Wednesday night around 9:30 pm the National Book Award winner will be announced in New York City. This years nominees are:

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon (signed copies here)

Home by Marilyn Robinson

Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen (signed copy here)

Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner

The End by Salvatore Scibona

Five young writers have been recognized by former winners of the National Book Award at the “5 under 35” celebration this year:

One More Year: Stories by Sana Krasikov

The Boat by Nam Le

All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gesson

The Farther Shore by Matthew Eck

Last Last Chance by Fiona Maazel

Have you read any of the nominated titles???

I had the pleasure of reading The Boat by Nam Le. As many other readers have noted, Le’s exploration of emotional and intellectual landscapes over an expansive geography is remarkable in this short story collection.

Luna Park Review asked Nam Le if he saw his own writing as somehow different from the majority of short stories being published today. He responded:

“Well, on balance, my stories are longer, I guess. But not so much as to be distinctive. I had to answer this question recently, of what it was I thought I was trying to do, and I came up with this formulation: that, for me, the project of fiction is to articulate consciousness with integrity. That’s what I try to do. What we talk about as ‘style’ is intrinsic to execution, of course, but should be, in my opinion, secondary in the reckoning of how ‘good’ something is. Barthelme and Bellow, Lydia Davis and Alice Munro, all different stylists, are all ‘good’; they just sit differently on each of the three branches (of ‘articulation,’ ‘consciousness’ and ‘integrity’). It’s a big tree. To mix metaphors, I think anyone who manages to pull off that trifecta is necessarily doing something new, something transformative. Maybe I’m old-school in that I still believe the finest thing a story can do is move its reader—to set off a little sob in the spine, as I think Nabokov called it. I don’t believe in technical self-limitation. I do believe 21st century consciousness is a complicated thing—and that its complications are without precedence. At bottom, I believe it’s a tough but good time to be writing.”

http://www.lunaparkreview.com/NamLeInterview.htm

Working at Lemuria, I have noticed that many readers shy away from the short story. Who could not love the short story? I rarely have the time to finish a novel at this point in my life. Though I have always loved reading and have degrees in English, I have many other passions. The short story allows me to experience another world, another view point in one sitting and there is never any guilt for having not finished. There is always the intellectual curiosity and wonder at how the writer is going to resolve the story, or perhaps not, in such a minimal number of pages.

Share