Friday, October 14
Winners
British playwright Harold Pinter, who juxtaposed the brutal and the banal in such works as "The Caretaker" and "The Birthday Party" and made an art form out of spare language and unbearable silence, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday.
Irish writer John Banville was also presented this week with the Man Booker Prize for his latest novel "The Sea." As well as receiving £50,000 in prize money, the award guarantees him huge sales for the novel and for his previous work.
Here at home, E.L. Doctorow's "The March," his novelization of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's bloody Civil War campaign, and Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," her memoir of grieving for her late husband, were among the nominees announced Wednesday for the National Book Awards. Other fiction finalists are Mary Gaitskill's "Veronica," Christopher Sorrentino's "Trance," Rene Steinke's "Holy Skirts" and William T. Vollmann's "Europe Central."
I, of course, was not nominated for any of these awards. Then again, I still haven't had a novel published. Or reached out with any serious effort to try and get mine published. But: Someday. A guy's gotta dream. Now back to work.
Irish writer John Banville was also presented this week with the Man Booker Prize for his latest novel "The Sea." As well as receiving £50,000 in prize money, the award guarantees him huge sales for the novel and for his previous work.
Here at home, E.L. Doctorow's "The March," his novelization of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's bloody Civil War campaign, and Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," her memoir of grieving for her late husband, were among the nominees announced Wednesday for the National Book Awards. Other fiction finalists are Mary Gaitskill's "Veronica," Christopher Sorrentino's "Trance," Rene Steinke's "Holy Skirts" and William T. Vollmann's "Europe Central."
I, of course, was not nominated for any of these awards. Then again, I still haven't had a novel published. Or reached out with any serious effort to try and get mine published. But: Someday. A guy's gotta dream. Now back to work.
