Random Notes

Toast of the Town: Like the Nobel, with its taste for obscure Third Worlders, the National Book Award has become less a literary prize than a token of liberal gratitude for meritorious service. In the past two years, awards have gone to an ominous account of the Manhattan Project, a novel about a group of white men who rape and murder a young black woman, an anti-Vietnam biography, and an anti-Vietnam novel. This year’s nominees include, in the non-fiction category, an idol-worshipping biography of Martin Luther King, a history of postwar U.S. foreign policy entitled Barbarian Sentiments, and an “exposé” of British environmental policy. That’s a tough call. Fiction is easier. In this category we find E. L. Doctorow pitted against Oscar Hijuelos and Amy Tan. Now, E. L. Doctorow is so venomous an America-hater as to have been condemned even by The New Republic. Hijuelos is Cuban—which may nudge him ahead of Doctorow, who, in any case, has already won a National Book Award. Amy Tan, though, is both an Asian and a woman. Despite the fact that The Joy Luck Club is her first novel, I’m putting my bets on her. Awards will be distributed November 29. Any takers?

Horror of Chambers: Nearly forty years ago, when Whittaker Chambers first walked into Random House with the manuscript of Witness, Bennett Cerf, Random’s long-time chieftain and a supporter of Alger Hiss, hesitated half a second before having him thrown out. In death, Chambers has been treated by publishers almost as roughly as he was in life. Whereas Hiss has been the subject of at least three book-length defenses, one sympathetic biography, and a memoir, Chambers’s memory has been kept alive mainly in intermittently available paperback reprints of his two books.

About the Author

David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer, a former literary editor at NR, is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute and co-author of The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath, and other books.

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Toast of the Town: Like the Nobel, with its taste for obscure Third Worlders, the National Book Award has become less a literary prize than a token of liberal gratitude for meritorious service. In the past two years, awards have gone to an ominous account of the Manhattan Project, a novel about a group of white men who rape and murder a young black woman, an anti-Vietnam biography, and an anti-Vietnam novel. This year’s nominees include, in the non-fiction category, an idol-worshipping biography of Martin Luther King, a history of postwar U.S. foreign policy entitled Barbarian Sentiments, and an “exposé” of British environmental policy. That’s a tough call. Fiction is easier. In this category we find E. L. Doctorow pitted against Oscar Hijuelos and Amy Tan. Now, E. L. Doctorow is so venomous an America-hater as to have been condemned even by The New Republic. Hijuelos is Cuban—which may nudge him ahead of Doctorow, who, in any case, has already won a National Book Award. Amy Tan, though, is both an Asian and a woman. Despite the fact that The Joy Luck Club is her first novel, I’m putting my bets on her. Awards will be distributed November 29. Any takers?

Horror of Chambers: Nearly forty years ago, when Whittaker Chambers first walked into Random House with the manuscript of Witness, Bennett Cerf, Random’s long-time chieftain and a supporter of Alger Hiss, hesitated half a second before having him thrown out. In death, Chambers has been treated by publishers almost as roughly as he was in life. Whereas Hiss has been the subject of at least three book-length defenses, one sympathetic biography, and a memoir, Chambers’s memory has been kept alive mainly in intermittently available paperback reprints of his two books.

About the Author

David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer, a former literary editor at NR, is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute and co-author of The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath, and other books.