From the Academy: What’s Happening to the Literary Mob?

A curious event occurred in American publishing this year: the judges and jurors of the National Book Awards conferred two of their chief awards upon distinctly worthy books. The New York Literary Mob, that conglomerate which dominates American publishing and reviewing, is losing either its senses or its grip-

For this year, the award for translation was given to Miguel de Unamuno’s Agony of Christianity, in Mr. Anthony Kerrigan’s translation and edition. (Last year, it was first announced by the National Book Awards gentry that a prize had been given to another volume of Unamuno in the Kerrigan edition; then that award was mysteriously withdrawn and a different book, published long before, given the translation award instead.) The five judges in the translation section praised Kerrigan for having “been able to capture with unusual grace the nobility, austerity, and passion that inform the thought of this great poet and thinker.”

A curious event occurred in American publishing this year: the judges and jurors of the National Book Awards conferred two of their chief awards upon distinctly worthy books. The New York Literary Mob, that conglomerate which dominates American publishing and reviewing, is losing either its senses or its grip-

For this year, the award for translation was given to Miguel de Unamuno’s Agony of Christianity, in Mr. Anthony Kerrigan’s translation and edition. (Last year, it was first announced by the National Book Awards gentry that a prize had been given to another volume of Unamuno in the Kerrigan edition; then that award was mysteriously withdrawn and a different book, published long before, given the translation award instead.) The five judges in the translation section praised Kerrigan for having “been able to capture with unusual grace the nobility, austerity, and passion that inform the thought of this great poet and thinker.”