Awarding the Obscure
Everyone knows there's pretty much an award for everything these days. Part of this is due to the organization's effort to garner attention to not only itself but to also provide certain works with an additional advantage when it comes to the awarding of the bigger honors. Conversely, one can assume that this stems from the notion that if a major work doesn't get the big name award, then it at least can claim some of the lesser known ones as minor accomplishments. The fuss surrounding the National Book Award nominations stems not from either of these two scenarios, but from the fact that the nominees are less than household names. In fact, it appears their own publishers, sometimes, aren't aware of their existence.

The New Yorker and the New York Times both published articles concerning the fuss over the nominees, and, while it's clear that awarding the obscure has a certain refreshing quality, it also raises other issues about the process, the judges themselves, and the publishers' interest in the role literature and literary awards affect not only sales but the reading public at large.

Anyone even half attuned to the book world knows that the most celebrated fictional work to appear in the last few months is Philip Roth's The Plot Against America: A Novel. All personal bias aside (I think Roth is one of our greatest living writers), the omission of Roth, among other big names, raises the issue of what exactly the motivation is of the nominating committee. Led by Rick Moody, the panel is, to some extent, prevented by the National Book Foundation, the organization responsible for the award, from commenting. The Times, however, hints at but doesn't actually address one crucial aspect. None of the judges have had a book on the Times' bestseller list, and only two have been nominated for the award in the past. These two facts raise several questions. Are the judges using this position as a way to make a statement against big name publishers and their prized authors, such as Roth? The two judges who had been nominated previously are, likewise, obscure. Are they responsible for even more obscure works being nominated?

Personally, I can't decide where to fall on this issue. On the one hand, it seems rather unprofessional of the judges to nominate books that are obscure for obscurity's sake. However, if there is a heartfelt appreciation that these books represent, truly, the best the publishing world has to offer this year, then it's commendable that they would choose these over books that are, from all indications, not the best from highly regarded writers. In the end, it doesn't really matter all that much because, as highlighted in the Times piece, the National Book Award really isn't all that prized anymore, especially when compared with the anticipation of the Booker Prize in Britain. Now, that's a culture that I wish we could embrace.