, a National Book Critics Circle Award and earlier National Book Awards. The Passage of Power focuses on Johnson’s vice-presidency and presidency up to 1964.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was previously a finalist for the National Book Award and is a likely candidate for the upcoming Pulitzer Prize. Taking place one Thanksgiving Day, the novel centers around eight soldiers and their tour through the Iraq war.

Past winners of the fiction award include John Updike and Jennifer Egan, and helped propel Toni Morrison and Jonathan Lethem to the forefront of literature. The award is unique among American book prizes in that finalists and winners do not have to be American citizens. Foreign writers such as W.G. Sebald and Roberto Bolano have the award to thank for much of their popularity in America.

Not too long after that announcement, the winner of the 33^rd PEN/Faulkner Award was also announced. Benjamin Alire Saenz won for his collections of short stories, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. The other finalists were Threats by Amelia Gray, Kind One by Laird Hunt, Hold it ‘Til it Hurts by T. Geronimo Johnson, and Watergate by Thomas Mallon.

Interestingly, all of the nominees were notably obscure, with none of them receiving nominations for other awards or appearing much in the media’s “Best Of” lists.

Past winners include Mao II by Don DeLillo, The Hours by Michael Cunningham and The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka. Notably, Philip Roth has won three PEN/Faulkner Awards for his novels Operation Shylock, The Human Stain and Everyman.

Finalists receive $5,000 and Mr. Saenz will take home $15,000. The award is to be presented officially on May 4 in Washington DC.

Image Courtesy: On Being

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With the announcement of the winner of the Pulitzer Prize rapidly approaching,  the Toonari Post has begun speculating who will come home with the prize. Another website has put up their own list of predictions, and Toonari Post is reviewing seven of them to judge their likelihood of winning.

Two short story collections seem to have a good chance at getting the prize: The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo and Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman.

Don DeLillo, more than any other author on the list, has received critical recognition. Literary Critic Harold Bloom said,” he is one of four current American authors to have touched the sublime” (the others being Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon.) Despite this, he still has not won a Pulitzer prize for his work.

The Angel Esmeralda consists of nine stories written from 1979 to 2011. Though some are much better than others, all are memorable thanks to DeLillo’s masterful prose. The settings stretch across the world, from New York to a high security prison in the Canary Islands, from Greece to outer space; however; there is one unifying theme throughout all of them: communication. It may take different forms in all of the stories, but an examination of how people pass thoughts and ideas from one another is always present.

Some of the earlier stories come off as a bit weak as the later ones seem like they were meant for critical analysis rather than pleasure reading, but the middle ones are amazing. The title story is almost unreal, and it is worth picking up the book based on that alone.

DeLillo is incredible with prose, and it shows.

“The old nun rose at dawn, feeling pain in every joint. She’d been rising at dawn since her days as a postulant, kneeling on hardwood floors to pray. First she raised the shade. That’s the world out there, little green apples and infectious disease.”

DeLillo has had a shot at the Pulitzer before with other nominated novels and this time around he has potential to add to his awards collection.

In contrast, Edith Pearlman is a small, lesser-known novelist, writing only short stories that have only made a small splash—until now. Binocular Vision won the National Book Critics Circle award last March and is currently ranked #1 on PPrize.com as ‘most likely to win’ the award. The book is split into two parts: the first consisting of selected stories previously published and the second being made up of new narratives. Pearlman’s prose at times reads bizarrely, but from the beginning onward is very effective:

“The town square was a bare knoll. A church faced the square. Its stucco walls seemed to be unraveling. The one-storied inn sagged towards its own courtyard. Robert was shown to a rear bedroom. From his window he could see oxen.”

Some of the stories are weak and forgettable, while others are strong. Though the book is excellent and is definitely in the running for the Pulitzer, it suffers from two problems. First, Pearlman has the uncanny ability to make even the most fantastic location seem banal, rendering what should be exciting stories into dull excursions.

Second, often the stories only come together and are worthwhile in the end, which at times works, but other times makes you wonder why you are even reading the story, and if the ending is messy or poor, the whole story comes off as unsatisfactory. While not all too many stories fall into this last category, enough do that the book at times seems disappointing.

Though the book itself is worth reading and definitely deserves the accolades it has already received, it does not exactly come across as Pulitzer material.

Stay tuned for the last installment of Pulitzer Prize speculation, as the Toonari Post takes a look at some of the novels nominated for the award.

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