Congratulations to the winners of the National Book Awards which were held last night at Cipriani. James McBride was a surprise speech-unprepared winner for his novel THE GOOD LORD BIRD and the New Yorker's George Packer got the nod for his recession-minded book THE UNWINDING. Mary Szybist and Cynthia Kadohata took home the prizes in poetry and YA fiction, respectively.
The most-mentioned moment of the night according to my Twitter analysis was Toni Morrison giving Maya Angelou an award (and a glowing speech to go with), a nod to two venerable female writers who show no signs of slowing down. Then, RAGTIME author E.L. Doctorow accepted a "Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" and in his speech he predictably went after the threat of technology to the sacred practice of reading and how e-books aren't real books. The usual my lawn, get off it stuff. At the end he apparently turned it to a defense of free speech (this is from Ron Charles' account in the Washington Post, since I found his tweets the most useful to follow during the live event), but not without making reference to the potential future of books laying in the "Chinese darkness." That could be pretty troubling, depending on what he meant.
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